I agree that it loses a certain something by the World Cup, but I don't think it falls apart quite as abruptly or as horribly as you say. At the very least, the ending was rather good.
But I agree about the anime... sorta. Parts of it are pretty good. It has the Rurouni Kenshin problem, in that the creators mostly do a good job adapting the source material, but clearly lack either the talent or the imagination to come up with material of their own. If you could somehow go through it with a craft knife, and remove every reel of Filler... Except their version of the field day. Inexcusable.
I have to strongly disagree with you there. It's not just the filler- every time the anime creators made even the tiniest change to the source material it was for the worse (at least as far as I watched; I simply couldn't stand it any more after a couple of dozen episodes or so). From making Habashira a terrifying opponent who petrifies Sena (which makes Sena seem really weak and pathetic, whereas in the manga it was his will and ability to stand up to Habashira that showed how much his character had developed already), to changing the Yuuhi Guts game so that it's the substitutes who score against Deimon rather than the real Guts (completely missing the entire point of the match), they just kept screwing up everything they touched. Not to mention the adapted character designs were hideous (I still think we should replace the portraits on the Characters subpage with ones from the manga) and the animation in general was dreadful- the manga felt livelier and more action-packed, and those images didn't even move!
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The greatest sports manga ever... for 27 volumes.
For the first 27 volumes (up until the end of the rematch against Ojo), Eyeshield 21 is simply the best sports manga ever. It's gripping, exciting, hilarious, packed with great characters, and contains more fist-pumping "hell yeah!" moments than any other manga I've ever read. It has a fantastic cast, not only major characters like Sena and the infamous Hiruma, but also lesser supporting characters like Juumonji, Yukimitsu, Panther and more. Every match is engaging, but the awesome clashes against the undefeated gods of the Shinryuuji Nagas led by Jerk Jock Agon and the Devil Bat's long-awaited rematch against their personal nemeses the White Knights and "Perfect Player" Shin are the absolutely pinnacle. It is seriously a masterpiece of the genre.
Then the match against Ojo ends and it all falls apart. I could write essays about how dull, unsatisfying and implausible an opponent Hakushu are, or what a friggin' insufferable Mary Suetopia the Teikoku Alexanders are, especially the series' most appalling Marty Stu Yamato Takeru, a flawless superman who is also presented as a perfect Nice Guy despite the fact that he's frankly a smug, arrogant ass. And by the time you get to the World Youth Cup the entire series has collapsed- while there are some good ideas there like a Japan all-star team containing all the best players we've wanted to see team up for ages, The Reveal of the Mummy Man, and the return of Panther, it's a mess of pointless Filler, terrible racial stereotypes and boring one-note Villain Sues like Clifford and Mr Don (the son of the President of the USA, supposedly strong enough to nearly kill Gaou, a man strong enough to roll a car with his bare hands, with a single blow). By volume 37 you just want it to end and stop tainting your memories of how great this manga once was.
Still, there's really no reason you have to go along with it. While I read the entire series scanned as it came out, I only bought the releases of volumes 1-27 so I could relive the thrills, laughs and tears. I'd recommend you do the same and do what the anime adaptation did- pretend the series ended after the Ojo match.
Oh, but skip the anime itself, though. Adaptation Decay incarnate. It reeks.