Sam Donnellon: Eagles defense does its job again, and gets some help against Giants

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - They pitched a shutout for 59 minutes, 45 seconds and won by six points. Like so much of this Eagles season, the final score did not reflect how the game played out, how either team played or who got served.

Eagles 20, Giants 14.

It should have been closer to 26-7, should have been one of those fourth quarters in which Donovan McNabb mugged it up for the cameras, the stands at Giants Stadium emptying out as the clock ticked down.

But that's not this season, is it? This season is raw nerves and migraines. It's four wasted turnovers in a four-point loss to Chicago. It's three straight punts by your offense in the third quarter of that 23-17 loss to Washington. This season is an exhausted, 24-point fourth-quarter meltdown in Baltimore that included a 108-yard pass interception.

This season is Brian Dawkins and Asante Samuel colliding in pursuit of an errant Eli Manning throw yesterday. It's a blocked field goal flipping a 13-0 halftime lead into a 10-7 nail-biter. This season is all about your defense hanging on for dear life, all about playing entire games, months even, with their hearts in their throats, hoping against reason that the offense would do something, anything.

Yesterday, it did. For the second game in a row. The Eagles' offense ran the ball all game long, held a possession advantage of more than 9 minutes over the Giants, rolled up 331 yards of balanced offense. That was the big story, another ground-game victory dialed up by the coach who has shown little past patience for that formula.

Giants receiver Plaxico Burress, who shot himself out of the league, was not there. That was the other big story.

The Eagles' defense? For much of this season it has played better than the final statistics suggest, deserved better than to be standing out there, bent over, as the clock wound down on another loss. Baltimore's 24-point fourth quarter was triggered by that crazy interception and

fueled by a lopsided time-of-possession advantage that wore them down in the end.

Cincinnati held a possession advantage of more than 8 minutes. When the Giants beat the Eagles, 36-31, on Nov. 9, New York had the ball for 39:10.

Yesterday, the Eagles ran 41 times. Yesterday, the Eagles' defense was fresh at the end.

"When you have the offense grinding the ball like that, it gives us the chance on the sidelines to make our adjustments," Dawkins said. "And to rest."

How interesting.