Rusty Vick lifts Philadelphia over Cleveland in opener

CLEVELAND (AP) — After throw­ing his go-ahead touch­down pass, Michael Vick hardly cel­e­brated. He couldn’t. He was too busy exhaling.

“It was a sigh of relief,” he said.

Vick, show­ing major rust after miss­ing most of the pre­sea­son and com­mit­ting some of the mis­takes he made last year, over­came four inter­cep­tions — and nearly a fifth on the final drive — by throw­ing a 4-yard touch­down pass to Clay Har­bor with 1:18 left as the Philadel­phia Eagles ral­lied for a 17–16 win over the Cleve­land Browns on Sunday.

For most of the opener, Vick was awful, atro­cious, abysmal.

But when he had to, Vick made just enough big plays.

“When you throw inter­cep­tions,” Vick said, “it’s one thing. But when you throw an inter­cep­tion for a touch­down and it changes the dynamic of the game, you look up at the score­board and now you’re los­ing, you feel a sense of dissatisfaction.

“I have a respon­si­bil­ity to this team and that’s to lead them, not to hurt them.”

Vick hurt the Eagles most when he threw his fourth inter­cep­tion early in the fourth quar­ter and it was returned 27 yards for a touch­down by Browns line­backer D’Qwell Jack­son, who som­er­saulted the final few yards into the end zone as Cleve­land fans flipped out in the stands think­ing an upset was possible.

But with the Eagles down 16–10, Vick marched them 91 yards for the go-ahead TD on his career-high 56th pass.

Before that, the super­star showed that miss­ing all but 12 snaps dur­ing the pre­sea­son because of injuries was indeed a big deal.

How­ever, Vick came through at the end and ral­lied the Eagles, who hurt them­selves with five turnovers and 12 penalties.

“The great thing about it was nobody pointed fin­gers,” said Vick, who fin­ished 29 of 56 for 317 yards. “Every­body just stuck together and encour­aged one another. We got out of here 1–0, and that’s what’s important.”

But even on that final drive there were flaws. Vick recov­ered his own fum­ble on a third-down scram­ble, and one play before his TD pass to Har­bor, Browns rookie line­backer L.J. Fort let what could have been a game-clinching inter­cep­tion slip out of his hands.

“Oh, man,” Vick said when reminded of his luck. “I gotta get out of Cleveland.”

After the Eagles took the lead, the Browns had one last chance but rookie quar­ter­back Bran­don Wee­den threw his fourth inter­cep­tion with 1:05 remain­ing and Cleve­land fell to 1–13 in sea­son open­ers since 1999.

LeSean McCoy rushed for 110 yards for the Eagles, who insisted they never lost faith in Vick as he struggled.

“He’s got a lot of courage, man,” wide receiver DeSean Jack­son said. “We worked so hard through­out the off­sea­son and through train­ing camp just to come out on fire and set this team up for a long year and great suc­cess. Some­times, it doesn’t always work that way.

“But you could see that he fought back. He kept mak­ing plays. Regard­less of him being down on him­self, every­body was say­ing, ‘We will still ride with you.’ It was a good sit­u­a­tion to see him come back and make a game-winning throw.”

Weeden’s day started on a com­i­cal note as he got trapped under a giant Amer­i­can flag being unfurled on the field for the national anthem.

“I was expect­ing to get a lit­tle warn­ing,” Wee­den said. “I was play­ing catch. I always stand on the 35– or 40-yard line. Next thing I know there’s about a 100-yard flag over the top of me. I sat on my hands and knees and kind of waited — me and one of the equip­ment man­agers. I looked at him and said, ‘this (stinks).’ “The rest of his day didn’t go much better.

He fin­ished 12 of 35 for 118 yards, had the four picks and forced sev­eral throws. Accord­ing to STATS LLC, Weeden’s 5.1 rat­ing is the sixth low­est in a sea­son opener by any quar­ter­back attempt­ing at least 15 passes since the merger in 1970.

Wee­den didn’t need that nugget to know he stunk.

“I take a lot of pride in play­ing bet­ter than that and I put our team in some dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions,” Wee­den said. “Our defense gave us every chance to win and offen­sively, myself included, took away from that. I’m down right now. I expect to play bet­ter than that.”

Posted by Jon Kleinknecht on Sep 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.