Turns out, the Eagles drafted this clever, top-secret plan to deflect attention from their wide receiver situation, in the wake of Kevin Curtis' sports-hernia surgery.
They instructed rookies Quintin Demps and Jackson to go out last night and run a kickoff and a punt, respectively, back for first-half touchdowns against the host New England Patriots, keying a 27-17 Eagles preseason victory.
We'll go right out on a limb and make a prediction: If the Birds run a kickoff and a punt back for TDs every week (they never did either last season), nobody will care what week it is when Curtis returns.
The Eagles don't play the Patriots this regular season. If they did, we're guessing that coach Bill Belichick would find better special-teams tacklers than he had last night, and that Matt Cassel would not be New England's quarterback.
But just the same, it was reassuring to finally see some tangible results from the Birds' offseason emphasis on special teams - you can't fault the kick and punt teams for not being very good the first two preseason games, then discount what they do in the third game because it's only the preseason.
Along the same lines, if Donovan McNabb had been significantly worse than his first-half 13-for-17 for 180 yards and a touchdown, you would have been hearing that it was far from meaningless, that his receivers were all terrible.
None of this is to say the Eagles don't still need help at wide receiver. Still, Jackson, who caught four passes for 67 yards in the first half, as the Birds built a 24-3 halftime lead and then yanked their starters, is far from terrible.
The major bad news of the first half was safety Brian Dawkins' cart ride to the locker room midway through the second quarter, after suffering what coach Andy Reid afterward called a right ankle strain. Reid said Dawkins would have an MRI exam today.
