It's only Monday and still time to bask in the glow of a glorious win to open the year. While everyone in Eagles nation is celebrating, Andy Reid thinks it was ok...
"It was a good way to start the season," coach Andy Reid said yesterday after his team won its opener for just the fourth time in his 10 seasons. "There were some good things. It looked like all three phases were doing OK. I would have liked to have seen them not score a field goal at the end. . . ."
Predictably, Desean Jackson was the name on many players' lips.
"We all know DeSean's a great football player," Sheldon Brown said. "Only time will tell (how good). Let's hope he continues to stay hungry. If he does that, maybe we'll be talking about the Hall of Fame. It all depends if he stays hungry and doesn't let everything go to his head."
Andy Reid was asked whether he was worried that the league was taking notice of Desean.
I'm not worried about it," Eagles coach Andy Reid said. "In high school, he came in and he had success early and was a great player. He goes to Cal and the same thing happens. The first punt return, he takes it the distance. He's always had these things happen to him, so he knows how to handle it. I give both those young guys [Jackson and kick returner Quintin Demps] a bad time because they bring a great confidence and cockiness to the locker room, and I like that. They'll keep it in perspective."
Desean himself wasn't surprised by his success
"With how the Rams played today we felt we could do some great things. We just attacked them," Jackson said. "I'm never surprised with (my) success. I put in the work. The only thing I can do is play, give it my all and that's what I did. I left it all out on the field."
"It just shows where I come from, Los Angeles, and just growing up, the things I had to go through, obstacles, things like that," Jackson said. "But I'm just very tough. I have a lot of heart inside of me. People would always tell me I was too small, couldn't play, or I wouldn't make it, things like that. Well, it definitely motivated me to get to where I'm at today."
Sheldon Brown talked about his huge hit on Steven Jackson
"I had the opportunity to try to set the tempo and the tone of the game," Brown said. "As a defensive player you never know when it's your opportunity. And when it presents itself you have to do your best and I tried my best to do that for the defense."
As it turns out, the hit may have been against Jim Johnson's advice...
"Coach always says that little guys have to go low, but I saw an opportunity to go high," Brown said. "It was a pretty good hit."
The defense were pretty humble despite a dominating performance
Asante Samuel
"You never can judge yet," Samuel said. "It's too early in the season. First game, you know, that's just my opinion. Whenever you hold an NFL team to three points it's good, but there's a lot of room to improve and there's a lot of work we still have to do. We have to keep chopping at the wood."
Juqua Parker
"After the way we played the whole game, we wanted that shutout," defensive end Juqua Parker said. "So to give up a field goal there, that bothered us."
"I think you can attribute it to all of the work we did in the offseason," Gaither said. "Really, it's hats off to that work. We were able to come out in the first week and play like we've been playing together for 2 or 3 years."
Quintin Mikell was disappointed with the lack of turnovers.
"I still don't think we're there," strong safety Quintin Mikell said. "We had a good game. But we had some picks we dropped. The thing we've stressed is [forcing] turnovers and getting off the field on third down. We definitely stepped up on getting off the field [on third down]. But we've got to do better with the turnovers. Hopefully, we can improve on that next week."
Inky columnist John Gonzalez had some thoughts on the TV coverage of the game
Did anyone else wonder why Fox color analyst Daryl Johnston laid into Smith? Yeah, Smith dropped a couple of passes near the goal line, but the game was a blowout. And it wasn't like Smith played poorly before that. Moose seemed like he was in a bad mood. Before the half, with the Birds leading 14-0, he admonished Philly for not winning by a greater margin. "I'm starting to get concerned about the Eagles," he said. "They're letting the Rams stay in this game."
Good call, Daryl. You're a regular Emmitt Smith in front of the camera.