Phil Sheridan: Lady luck smiling on the Birds

Rest easy, Eagles fans. Your local football team is doing just fine.

Jason Peters vs. Colts defensive end Dwight Freeney next Sunday? No worries there.

"He's a Pro Bowl guy, I'm a Pro Bowl guy," Peters said. "You're going to see two Pro Bowlers going at it Sunday."

Dimitri Patterson starting at cornerback in place of Ellis Hobbs, who may have an injury besides windburn? No sweat.

"I feel like I can cover anybody," Patterson said.

Sitting at 4-3 and going into the meat of their schedule?

"We control our destiny," tight end Brent Celek said. "As long as we continue to play well, we'll be OK."

Evidently, that horrendous loss in Nashville a week ago was a figment of our collective imagination. It never happened. Either that or the Eagles spent their bye week having their short-term memories erased with Tommy Lee Jones' "flashy thing" from Men in Black.

Before the season, one of the more annoying aspects of this Eagles' youth movement was the sense you got from the players that they had been held back from achieving greatness for the last year or two. This was their time, and they were ready to leave their mark. This was when Kevin Kolb was the young prince, and no one had missed a blocking assignment or blown a coverage yet.

There is one thing saving this Eagles season, and it is not the Eagles. It is the undeniable fact that the rest of the league, specifically the rest of the NFC, is a morass of dysfunction, ineptitude and outright stupidity.

Where to begin? How about Dallas, where owner Jerry Jones has been in denial about head coach Wade Phillips for at least two years? Pretending is no longer possible, however, not with a 1-6 record. One suspects the only reason Phillips remains employed for now is that Jones is too stubborn to do what everyone knows he must do.

Or how about Washington, where Mike Shanahan benched Donovan McNabb in the fourth quarter in favor of Rex Grossman? Predictably, Grossman fumbled away the ball and any chance at winning the game. That is, after all, how he went from being the starting QB in the Super Bowl to a journeyman backup. After the decision blew up in his face, Shanahan tried to justify it with an explanation - Grossman knew the two-minute offense better? Really? - as lame as his pass protection schemes.

By Monday, Shanahan had a new explanation. Because of hamstring problems, McNabb wasn't ready from a "cardiovascular standpoint" to run a two-minute offense with no time-outs.

Ahem.

So that covers half the NFC East. Only the New York Giants are being managed as if by sentient beings, and they have been rewarded with a 5-2 record.

The way their schedule breaks, the Eagles have to play five of their six divisional games in the second half. That loomed as a major challenge when the schedule was released. Now they get Washington coming off McNabb's benching and its bye (Nov. 15) and two late-season games against a dead Cowboys team mostly concerned with who its next head coach will be.

With luck like that, chances are Eli Manning will be kidnapped by aliens just before the Eagles play the Giants.

As for the other tough-looking games on the schedule, one is next Sunday's home game against Indianapolis. The Peyton Manning-led Colts haven't played the Eagles often, but they wish they had. In three meetings, Manning's teams have beaten the Eagles by a total of 124-51.

If there's an ideal way for this team to face the Colts, it would be coming off its bye week when the Colts are coming off a short week. Voila! Indy played on Monday night and will have to play a road game just six days later.

Then there's that other NFC shoulda-been-a-contender, the Minnesota Vikings. They made a little news of their own Monday. After trading a third-round pick for Randy Moss, the Vikes released the future Hall of Famer after just four games. Fortunately, head coach Brad Childress has everything else under firm control. Thanks to his passive/aggressive relationship with Brett Favre, the Vikings are 2-5 and sliding toward oblivion. They may get there long before playing the Eagles between Christmas and New Year's.

The Saints are showing signs of regaining their championship swagger. The Packers are tough to get a handle on. Just by being mediocre, the Eagles are looking pretty good.

"We feel good about our position," once and future starting quarterback Michael Vick said. "Our focus is to take it one game at a time and win as many games as we can of the next nine, just play good football."

They will get their chance. Luck has provided a very good opportunity for this unproven team to prove itself. If these Eagles are as good as they think they are, nothing could possibly go wrong.