MORE FROM THE WEB
More fan contributions from Philly.com Sports partner Bleacher Report
This article was originally published in the Daily News on September 13, 2004.
As he watched the play unfold, standing somewhere near the right hash mark, Jon Runyan had one thought.
"Throw the ball," was the gist of his thinking, Runyan later recalled, as Donovan McNabb rolled and rolled and rolled to the right, Michael Strahan on his heels, the play McNabb had called already in ruins. Runyan was as powerless to help his quarterback as any of the 67,532 people sitting in the Lincoln Financial Field stands.
"He has to know, if he gets out of the pocket, I can't keep up with either one of them, so he's on his own," said Runyan, the Eagles' right offensive tackle, charged with keeping Giants defensive end Strahan in check.
McNabb gave Strahan a little head fake, acting like he was going to try to turn upfield. He did not. Suddenly, they were out of room at the sideline, and it seemed McNabb was going to step out, just ahead of Strahan's charge, bringing up third-and-goal from about the Giants' 16.
Just then McNabb whipped his right arm back across his body. It was an impossible position to throw from, surely he was just dumping the ball to avoid the sack - but there was Terrell Owens breaking across the end zone, and then the ball was in Owens' arms and the Eagles had another touchdown.
OK, so the New York Giants looked fairly pliable in the Eagles' 31-17, season-opening victory yesterday. It isn't going to be like this every week. But plays such as McNabb's scramble-and-fling with 2 minutes, 17 seconds left in the first quarter - McNabb's second of three touchdown passes to Owens - sure seemed to promise something beyond what we've seen before from this offense and this quarterback.
Owens - who caught eight passes for 68 yards and ran through an impressive repertoire of touchdown celebrations, in only the second three-TD-catch day of his illustrious career - said the play showed, "No. 1, [McNabb's] scrambling ability; No. 2, his vision; No. 3, his strong arm, to throw the ball back inside. That's one of the quarterback coach's nightmares, him throwing back across his body. But obviously, we have that relationship - I knew what he was doing and I saw what he was seeing . . . I saw an open spot, and that's where he threw the ball. "
McNabb's four touchdown passes (he also found tight end L.J. Smith in the end zone, Smith making perhaps the best catch of a day that saw more than a few good ones) equaled his career high, last reached on Nov. 17, 2002, the day he broke his right fibula against the Cardinals. McNabb completed 26 of 36 passes for 330 yards, the second-highest yardage total of his career (bested only on Dec. 10, 2000, when he threw for 390 against Cleveland). His passer rating of 137.5 tied his career best, set that day against the Browns.
"I think it was a good start," said McNabb, who noted that the 50-yard run Brian Westbrook busted on the first play of the Birds' second possession forced the Giants to respect the threat of the run, and opened up the secondary.
The escape-from-Strahan throw started out as a pass to Westbrook, McNabb said, but Westbrook was covered, and so was his next read, tight end Chad Lewis. McNabb was just buying time, waiting for Owens to find an opening, and he did.
"We still have some work to do," McNabb said, when asked about his chemistry with Owens. Owens came out to McNabb's home in Arizona before training camp to get a feel for McNabb's passing style, but they misfired more than they hit in sporadic preseason action. "We're going to be faced with different defenses and different schemes. Sometimes things are going to be crisp and sometimes things won't be crisp. "
You couldn't really say Owens was the focal point of the offense, except in the red zone. Westbrook rushed for 119 yards on 17 carries, the first 100-yard day of his career, and he caught three passes for another 42 yards. Lewis caught half a dozen balls for 58 yards, his most productive day in nearly 2 years. Todd Pinkston had a 53-yard catch, the longest of the game, among his three receptions for 76 yards. Smith had three catches for 50 yards, giving the Birds nine receptions and 108 yards from their tight-end position. Whatever the Eagles' offense wanted, it got, seemingly without a lot of effort.
"They worked very hard at it and they spent the offseason working on it, they came into camp working on it, you could see it getting better every day during the training camp and through the preseason," Reid said, when asked about his offense's timing. Reid won an opener for only the second time in his 6 years with the Eagles. "I think you'll see even better timing as they play more together. "
The only shadow was cast with 2:39 left in the first half, when first-round rookie guard Shawn Andrews went down with a broken right fibula, after Westbrook and a pile of tacklers seemed to overtake Andrews from behind. Reid said Andrews, the Eagles' first rookie starter since defensive tackle Corey Simon in 2000, would miss the rest of the season. Top sub Artis Hicks finished the game as the left guard, with Jermane Mayberry moving from left to right, where he had played before being moved for Andrews.
Earlier, Westbrook's long gallop set up T.O.'s first Eagles touchdown, a 20-yard McNabb strike to the right corner of the end zone two plays later. Owens struck a statuesque pose, one foot resting on the ball, his right bicep flexed. The Linc crowd loved it.
From there, it was a pleasant evening of pitch-and-catch. By halftime, the Eagles were leading, 24-10, McNabb had thrown for 204 yards and three TDs. And hardly anybody even remembered that the Giants had scored first, Ron Dayne plowing Darwin Walker backward into the end zone from 3 yards out, as the Eagles' big offseason defensive acquisition, end Jevon Kearse, sat on a sideline medical table having his right ankle examined.
Kearse wasn't seriously hurt, Dayne and Tiki Barber couldn't run their way out of what ultimately became a 31-10 deficit, and the game unfolded pretty much exactly the way Reid and his staff probably envisioned.
At times, the Eagles' defense looked like a group that hadn't played together much in the preseason, which it hadn't, and like a group that can't stop an opponent from running at the right side of its line, which it couldn't quite often last season. As several Eagles noted, the next opponent - Minnesota, a week from tonight at the Linc - might make things a lot more interesting.
Even under new coach Tom Coughlin, the Giants were the Giants the Eagles have come to know in winning six of the last seven meetings: They somehow didn't score a point on two trips inside the Birds' 10, fumbling it away and then turning it over on downs.
But, boy, that Eagles offense: 454 net yards, 7 yards per snap.
"Overall, I think it was a great total performance for the offense," McNabb said. "It's something we can feed off of going into Monday night against Minnesota . . . You can definitely feel the confidence rising for all of us. "
