[ Monday, Jan. 20, 2003 ]
Eagles: all hype and no show
McNabb wasn't on and neither was the rest of the team as Philly fell 27-10 to the Bucs in a game they were destined to win.
By Chris Korman
Collegian Staff Writer
PHILADELPHIA - Get rid of it all.
All the stuff about Tampa not being able to score a touchdown at Veterans Stadium.
Every word about how freezing temperatures sink everything the Buccaneers try to do.
The urbananized prose spewed from the guy over on Market Street, the stuff about shutting Warren Sapp up once and for all.
Throw all that out.
No, better yet, leave it in the Vet. Let it sit there. Let it be the last memory for Philadelphia football fans, those of the green and black, formerly surly and angry, but now largely tired and indifferent.
Then, blow it up. Line the place with explosives and push the button. Bring it all crashing down.
But know that disappointment will always linger.
That's the fact the Philadelphia Eagles face - an almost permanent regret - after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did all the things they weren't supposed to do and won the NFC Championship 27-10.
"All losses hurt the same," Eagles defensive tackle Corey Simon said in the locker room.
But that's hard to believe. The Eagles were supposed to win the conference game because they came so close to doing it last year, but didn't.
The Eagles were supposed to beat the Bucs because they had done so in each of the last two playoffs.
The Eagles were supposed to win because they were a team of destiny, what with overcoming the loss of their star player and quarterback, Donovan McNabb, for more than half of the year.
They were supposed to win just because everyone in Philadelphia said so.
But all those people learned, the very hard way, that the word "supposed" isn't very useful in sports.
All it does is lead you to here, the land of needless ruin. It hurts more to lose after everyone has assumed you'll win.
It was a silly assumption. Because, after all, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a good football team. And they were a good football team before they ended all the supposed talk.
"There it is," Simon responded when asked if Tampa was simply good, this time sounding believable - and convinced. "They're a good football team. In fact, there isn't any better team in the NFC."
Ronde Barber sealed that fact by stepping in front of a ball that Donovan McNabb shouldn't have thrown late in the fourth quarter.
But he had to throw it. The moment called for it. McNabb was leading a furious comeback, his team down 10 points late in the fourth quarter. McNabb had taken the team to the Tampa 24 through acrobatic dodging of defenders and bullet passes. He did it the McNabb way.
So to continue it, he stepped back, saw a blitz and threw the ball at Antonio Freeman.
When Barber returned the interception 92 yards for a touchdown, he ended all hope for the Eagles. Even McNabb didn't bother chasing him.
Barber spent all day making plays.
Early in the third quarter, with his team up by a touchdown, Barber came around the left end unblocked and hit McNabb's raised arm before he could get a throw off and caused a fumble, which Tampa recovered.
Barber also made three tackles and deflected four passes.
McNabb had one of his toughest days as an Eagle. His six-game layoff after a broken ankle hurt him more than it had appeared last week against the Falcons. Though he completed 26-of-49 passes for 243 yards,
McNabb could not get it done when and where it mattered: in the first quarter, near the end zone.
