JAN

02

BRODRICK BUNKLEY, who would turn out to be the last player to leave the Eagles' locker room yesterday, didn't really want to believe the 2007 season was over. "It's tough, it's ending early," Bunkley said, after the Birds closed the books at 8-8, with a thoroughly unexciting, 17-9 victory over Buffalo. "We're still going to be watching football games from here on out. Being a football player, being a part of this Philadelphia Eagles team, it's going to be very tough.'' Yes, it certainly did end early. It seems like only a few weeks ago that Greg Lewis and J.R. Reed were standing in the visitors' locker room at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, explaining how two punts slithered through their hands, accounting for 10 Packers points in a 16-13, season-opening loss. That game, which most everyone in both locker rooms agreed the Eagles should have won, turned out to be the season in a nutshell; 2007 slipped through the Eagles' hands. "We missed on a lot of opportunities . . . that's why we're sitting here with the season over with,'' quarterback Donovan McNabb said yesterday, after absorbing perhaps the most thorough public battering his image has ever taken. McNabb (291-for-473, 61.5 percent, 3,324 yards, 19 touchdowns, 7 interceptions, 44 sacks) finished a season healthy for the first time in 3 years, but he was hesitant, immobile and inconsistent deep into the season, in his comeback from ACL surgery. If McNabb had been a little sharper a little sooner, if his receivers had been good enough to bail him out when he was struggling, if the defense could have ever scored a touchdown or come up with the ball at a key moment, the Eagles would be playing next week. They should be playing next week. They went into the final weekend of the season ranked in the top 10 in the league in both offense and defense; they finished with eight more touchdowns and 44 more first downs than their opponents. Stat geeks of the future will puzzle over how this team wasn't any better than 8-8...

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