Otho Davis

Eagles guard Mike Schad partially tore a ligament in his right knee on Sunday, he said yesterday, and team trainer Otho Davis said Schad is expected to miss this week's game against the New York Giants at Veterans Stadium. Schad said the knee was injured when a Miami Dolphin fell on it during the third quarter of the Eagles' 19-14 loss. He returned in the fourth quarter. "It felt loose," Schad said of the knee. Schad should be able to play most of the team's remaining games, Davis said, if his damaged medial collateral ligament responds properly to physical therapy.

For the first time in nearly two years, defensive back Ben Smith has been cleared to play football by his surgeon, Clarence Shields of the Kerlin-Jobe Clinic in Los Angeles, Eagles trainer Otho Davis said yesterday. Smith, who suffered a devastating knee injury in 1991 and went through two corrective surgeries, visited Shields this week to get final clearance to put on the pads. Davis talked with Shields yesterday. "Ben's cleared to go," Davis said. "Now it's up to Ben. " Smith is due back in training camp today.

Eagles running back Tony Brooks will be sidelined indefinitely after undergoing back surgery to repair a herniated disc. Dr. Leonard Bruno, neurosurgeon at Germantown Medical Center, performed the successful operation approximately 10 days ago, according to Eagles head trainer Otho Davis. Brooks was conspicuous by his absence at yesterday's minicamp for rookies and selected veterans who will compete for jobs in next month's training camp. Davis said that Brooks, a fourth-round draft pick last year, would be sidelined at least until late August or mid-September.

Good news on the Keith Byars front: According to Harry Gamble, the Eagles' vice president-general manager, an examination yesterday by the doctor who operated on Byars's right foot indicated "significant improvement. " Nevertheless, Gamble said it is still too early to tell if Byars will be ready for the start of the regular season. "From what they could see, the fracture site looked very good," said Gamble, who had received his report from Otho Davis, the Eagles' trainer.

Otho Davis made his final journey from Philadelphia, his adopted hometown, across the Ben Franklin Bridge yesterday morning. Somehow, the man known as simply 'O' would have found humor and delight in the fact he would not have to pay the $3 toll anymore. Davis hated bridge tolls and the traffic jams they created every day on his way from his Mount Laurel, N.J., home to Veterans Stadium, where he worked as the Eagles' head trainer for almost a quarter of a century. Trailing him across the Delaware River en route to his final resting place was a police-escorted motorcade led by his wife, Mary Louise, four sons; a daughter; and sister.

One of the more popular players in Eagles history was back yesterday in the locker room he called home for 11 NFL seasons. Andre Waters, 33, worked out for Eagles personnel officials and coaches and could join the Eagles on the practice field today if he warrants being offered a contract. The strong safety played last season for the Arizona Cardinals, but after a fallen arch plagued his season, he was released by coach Buddy Ryan at season's end. He said his workout for the Eagles likely will be his last stop.

The mercury reached 112 degrees in Tempe, Ariz., on Monday and cooled down to 105 yesterday. At game time Sunday, 5 p.m. Pacific time, the temperature is projected to be hovering in the high 90s, possibly 100. The Eagles have begun preparing for the intense desert heat. Otho Davis, the Eagles' head trainer, addressed the team Wednesday and provided the players with a short list of directives for hydrating their bodies days in advance of tomorrow's departure. Coach Ray Rhodes said the Eagles will reduce their warmup sessions before Sunday's game against the Arizona Cardinals, and he plans on dipping into the depth chart in an effort to keep players fresh in the sweltering sun. "We'll have to definitely play more defensive linemen and we'll probably have to play more of our skill guys and alternate our offensive linemen," Rhodes said.

Less than 48 hours from game day, there is reason to be concerned about the status of Eagles quarterback Jim McMahon. Five days removed from the miracle on the shore of Lake Erie, McMahon's right elbow continues to experience soreness, and it appears that he will not throw a football until Sunday's pregame warmup. The Eagles' strategy appears to be this regarding McMahon's sensitive, tendinitis-plagued elbow: use it only on game day, hope he lasts the game, and take treatment all week, without practicing.

The sellout crowd at Veterans Stadium may have witnessed the final NFL game of Mark Bavaro. Appropriately, the nine-year pro may have finished his brilliant career by serving up a flashback to his prime with his two catches for 45 yards, including a 27-yard touchdown grab against the Giants, the team that made him famous. Bavaro played on his damaged foot and experienced severe swelling which kept him out of yesterday's practice. Normally, Wednesdays have been the one day when Bavaro, 31, practiced.

Like a barometer in winter, the Eagles' NFL rankings are falling steadily. The offense, which once was first in the conference, slipped from fourth to fifth in the NFC and fell from eighth to ninth overall. Also, the Eagles have given up 35 sacks, the fourth highest total in the NFL and the most in the NFC. The NFL average is 25.4. Defensively, Bud Carson's troops as a whole fell from third to fourth in the NFL. Against the run, the Eagles dropped from ninth to 10th.

It was like watching a live reenactment of a highlight from the past, like getting to see Randall Cunningham scramble again or Julius Erving soaring in for a dunk. Donovan McNabb dropped back and flipped a little screen pass over the heads of the Chargers' defensive linemen. And there was Brian Westbrook, gathering it in with open space in front of him. Just like the old days. It was a bittersweet moment - a reminder of just how breathtaking Westbrook could be, how utterly impossible to cover, but also of how long it had been since we had seen that.

Randall Cunningham and Al Wistert will join the greats in Eagles history when they are added to the team's Honor Roll at halftime of the Sept. 27 game against Kansas City. Their induction will bring the total to 29 members. This will be the first induction since 1999, when the 1948 and '49 championship teams and longtime trainer Otho Davis were added. Jerome Brown was the last player inducted, in 1996. Cunningham, a four-time Pro Bowler, played for the Eagles from 1985 to '95. While with the Birds, he threw for 22,877 yards and 150 touchdowns, and rushed for 4,482 yards and 32 touchdowns.

RON JAWORSKI started the week after the brutal Mike Hartenstine hit, and that's all you really need to know about Ron Jaworski. Eagles-Bears, 1980, Eagles in the middle of what turned out to be an eight-game winning streak, Jaworski back to pass, fades to his right, looking, looking, looking downfield until Hartenstine thumps him from behind, burying his blue-and-orange helmet between the quarterback's shoulder blades. Stan Walters, the Eagles' beefy left tackle, still wakes up in the cold sweat of anguish, thinking about how Jaworski's head snapped back, how he plummeted, face-first onto the unforgiving surface at Veterans Stadium.

Otho Davis made his final journey from Philadelphia, his adopted hometown, across the Ben Franklin Bridge yesterday morning. Somehow, the man known as simply 'O' would have found humor and delight in the fact he would not have to pay the $3 toll anymore. Davis hated bridge tolls and the traffic jams they created every day on his way from his Mount Laurel, N.J., home to Veterans Stadium, where he worked as the Eagles' head trainer for almost a quarter of a century. Trailing him across the Delaware River en route to his final resting place was a police-escorted motorcade led by his wife, Mary Louise, four sons; a daughter; and sister.

Otho Davis used to have a picture on his office wall of a man on horseback. The caption read, "It's not how many people you know, it's how many people you help. " That was the credo of the man who mended the Philadelphia Eagles for 23 years. Mr. Davis died Tuesday night of cancer of the pancreas and liver at age 66. He leaves behind a wife, five children, hundreds of players he healed and mentored, and a generation of athletic trainers who learned from his example and benefited from his generous spirit.

The Philadelphia sports community has lost another legend. Otho Davis, the renowned athletic trainer and veteran of 23 seasons with the Eagles, died last evening after waging an inspiring battle against liver and pancreatic cancer. Davis, 66, passed peacefully with his wife, Mary Louise, family members and close friends at his bedside at St. Agnes Medical Center in South Philadelphia. Davis' body will be flown to his beloved hometown of Elgin, Texas, where he will be buried alongside his father.

NFL training camps open this week from Suwanee to San Diego, as the sound of the air horn blares loud on the land, signaling the end of one tedious drill or the start of another. Sweat and repetition are the stuff of training camp: hard work in the hot sun, guys running through tires and enduring other drudgery never repeated in a game, hoping to survive the cuts and win a job. It gets boring very quickly, and in the days when the NFL was not half so corporate and the players had more imagination than money, training-camp tedium produced practical jokes, pranks, capers, and some wonderfully outrageous behavior.

Otho Davis, the Eagles' head trainer, yesterday decided to accept a reduced role with the club as owner Jeffrey Lurie continues a restructuring and upgrade of the franchise's medical care and training facilities. Davis, reached in Indianapolis, site of the NFL scouting combine, said he is hopeful a satisfactory financial package can be worked out that will allow him to assist in a smooth transition to the Eagles' next head trainer. By deciding to remain with the club, Davis, 62, appears resigned to taking a substantial but still not determined pay cut from his $140,000 salary.

Be honest. It requires the faith of a zealot to believe the Eagles can beat Dallas on Sunday. There is a powerful truth to statistics, and the numbers coldly suggest a Cowboys win. Dallas, after all, has beaten Philadelphia seven straight times. The Eagles' run-defenders have been awful. And even when they aren't, they can't stop Emmitt Smith. But even in an NFL dominated by just two teams for most of the 1990s, unlikely faith is occasionally rewarded. So all those hopeful pilgrims who will journey to Veterans Stadium on Sunday can cling to this one encouraging fact like a rosary: These same invincible Cowboys were swept by the Redskins this season.

Eagles guard Joe Panos will miss the remainder of this season after a magnetic-resonance-imaging test revealed a deterioration in his torn left rotator cuff, trainer Otho Davis said last night. After undergoing the MRI Wednesday, Panos learned the results yesterday and decided to seek a second opinion from Dr. John Fenlin at Pennsylvania Hospital. Panos said last night that the diagnoses by Fenlin and Eagles physician Arthur Bartolozzi were essentially the same. "They said the tear was worse and could have become an even more serious problem if I continued to play," Panos said.