Eagles hold on to beat Colts

FROM THE MORNING CALL

PHILADELPHIA — Michael Vick made enough plays with his legs and left arm in his return from a three-game injury absence and the Eagles overcame 13 mostly sloppy penalties and even worse officiating to send the Indianapolis Colts home with a 26-24 setback Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field.

Vick survived a vicious pass rush to scramble for 74 yards on 10 carries and completed 17 of 29 passes for 218 yards and a touchdown as the Eagles held off a Peyton Manning-led comeback in the fourth quarter.

Wide receiver DeSean Jackson, who sat out the last game with a concussion, made the biggest impact, catching seven passes for 109 yards and a touchdown.

Manning, who struggled to an uneven passing performance due to a running game that was shut down and a sophisticated pressure scheme that made him guess wrong just enough, rallied the Colts to a late touchdown, but needed 16 plays and more than four minutes to pull it off.

By the time he got the ball back, at the Indy 26-yard line, only 40 seconds remained. That wasn't enough time to get the field goal the Colts needed against an Eagles defense that survived some ghastly penalties and even worse officiating.

"We threw the kitchen sink at 'em," defensive coordinator Sean McDermott said. "We just tried to give them different looks and our players, my hat goes off to them, because they had to execute all those different looks and it was a little bit unorthodox at times.

"But there's not a lot of people that beat this guy, and you've got to do some things out of the ordinary. At the same time, you've got to play physical football. You've got to run, you've got to tackle, you've got to make plays on the football like [cornerback] Asante [Samuel] did."

Samuel intercepted Manning twice — the first time to set up a first-quarter field goal; the second to seal the Eagles' first-ever victory over Manning, who was 3-0 against them coming in.

Despite first-half stretches in which he was brilliant, Manning finished with just 31 completions in 52 attempts for 294 yards and a touchdown. He absorbed three sacks and had another one with a lost fumble wiped out on an unnecessary roughness penalty by Trent Cole. Manning finished with a QB rating of 65.7, his second lowest figure of the season.

Credit the Eagles' defense for keeping its head after a second-quarter implosion in which the Colts came back from deficits of 13-0 and 16-7 to take a 17-16 lead heading into intermission.

"The players and coaches challenged themselves as individuals to make sure we maintained the intensity through four quarters," Eagles coach Andy Reid said. "And I thought we did that. This is coaches and players. This is not just the coaches sitting there doing this, it was coaches and players challenging each other to step up and make a play."

"You've just got to play different looks against him," defensive end Juqua Parker added. "That's what we did today, and it turned out pretty good. I think this win let us know what we can really do when we all play together, and that's what we did today."

The Eagles hit Indy with their best shot right away as LeSean McCoy went 62 yards up the middle on the first play from scrimmage and Vick hit Jackson with a 9-yard scoring pass two plays later for a 7-0 lead.

An interception and 33-yard return by Samuel squelched Indy's second series and set the Eagles up for a field goal that put them ahead 10-0.

Another long play, this time a 58-yard bomb down the middle to Jackson on the Eagles' next series, helped them get into scoring position again. Alas, after getting a first-and-goal at the 8-yard line, the Eagles were stifled and had to settle for another field goal.

Those red-zone shortcomings nearly cost them the game as Manning and the Colts began to find some rhythm in the second quarter, finally scoring on a 3-yard pass from Manning to Jacob Tamme, capping a 76-yard drive.

The Colts then wound up turning the momentum completely their way by the end of the first half, closing to within two points when Javarris James finished off an 80-yard drive with a 6-yard run, then taking the lead when Adam Vinatieri kicked a 37-yard field goal with 7 seconds remaining.

That second touchdown drive was marred by a controversial penalty called against Eagles rookie safety Kurt Coleman for knocking what appeared to be a completed pass to Austin Collie loose. Referee Carl Cheffers ruled that Collie, who suffered a concussion on the play, was a defenseless receiver who failed to make a catch and then was hit in the helmet with Coleman's shoulder.

This, despite slow-motion replays that show Collie clearly taking two steps with the ball before being absorbing legal hits by Coleman and safety Quintin Mikell.

"I was breaking on the ball," Coleman said. "It was almost a collision between me and Quintin. I was just playing football."

And a lot of it, after starter Nate Allen was knocked out of the game early with a neck strain.

Two plays later, James was in the end zone and Manning appeared headed for another huge game.

But the Eagles' defense stiffened after intermission, enabling them to get the lead back for good.

First, David Akers kicked a 44-yard field goal, the last of four he hit in this contest. Then Vick finished off an 80-yard drive early in the fourth quarter by punching it in himself from the 1, putting the Eagles up 26-17.

Manning was just 13 of 27 for 123 yards in the second half.

For all the spectacular things the Eagles did to score in this contest, a clock-killing series in the fourth in which they were denied was every bit as important. The Eagles gained possession at their 11 with 12:45 to go and Vick completed two third-down passes to keep the drive going and scrambled on third-and-10 for another first down.

Although the drive eventually stalled at midfield, they had killed nearly seven minutes, which proved to be enough for one Colts score but not two.

Samuel's second interception, which came in the closing seconds, sealed the win.

"One of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game," Samuel said of Manning. "It feels good to me. I've been battling for this for years in New England. He's a hell of a player, a hell of a competitor, so I'm glad we got the win."

Making his first career start at the other cornerback spot was Dimitri Patterson, who held up quite well with six solo tackles.

"We didn't want to beat ourselves," he said. "We knew what we were getting into. We were going to make some plays, we knew they were going to make some plays. We wanted to make sure we didn't give the game away."

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