Eagles Prove Better of a Bad Lot, 32-24 : Pro football: They score 17 points in the final minutes for second victory. The Vikings drop to 1-5.

Before the game was scarcely under way, the booing crowd could see why the Minnesota Vikings and Philadelphia Eagles had won only once apiece this season.

Soon the players were making nearly a mistake a minute--the players and, sometimes, the officials.

But in between the false starts and the fumbles and the muffs and the dropped passes, not to mention the facemask fouls and several strange calls by the officials and both coaches, it was also clear why these teams have made the NFL playoffs so often in recent years.

Monday night’s big plays were executed as alertly as their lucky plays, and in the fourth quarter the Eagles made the most of both to win, 32-24.

Turning the booers into rooters, Philadelphia scored 17 points in the final minutes to take the game away from Minnesota, which had held a 24-15 lead with only 4:01 remaining.

“Sooner or later, I knew we’d come back and get them,” Eagle quarterback Randall Cunningham said.

Said Viking Coach Jerry Burns: “It’s tough. Losses are all tough.”

Late in the game, Eagle Coach Buddy Ryan almost surely was expecting to drop to 1-4 in the NFC East and almost out of playoff contention.

Instead, the Eagles are 2-3. Burns’ Vikings are 1-5 and thinking about 1991.

When the roof fell in on Burns, it was painful to see.

His team had seemingly broken up a fourth-and-one Philadelphia pass at the Minnesota 40. But a Minnesota defensive player was called for holding.

And that was the turning point.

In the next couple of minutes:

--Cunningham lofted a long pass that was deflected first by a Viking and then by an Eagle before it landed in the arms of a rookie Eagle receiver, Fred Barnett, who walked the last five yards of what has been officially scored as a 40-yard touchdown play. Now Minnesota’s lead was only 24-22.

--Viking quarterback Rich Gannon, back to pass three plays later, had the ball in his uplifted right hand and was set to pass when, pressured by linebacker Seth Joyner, he suddenly dropped it. Again it was the Eagles who got the ball, this time at the Minnesota six-yard line, and again they scored when halfback Anthony Toney powered through the demoralized Viking line on first down. Now Philadelphia was ahead, 29-24.

--Next, trying to reclaim the lead he had held so long, Gannon again dropped back to pass, and this time he actually did--but to the wrong team. After Eagle safety William Frizzell intercepted, Ryan opted for a third-down field-goal attempt, and Roger Ruzek, kicking despite a painful rib injury, chipped it in from the 19-yard line.

Right up to the instant when the Vikings stopped that fourth-and-one Eagle play in the fourth quarter--or thought they had stopped it--they had played the most of what good football there was in this game.

Gannon, for example, had delivered two mighty touchdown throws for Minnesota on a night when he had 211 yards passing in the first half, outproducing Cunningham then and thereafter in everything but tipped passes.

Both of his scoring bombs went to a former Eagle, Cris Carter, a second-string Minnesota split end who shortened Philadelphia’s early 9-0 lead to 9-7 with his first catch, once the Vikings converted.

That touchdown came on a flea-flicker pass. Carter’s second scoring catch came on a bomb from Gannon that is in the book as the 78-yard touchdown play that enabled Minnesota to take a 21-9 halftime lead.

When the Eagles blitzed Gannon on that play, Carter coolly sped beyond the Eagle covering him, cornerback Izel Jenkins, and Gannon cooly let him have it, throwing the game’s best pass to a player who had outrun everyone else.

Cunningham, by contrast, could almost never extricate himself from the clutches of the Minnesota defense, which again was led by end Chris Doleman and safety Joey Browner.