PREFERS TEMPLE'S OFFENSE TO PRINCETON'S
Donovan McNabb has been known to go for the laughs when he is in front of the media. Sometimes he hits and sometimes he misses.
Last week, he scored with his line about the janitor being the guy who told him he would start against Arizona.
Wednesday, he took another crack at it, during his conference call with the New York area media.
Like just about everyone else, McNabb was asked about security concerns and whether he feels unsafe when he goes out in public. This, of course, follows on the heels of the Plaxico Burress incident.
"I think security is an issue that not just as a football player, but just as an athlete and as a celebrity, as a face, a figure, is something that you have to focus in on because too many times we have heard too many tragic stories or guys getting held up or getting robbed and that is something we need to eliminate," he said. "Security is an issue in which it is something that passes across your mind and something that you really need to look into."
The followup question asked whether he drew the line at owning a firearm.
"I don’t have any weapons," he began. "I don’t own any weapons unless you call a couple of Louisville sluggers and aluminum baseball bats some of my weapons, but if you come into my house I am going to turn into Barry Bonds on you."
The line drew a laugh from the folks on the other end of the speakerphone.
Although we suggest he should have gone this route: "I don't have any weapons ... but you all have known that for years."
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Giants coach Tom Coughlin tried to move past the Burress incident during his meeting with reporters. He issued a statement and then said he would not take any questions on Burress. And then this ...
"Believe it or not, we have a football game this weekend; a very important game against a very, very good Philadelphia Eagles team in the division – a team that we played a few short weeks ago in a very close game down in Philadelphia. I am pleased with our team, with our mental toughness, with our ability to focus, and with our ability to go ahead and approach the task at hand despite the circumstances that were laid really in front of them Saturday morning. So we look forward to preparing for Philadelphia. We have had a good meeting this morning. We have had an opportunity to, again, talk about this football team that came back from an overtime tie and then a loss to Baltimore in which they turned the ball over to take a lot of ridicule and heat from the media, from everybody else prior to their game against he Cardinals. And then they lined up and scored 48 points. So we have our work cut out for us. And we need to spend the time this week in preparation for this team."
Les Bowen has covered the Eagles for the Daily News since 2002. Before that, he spent nearly 13 years covering the Flyers. It took Les only a few seasons after the switch to figure out that there was no penalty box at the Linc, and that the time really wasn't his, despite what Andy Reid kept saying. Les came to Philadelphia and the Daily News from Charlotte in 1983. In the intervening years, he has pretty much lost track of NASCAR, and his accent. He, his wife Barbara, and their two sons live in Haddon Township, New Jersey.
Paul Domowitch has been with the Daily News since 1982. He has spent most of his 27 years at the paper covering the Eagles and pro football. For the last 10 years, he’s been a selector for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. A native of Wilkes-Barre and a graduate of Wilkes University, Domo came to the Daily News from the Fort Worth (Tx.) Star-Telegram, where he covered some god-awful Texas Ranger baseball teams. His first beat at the Daily News actually wa s boxing, which he covered just long enough to lose two sports coats to blood spatter before moving on to football. Domo and his wife Shelley, a University of Oklahoma grad and very dangerous to be around following a Sooner loss, have been married 29 years and have raised 2 terrific daughters – Allison, 26, a lawyer and graduate of Boston University School of Law; and Amy, 23, who graduated from Clemson and works in marketing and sales for a professional baseball team.
