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Patriots safety Rodney Harrison addresses the media at the team's hotel in St. Augustine, Fla.
Even without the pads on, New England safety Rodney Harrison delivered quite a blow.
Asked whether he will say anything to Eagles wide receiver Freddie Mitchell, who dissed the Patriots' secondary last week (click link for Eagles' Mitchell Stirs Trouble With Patriots Secondary story) , Harrison took his shot.
"What would I say?" he said. "It's Freddie Mitchell."
And with that, Super Bowl week was on.
The Eagles and Patriots, two teams with very little history or animosity between them, opened America's big football celebration with a nice bit of trash talking Sunday at the first of the dozen or so news conferences that will take place during the week.
This was Harrison's first chance on the Super Bowl stage to respond to Mitchell. Last week, the Eagles receiver said he couldn't name any of the Patriots defensive backs except for Harrison, about whom he said, "I've got something for him."
Harrison, who has spent much of his 11-year career playing the us-against-the-world card to anyone who would listen, found his perfect foil in Mitchell, who let political correctness take a back seat and greased the wheels for this Super Feud.
"You're always going to find one jerk out of the bunch. Just like Vanderjerk. Mike Vanderjerk," Harrison said, referring to Colts kicker Mike Vanderjagt, who earlier in the postseason suggested the Patriots were ripe for a loss. "You're always going to find one guy like that who wants some attention and wants to do something to try and stir up the emotions of the game."
Not surprisingly, Mitchell was unavailable at the Eagles' media opportunity Sunday. Also not surprisingly, coach Andy Reid tried to sidestep the inevitable questions about how he reacted when he heard what Mitchell said.
"That's between Freddie and I," Reid said.
Meanwhile, Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb understandably took his teammate's side in the fray, framing Mitchell's comments as meaningless blather made during the tedious bye week.
"Freddie didn't mean anything by them. It's sad that people have to blow them up to make them into a story," McNabb said. "Freddie apologized. If someone needs those comments to get up for a game like this, they don't need to be here. This is the Super Bowl, this is the ultimate."
The Mitchell-Harrison imbroglio took at least a temporary bite out of the other main "football" stories of the week: whether the Eagles will get lost in the hoopla of playing in their first Super Bowl since 1981 (Reid said he'll give the players their freedom, treat them like adults); whether the Patriots, seeking their third title in four years, are on the verge of a dynasty (Coach Bill Belichick insists the past has nothing to do with this week); and, most notably, whether Eagles star receiver Terrell Owens will deem his injured ankle sturdy enough to play.
Owens, who tore up the ankle Dec. 19 and has missed the last four games, has not received clearance to play from the surgeon who operated on his ankle.
Nevertheless, the receiver hasn't ruled himself out of the game and his status has become the overarching theme of the buildup to the big game.
"It seems like everyone talks about the Patriots, then when they talk about the Eagles, it's what T.O. will do," McNabb said. "If he plays, you'll talk about him. If he doesn't play, you'll talk about him anyway."
Reid said Owens has been steadily increasing his work and will try to "do a few things" at a light practice Monday, but his availability won't be determined until much later in the week.
And while there will almost certainly be an entire week to speculate on Owens, it's hard to know how long the Mitchell mess will last.
Even if it was only for a fleeting day, it was good stuff.
"When he says something like that, he's disrespecting our whole defense," Patriots linebacker Willie McGinest said. "Not only Rodney, but me, and Tedy Bruschi and Mike Vrabel and all the rest of us."
But especially Harrison.
"Maybe he was drinking before he started talking," he said. "That was clearly a mistake, because no one in this league would attack somebody a week before the Super Bowl."
Source: AP
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