By Michael Donovan
So, the Eagles steam-rolled the Baltimore Ravens Saturday night 40-17 at the Linc, and no one was happier than Sam Bradford to get the monkey off his back after taking his first snaps since an ACL in his right knee a year ago.
But count DeMarco Murray right behind in the happiness race.
“It was awesome,” Murray said after the game.
“Like I said, since I’ve been here the fans here have been phenomenal. A lot of passion, emotion, enthusiasm comes from those guys in the stands. As players we feed off that. The energy out there was awesome. It was great to play in from of these fans.”
Murray, who sat out the preseason opener against the Colts, carried just five times for 18 yards. His first carry, on the game’s first play went for right; and he later scored the team’s second touchdown on a two-yard burst.
“It felt good to be out there with my teammates,” Murray said. “I thought we had two good drives (with the first team). Obviously, we’ll watch film and learn from the things we didn’t do so well. But I thought it was a good first game.”
Murray led the league in rushing with Dallas last year when he carried the ball 392 times for 1,845 yards and 13 touchdowns.
This season with the Eagles, he leads a three-headed attack that also features Ryan Mathews, who has been one of the stars of training camp and the versatile veteran Darren Sproles.
Saturday night Mathews scored the Eagles’ first touchdown on a 14-yard run; and Sproles carried twice for 10 yards and caught two passes for 15 yards.
“I don’t know, we’ll see,” Murray said of the Eagles deep running game. “Obviously, we have a good group of running backs. Mathews and Sproles, those guys are great guys and they work extremely hard. So it’s going to be hard for teams to really focus on any one back. I think it’s good that we’re all going to be fresh throughout the game.”
