Krause: There are several ways to look at this victory

FOXBOROUGH – All right. Which is it? Was this game inevitable? Was this the game we’ve all been waiting for?After all, if you’re going to run the table, especially in the National Football League, it stands to reason that at least once along the way, a team you least expect will jump up and put a scare into you.That was the Philadelphia Eagles last night. They threw a huge scare into the Patriots. There was no talk of running it up at Gillette Stadium last night. Only talk of surviving.”We don’t care if it’s by one point of 100 points,” said safety Rodney Harrison. “All we care about is winning.”The only expectations we worry about are our own,” he said. “The Eagles made plays. There were times when we had opportunities to make plays and we just didn’t make them.”However, said coach Bill Belichick, “we made enough plays to win.”Was this the game where the Patriots secondary got exposed? If there’s an annual Achilles heel on this team, it’s the defensive backfield, and last night really brought that to light. Backup quarterback A.J. Feeley passed them silly for most of the night. Unfortunately for him, however, he bookended that performance by throwing one interception that Asante Samuel returned 40 yards for the Patriots’ first touchdown; and a second pick that effectively ended the game – an overthrown ball that Samuel grabbed in the end zone as the Eagles were mounting a comeback.”Without those two big plays,” said coach Bill Belichick, “I don’t think we win the game.””Hey,” said Samuel, “if my coach says that, I’m taking it.”Still, will rival NFL coaches try to use the West Coast offense more often from here on out?The Patriots tried to get by without running the ball. They only rushed it once in the first half – a one-yard touchdown plunge by Heath Evans. And they only ran it 16 times for the game.The accent on the empty-backfield offense took its toll. Quarterback Tom Brady – who has hardly been touched all season – was sacked three times, once viciously in the first quarter. Still, Brady managed to throw for 362 yards and complete 34 of 54 passes.And he wasn’t entirely happy after the game either.”We have a lot to be happy about,” he said, noting that the team clinched the AFC East title for the fifth straight season. “But we have a lot to learn from this too.”But the real story might be this: It’s almost December, and as Tedy Bruschi noted, games get tougher in December. Those blowouts against hapless opponents of September and October are long forgotten when the weather gets colder and the conditions get harsher. That’s when you need all the bullets in your gun.The Patriots were missing a large part of their offense last night, as their running game was not only invisible, but an afterthought. It’s a credit to Brady that he carried the team on his back all night long but one wonders whether that can continue against teams such as Baltimore (next Monday night) and Pittsburgh (the following Sunday).Maroney ran hard while he was in there, but he only had 10 attempts for 31 yards. The second-leading rusher was Brady, with 16.”We thought that (empty backfield) was the best way to match up with them early in the game,” Belichick said, and you can’t dispute him. The team only had the ball four times in the first half and scored on three of those possessions. The game started oddly, with Samuel running one back for a touchdown on the third play of the game; and then when the Patriots foolishly turned and ran downfield on the kick following Philly’s second touchdown. It turned out to be an onside kick, with the Eagles recovering.”We lost a possession on that one, too,” Belichick said.His plan would have worked, too, except that the defense had a devil of a time stopping Feeley.Maybe it’s just Feeley. The Patriots lost to him one other time – in December 2004 in Miami. You might remember that one.Steve Krause is sports editor of The Item.