But on the next series, after a short 49ers punt, Smith redeemed himself by digging out a low McNabb TD throw on third-and-1 from the 2, two plays after he resembled a rag doll getting thrown aside on a running play. The deficit was one.
The Eagles then drove for a 38-yard field goal that put them ahead for good and survived a review challenge - though technically, since it went over the right upright, it was not subject to review.
Then Quintin Mikell ran back a J.T. O'Sullivan pick 41 yards, to the 49ers' 7, and another Akers field goal opened a four-point lead. Then Trent Cole ripped the ball out of O'Sullivan's passing hand, Chris Clemons recovered it, and Akers made it a seven-point lead with just 1:10 left.
Still, though, O'Sullivan hit Josh Morgan for 25 yards and the ball was at midfield with 48 seconds left. Disaster remained a possibility. Then Parker recognized a route the Birds had been burned on before and jumped it, and O'Sullivan's pass for Arnaz Battle came back all the way, 55 yards for a touchdown that set the final score.
"I was real tired after that,'' noted Parker, who had never before returned a pick for a TD. "If we wanted to turn our season around, we had to go out and be aggressive. That was what we did in the fourth quarter . . . We played Eagle football, man, and we made things happen . . . We told ourselves we had to play 15 hard minutes of ball, and that's what we did.''
Playing 60 minutes that way will have to wait, at least for a few weeks. But the Eagles made that goal seem a little less remote. *
