Election Point

A new NBC News/Mason-Dixon poll in Florida finds Sen. Barack Obama leading Sen. John McCain, 47% to 45%.

If Florida goes Blue Obama and PA stays Blue would need to win only one of Nevada, Ohio, NH, Colorado, New Mexico, Michigan, and Virginia. This is very good news indeed. Of course, we are still behind in the rolling-average of polls in FL and a lot is yet to happen but this is very good news nonetheless.

Unrelatedly, here are two Eagles points.

So far the Eagles have played the Cowboys (Marion Barber), the Steelers (Willie Parker), and the Rams (Stephen Jackson) three teams with top backs and excellent rushing attacks. According to the Inquirer:

In [those] three games, they have allowed an average of 45.7 yards on the ground, well ahead of No. 2 Minnesota (70.3).

That is what they did to three top running teams. Think about what will happen when they go up against a mediocre or poor rushing team.

Secondly, the Inquirer also pointed this out:

The Eagles are 11-6 the week following an appearance on Monday Night Football since Reid became coach in 1999

This initially seems impressive. I then thought, wait a second, the Eagles were very good over that period, and it makes sense to compare it to their overall production. If a team that was 11-80 over several years was 11-6 after Monday Night Football, you'd say "wow fascinating". In this case, though, during the Andy Reid era mentioned above the team is 90-57 (61% winning percentage). 11-6 works out to a 64% winning percentage. This is a difference liekly attributable to statistical noise given the small variance (5%) and sample size (17).