Tuck: We Don’t Forget What McNabb, Jackson Did


Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver DeSean JacksonThe fun part about the Eagles-Giants rivalry is that the players seem to genuinely dislike each other.

With players often switching teams and sharing agents, you don’t see a lot of that in sports anymore.

Yesterday, we wrote about the LeSean McCoyOsi Umenyiora ongoing back-and-forth. And now, defensive lineman Justin Tuck has offered his opinion on some past Eagles-Giants moments that still irk him.

“We don’t forget anything,” Tuck told Tom Rock of Newsday. “I’m sure they don’t either. They don’t forget the 12-sack game against [Donovan] McNabb, because they’ve tried their best to block the crap out of us since then. And we don’t forget McNabb going to the sideline picking up the phone [in their January 2009 playoff game], [Jackson] tossing the ball at Perry, all different things.

“We’ll handle that on Sunday night.”

Tuck is first referring to the 2009 playoff game when Donovan McNabb scrambled out of bounds with about three minutes left and picked up the phone on the Giants’ sideline. The move prompted Fox analyst Troy Aikman to remark that sometimes, he doesn’t know what runs through McNabb’s head. The Eagles won that game, 23-11, to advance to the NFC championship, but haven’t won a playoff game since.

The DeSean Jackson incident occurred last year. The Eagles’ wideout caught a 50-yard bomb from Vince Young and proceeded to flip the ball at Giants defensive coordinatorPerry Fewell, drawing a taunting penalty and negating the gain.

The Eagles won four in a row against the Giants in 2009 and 2010, but split the two games last year as New York won the Super Bowl for the second time in five seasons.

“When people ask me questions about other teams and things of that nature, I always say this: You go back to February and you see the last team that was standing,” Tuck said. “You ask any of those guys, where would they want to be on that date, they would say where we were. I don’t think we have anything to prove.”

Follow Sheil Kapadia on Twitter and e-mail him at skapadia@phillymag.com.