Didinger: Game I'll Never Forget: Pickle Juice Game
Friday, June 12, 2009
By Ray Didinger
CSNPhilly.com
There was a feeling in the summer of 2000 that the Eagles were getting better, getting closer. But no one expected this.
The Eagles opened the regular season with a 41-14 rout of the Dallas Cowboys at Texas Stadium. They started with a bold gamble – an onside kick on the opening kickoff – and never let up on a day when the temperature on the field reached 130 degrees.
“It was a message to the whole conference that we’re going to be aggressive,” said Donovan McNabb, who was firmly established as the No. 1 quarterback after splitting time with Doug Pederson the previous season.
“We beat a team that Philadelphia loves to beat and we beat them convincingly,” said owner Jeff Lurie.
There were actually several forces at work. The Eagles were a much improved team in their second year under coach Andy Reid. They closed out the 1999 season with back-to-back wins over New England and St. Louis and carried that confidence into 2000 with a hungry McNabb running the offense.
The Cowboys, on the other hand, were an aging team that was about to crash and burn under first-year head coach Dave Campo. Looking back, it’s easy to see why things unfolded as they did, but watching it live that day in Texas Stadium, it was a shock.
Even when the Eagles recovered the onside kick and McNabb threw a quick touchdown pass to Jeff Thomason for a 7-0 lead, I expected Dallas to come back. These were the Cowboys, after all, and the Eagles had won only one road game in the previous three seasons. I figured it was only a matter of time before order was restored.
But on the Cowboys first play from scrimmage, rookie defensive tackle Corey Simon sacked quarterback Troy Aikman. Dallas went three-and-out, the Eagles added another touchdown on a Duce Staley run and, suddenly, I began to see this wasn’t a fluke. The Eagles were landing all the punches and the Cowboys were sagging to the canvas like a weary old pug.
There were several highlights:
• Staley rushed for 201 yards, the second most ever for an Eagles running back. Only Hall of Famer Steve Van Buren had a bigger day, gaining 205 yards against Pittsburgh in 1949.
• Jon Runyan played his first game as an Eagle at right tackle. His powerful blocking helped the team rush for 306 yards, the most ever surrendered in one game by the Dallas defense.
• The defense limited Emmitt Smith to 29 yards rushing and knocked Aikman out of the game with a concussion. The Eagles had five sacks of Aikman and two interceptions, one of which was returned for a touchdown by middle linebacker Jeremiah Trotter.
• The 27-point margin of victory was the largest since the Eagles 40-8 win in San Francisco in 1994. It was their most lopsided opening day victory since they defeated Tampa Bay by the identical score in 1988.
In Eagles lore, this win is commonly referred to as “The Pickle Juice Game.” That’s because the players drank pickle juice to ward off dehydration on the brutally hot day. It was the hottest game in NFL history. It was 109 degrees at kickoff, eight degrees hotter than the previous record set in a Cowboys-Cardinals game played in Arizona in 1997.
Trainer Rick Burkholder credited Steve Condon, a college trainer who interned with the Eagles during the summer, with the idea. He had the players drink the briny juice from a jar of kosher dills with its high levels of salt and nutrients to keep them from cramping in practice. It worked so well, they kept it up right through the trip to Dallas. On game day, the Cowboys lost a dozen players to heat cramps. The Eagles lost none.
“I know it helped me,” safety Brian Dawkins said. “I’m a crampee. I cramp up all the time. I didn’t have a single cramp today.”
It wasn’t just a one-day chug-a-lug. Burkholder studied the weather reports all week so he knew it was going to be 100 degrees plus on Sunday. He had the Eagles load up on water and sports drinks all week in practice, then topped them off with pickle juice on Sunday. Crazy as it sounds, it worked.
“I was worried they might get sick drinking that stuff,” Reid said. “But a lot of them liked it, whatever that says about them.”
It was a career game for Staley, who caught four passes for 61 yards in addition to the 201 yards he gained on the ground. He had a 60-yard run from scrimmage, sprinting away from tacklers while most folks were having trouble just standing up in the heat.
“People were talking about us going 7-9 or 8-8,” Corey Simon said. “But we’re planning to go beyond that. There’s no reason this team can’t do much better than that. We showed that we can be a good team today.”
Indeed, the victory was just the start of a turnaround season as the Eagles improved from 5-11 in 1999 to 11-5 and a playoff berth in 2000. The Cowboys never seemed to recover from the beating and finished the season at 5-11.
I'm missing something here. When was this game?
