CLEVELAND - The Philadelphia Eagles as Super Bowl contenders?
That's a long way away. And after a miserable offensive performance in Sunday's opener in Cleveland, the Eagles are a long way away from thinking about any kind of big season.
For now, they're simply survivors. Barely.
The Eagles managed just two touchdown drives Sunday -- one at the end of the first half that gave them a 10-3 lead, and a 4-yard pass from Michael Vick to Clay Harbor with 1:18 left gave them a 17-16 win. They escaped on day they had to fight for every yard, often resembling the sputtering offense that bogged them down early last season.
Vick played like a quarterback who had just 12 preseason snaps, none past Aug. 20. He ended up throwing for 317 yards, but he spent most of the day taking shots from Browns blitzers and throwing himself into trouble. Vick threw four interceptions, and he didn't get much help from his offensive line or his playcalling. The Eagles ran the ball 30 times and threw it 56.
"If you take a positive out of this, you saw good defense and a tough football team that hung in there," Eagles coach Andy Reid said. "I'll take the win. We have plenty to work on and that's what we're going to do."
What beauty there was for the Eagles came not only in the result, but the finish. The winning drive covered 91 yards, or almost as many as the 99 the Eagles managed the in six prior second-half series. The good news going forward is that the Eagles know they're capable of better. The bad news is that future opponents see an opportunity to put a lot of pressure on Vick and force him to make better decisions than he did Sunday.
"We had a lot of miscues," wide receiver DeSean Jackson said. "Things weren't in sync. We've got to get back to the drawing board."
Perhaps most alarming was Reid's postgame answer to a question about Vick being able to endure a whole season of taking the type of hits he took Sunday.
"We'll see," Reid said.
The Eagles have the pieces and the names you know, but the highlight reel from the opener isn't as long as the list of miscues. The Browns took away the deep ball that Vick loves to throw and sent blitzers at Vick from all angles. The offensive line struggled, and besides the four interceptions there were three fumbles (one lost) and a bunch of penalties. The first two drives saw big plays called back by offensive pass interference and a pair of holding calls. Speedy receiver Jeremy Maclin twice left the game with injuries, making Vick's job even tougher.
"Everybody kept positive, kept working, and we can build with that," Reid said. "You can build with that attitude. That's what we'll do.
"We did enough negative things where it's tough to win a game. We finally eliminated the mistakes (on that last drive)."
If the offense needs time to find itself, the Eagles will need their defense to keep playing like it did Sunday, when it got two sacks and four interceptions -- two apiece by Kurt Coleman and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie.
The Browns offense was historically bad last year and might be worse this year; rookie Brandon Weeden racked up a quarterback rating of 5.1 Sunday. The Eagles defense had a lot to do with that, and the Browns defense played very well, too. But the Eagles kept hurting themselves with penalties and bad throws, none worse than the one Browns linebacker D'Qwell Jackson returned 27 yards for his team's only touchdown and a 16-10 lead with 13:59 to go.
"Our defense saved us," Vick said. "The defense went out and played well. They looked really good."
Vick threw into double and triple coverage all day. On his next to last throw he got lucky that Browns linebacker L.J. Fort - who already had one interception on the day - didn't complete the catch after sprawling out to break up a pass in the end zone.
In a span from the early second quarter until the final two minutes of the third, the Eagles failed to cross midfield on seven of eight drives. The numbers were just ugly. The Eagles averaged three yards a play in the third quarter, racked up 110 total penalty yards and turned the ball over five times.
"There are plenty of throws I'd like to have back," Vick said. "I was rusty out there. I just fought through it. When we scored that last touchdown, it was a sigh of relief."
Maybe the best way the Eagles can keep Vick upright is to establish the run and make future opponents pay for bringing the number of blitzes from the secondary. LeSean McCoy ran for 110 yards on 20 carries. He had a 13-yard run in the fourth quarter that might have been a 59-yard touchdown had Jackson not whiffed on a block in the middle of the field.
Such near-misses overshadowed big plays all day, but the defense and that 16-play final drive allowed the Eagles to learn several lessons without suffering a loss.
"We get out of here 1-0," Vick said. "That's what's important."
