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Sonny Jurgensen Beats His Old Team

Oct. 11, 1964 - Sonny Jurgensen (pictured) was always tough when the Eagles played the Redskins in Washington. And he still is. The difference at D.C. Stadium today was that Jurgensen was wearing the burgundy, gold, and white as he tossed five touchdown passes to lead the Redskins to a 35-20 win over Philadelphia.

“I got find protection for our line all the way,” said Sonny. And believe me, that makes all the difference. You can’t do it when you’re flat on your back.”

Jurgensen was on his back more than a few times today, but he was getting the ball off first — demonstrating that last split-second release that had convinced coach Bill McPeak he’d acquired the quickest arm in football when he got Jurgensen from the Eagles in a trade for Norm Snead.

But those who will judge that trade solely on today’s evidence will be no more realistic than those who tried to judge it strictly on the accumulated statistics of the four previous weeks.

The stats were all in Snead’s favor going into the game, just as the first head-to-head meeting of the two quarterbacks was all in favor of Jurgensen. But the respective values of any trade can only be judged by their effect on a team, game in and game out, over the course of a season.

“I’d make the same trade 99 times out of 99,” said Eagles coach Joe Kuharich. “You don’t judge a trade on a one-game performance.”

As for coach McPeak, he simply said: “I feel we have the quarterback we can win with, and I would have told you that as confidently after last week’s game as I do after today’s.”

Jurgensen’s reference to the trade was brief and understandably personal. “Any player likes to do well against a team that traded him, but I would have been a lot happier if we could have started rolling like this a few weeks earlier.”

McPeak has never been one to cop pleas, but when asked specifically, he admitted that if any one factor had delayed the Redskins’ development it was the knee injury that kept Jurgensen sidelined till the last preseason game.

“That had to set us back,” said McPeak, “but it doesn’t apply to last week against St. Louis. We could have been alternating Johnny Unitas, Y.A. Tittle, and Bart Starr at quarterback last week and it still wouldn’t have helped us because, quite frankly, we stunk out the place.”



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