Occasionally during the dead points of this offseason, we’ll look back at some of the quirks, highlights, lowlights and follies from recent years. Today, we relive a painful evening for Donovan McNabb.
Sunday Night Football, final night of September, 2007. Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb drops back to throw 43 passes against the division rival New York Giants. Only 31 are delivered, only 15 are completed, and a tied-for-NFL-record 12 are never made as a result of sacks.
Six for Osi Umenyiora, three for Mathias Kiwanuka, two for Justin Tuck and one for Michael Strahan. Sure, that’s a fierce foursome for any offense to deal with, but how the hell does that even happen?
It was a night Eagles left tackle Winston Justice would never forget. Making his first career NFL start in place of the injured William Thomas, the USC product was responsible for four Umenyiora sacks. Eventually, they had to help Justice out and New York’s defensive front was able to take advantage by overwhelming center Jamaal Jackson, who gave up two sacks.
“It was like a video game out there,” Umenyiora later recalled, per ESPN.com.
Clearly, Strahan thought Justice didn’t get enough help.
“That poor kid that they had over there,” Strahan said. “Why didn’t they help him? I felt, in an odd way, you could ruin the guy. It’s his first start and that’s what he gets. It’s not a good thing.”
The good news is it didn’t ruin Justice, who spent four more years with the Eagles (two as a regular starter) and started the majority of the 2012 season with the Indianapolis Colts before finishing an eight-year career in Denver.
The Eagles recovered from 1-3 to finish 8-8 and their line was decent the rest of the year, which made this single performance a little more perplexing.
The Eagles, who were without star running back Brian Westbrook, didn’t help themselves by continually winding up in 3rd-and-long situations. Seven of the 12 sacks on McNabb came on 3rd-and-5 or more yards. Five came on 3rd-and-10 or more.
“We did all the bad stuff, putting ourselves in bad situations and third and long,” right tackle Jon Runyan said. “That’s just telling the defense exactly what you are going to do.”
