Confused bumbling at a critical moment late in the game - check.
And, best of all, everyone's favorite characteristic of that 8-8 team last season made a postgame appearance: The widespread delusion in the locker room that the Eagles were somehow the better team, despite having lost in a fairly convincing manner.
"Not taking anything away from them, but there is no way this team is better than us," Donovan McNabb said, after the Redskins (4-1) ran for 203 yards to 58 for the Eagles (2-3), outgained the Eagles 388 total yards to 254, piled up 22 first downs to the Eagles' 14, continued their streak of no offensive turnovers in 2008, and converted 10 of their final 15 third downs, after starting out 1-for-4, while the Eagles managed all of three first downs, total, after the first quarter.
After some trick plays and a 68-yard punt return touchdown from DeSean Jackson helped put the Birds up 14-0 at the end of the opening quarter, the Redskins were decisively the better team. Listeners to his postgame news conference found it difficult to fathom what game McNabb was watching; this was not much like the previous week's loss, a giveaway in Chicago, in which the Eagles were missing Brian Westbrook. Washington took this game, at least as much as the Eagles gave it.
Make no mistake: Jim Zorn was the better coach at the Linc yesterday, Jason Campbell was the more effective quarterback, and Clinton Portis was the best running back.
"It was embarrassing, these last 2 weeks. They're two teams we should not have lost to," McNabb said, lumping the Redskins in with the mistake-prone Bears, who turned the ball over four times, or four times more than the Redskins have this season. "It's what we didn't do - not what they did, but what we didn't do."
