Eagles’ Offense Wakes Up, Defense Puts Giants to Sleep

Reggie White spearheaded a stifling defense; Jim McMahon and Keith Jackson chipped in with a 73-yard touchdown connection and James Joseph ran for 11- and one-yard touchdowns for the Philadelphia Eagles, who beat the New York Giants, 30-7, Monday night.

It was the Eagles’ sixth victory in their last seven meetings with New York and the Giants’ worst defeat since 1980.

It was a complete victory for Philadelphia, which like the Giants has a 4-5 record and is a game out of wild-card contention.

But the Eagles came out looking a lot better than New York, which has been outscored, 47-7, since taking a 13-0 lead into halftime in a 17-13 loss to Washington last week. The 23-point margin of defeat was the Giants’ worst in a non-strike game since a 44-7 defeat in San Diego 11 years ago.

“I think we wore them down and took the fight out of them,” said Ron Heller, the left tackle, who helped keep Lawrence Taylor off McMahon.

“I thought we were mentally prepared,” said New York Coach Ray Handley. “We just got beat physically.”

That was by a defense led by White and Clyde Simmons that held the Giants without a first down for the first 17 minutes. Then, as the night wore on, an Eagle offense broke out.

McMahon was 16 for 26 for 229 yards, and the Philadelphia running game, averaging only 67 yards a game coming in, ground out 137. Most of them came on two second-half drives of more than nine minutes each.

Joseph, a rookie who had gained only 18 yards in 11 carries, had 68 yards in 18 carries, all after replacing the injured Keith Byars in the third quarter.

The Philadelphia defense held the league’s leading running game, averaging 150 yards a game, to 46.

It also sacked Jeff Hostetler four times, forcing a fumble that set up one of Roger Ruzek’s three field goals. Simmons and White had 1 1/2 sacks each against an offense that had allowed only 13 in its first eight games, none in the last two.

“They were on top of me all night,” said Hostetler, who finished nine for 17 for 142 yards. “I never really had time to throw.”

“Reggie was getting great pressure,” said linebacker Seth Joyner, whose sack resulted in a fumble that set up a field goal by Ruzek. “There’s not much mystery about it.

“If you study what the other guys are doing, you can get into position to stop the plays. And, hey, we’ve been playing pretty strong defense all year. We probably missed three or four sacks we should have had.”