"We would've been beating our head against the wall trying to run on them," one member of the Eagles organization said. "Every game plan is different, but we felt the best way to beat that team was to throw the ball."
Even with a 20-point lead in the second half, the Eagles continued to throw the ball, which probably said as much about Reid's lack of confidence in his defense as it did about his lack of confidence in being able to run the ball against the Niners' front.
"In this league," Mornhinweg said, "you better keep scoring [and] you better stay aggressive, or it will come back to bite you."
In the first three games, McCoy averaged 19 rushing attempts. The Eagles lined up in run formations - two-tight end or two-running back sets - on 117 of 206 plays (56.8 percent). That percent is unheard of for Reid, who favors three- and four-wide receiver sets for both passing and running.
Sunday, they used two-tight-end or two-running-back sets on only 16 of 68 plays (23.5 percent) They lined up in three- or four-wide-receiver formations on 49 of those 68 plays, as Michael Vick threw the ball a career-high 46 times.
Will it be more of the same this week when the Eagles face the Bills and their 3-4 defense?
Probably not.
Look for them to run the ball quite a bit more, and look for them to use a lot of two-tight-end sets again. If you've perused the Bills' statistics, you know they're not the run-stuffers the Niners are. They're 25th in rushing yards allowed per game (129.5) and 26th in rushing average (4.9). Last week, the Bengals rushed for 171 yards against them in a 23-20 victory.
