THINKS THE EAGLES STOLE ONE
Thursday is coordinator day down at NovaCare, and your Eagletarian is attempting to summon the energy to distill their collected wisdom into a few pithy paragraphs.
But my normal light and breezy style is hard to affect today. I have nearly lost the will to blog.
In today's Daily News, I asked, rhetorically, "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" while I was narrating how Donovan McNabb refused to concede superiority to the Giants, in a conference call with New York-area media.
As of this moment, I have received no fewer than 5 (that's five!) e-mails from readers who wished to inform me that it was, in fact, the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor.
Deep sigh.
I'm not sure I want to live in a country, or a world, where people don't get references to "Animal House." What 
are they teaching in the schools these days? Do I need to start leaving room for footnotes at the bottom of the stories? Or inserting clunky explanations every time I reach for a cultural reference? (And by saying "what the Eagles have here is a failure to communicate," I am referencing the Strother Martin character in the Paul Newman movie 'Cool Hand Luke.' See, Strother Martin plays this chain gang captain ..."
Please, folks. Tell me somebody out there gets it. It's not like I'm quoting Plutarch here.
OK, now that we'vve addressed that, I feel I can go on. For a little while, anyway.
The coordinators: Rory Segrest felt DeSean Jackson's mistake on that punt muff Sunday was not flying into a crowd and trying to catch the under-kicked punt, it was not calling for a fair catch. That sounds solid to me, hope DeSean was listening.
Jim Johnson talked about how hard it is to stop a balanced offense like the Giants', that you can't just, say, shut down Brandon Jacobs or double-up Plaxico Burress and figure you'll win.
Johnson noted that over the past three seasons, when the Eagles have beaten the Giants (two of seven times, once in the playoffs following the 2006 season) they've handled Burress. This year, of course, the eaqgles have added Asante Samuel, a Pro Bowl corner who seems better at defending those jump-ball passes than Sheldon Brown or Lito Sheppard. Though Samuel memorably dropped an Eli Manning pass that would have changed the outcome of last February's Super Bowl, and the course of David Tyree's career.
Johnson also seems concerned about the Giants' running game, which features an experienced offensive line and backs Brandon Jacobs, Derrick Ward and Ahmad Bradshaw -- "three guys who could play for anybody," Johnson called them.
Marty Mornhinweg feels the antidote to the Giants' pressure is to hit some big plays against them, which of course might be easier to talk about than to accomplish. Mornhinweg feels his short-yardage running game is improving, though he concedes it isn't where he wants it to be yet.
There's more, but I've been asked to report to Dean Wormer's office.
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.
