Eagles' Westbrook learning to share

OAKLAND - Eagles running back Brian Westbrook was as bewildered as his teammates after it was over.

He set a meaningless record yesterday - with 50 rushing yards, he moved past Steve Van Buren into second place all-time on the Eagles' rushing list. He ran the ball only six times, though, which was much more meaningful. He was in a full rotation with rookie LeSean McCoy, which also was much more meaningful.

"Just the way coach is doing it now," Westbrook said. "Me and LeSean, we really just switch series. So every other series, LeSean is in there . . . I just go out there and play any chance I get, when I have an opportunity. Coach feels comfortable with LeSean in there. He's a very good player. He's made some big plays thus far this season. But when I'm in there, I just want to try to help this team."

It is just so unusual, not seeing Westbrook out there, say, on a key third-and-6 play. But that happened a lot yesterday in the Eagles' 13-9 loss to the Oakland Raiders. And the oldest, most familiar song in the Andy Reid songbook - the Where Did the Running Game Go blues - was dusted off for a rousing rendition after this one was over.

Westbrook had six carries for 50 yards. McCoy had five carries for 13 yards.

"I think, in hindsight, of course you would love to run the ball a whole lot more," said Westbrook, who has become adept over the years at dealing with this particular line of inquiry. "You would love to control the clock a whole lot more. We've had a lot of success throwing the ball in these first four games, or whatever it was, so it's hard to go away from that. But I think that, looking at it, we had some success running the ball. If we would have run it more, hopefully we would have had more success."

Alas.

Instead, the day featured dropped passes and a body-slammed quarterback. Nine points against the Raiders did not seem possible for a team that had been averaging 31.8 points per game, second highest in the NFL.

"We're better than that," Westbrook said. "We didn't come out today and execute our offense very well at all. We had a couple of drives but we weren't able to put the ball in the end zone. We're a lot better team than we played today. We have too many weapons on this team for us to really only put up nine points and not score any touchdowns."

Westbrook said he thought the team was emotionally ready, but that the mistake they made was to allow the really beleaguered Raiders to get their feet under them at the start of the game.

"Anytime you play a team like that, you come into their house, you've got to jump on them early," he said. "You don't want to let them stick around. You don't want to give them any hope, and we didn't do that from the very beginning . . .

"I think the defense played pretty good. We probably need some more yards from the special teams. But offensively, we didn't hold up our end of the bargain - and we're a better team than that."

Only if they prove it.