Lurie downplays Eagles as 'dream team'

BETHLEHEM - Eagles owner Jeff Lurie held his annual training camp state-of-the-team address yesterday, and boy, I gotta tell you, things don't look good for the home squad.

Forget all of this "dream team" talk, people. Forget all of this nonsense about them being the "team to beat" in the NFC. After listening to the Debbie Downer poormouth his football team for nearly a half-hour, I walked away wondering if they'll even win a game this year.

"As I look at the NFC, I laugh when people say, 'Are you the favorite?' " Lurie said. "Let's cut to reality. You've got Atlanta coming off the best record in the NFC. Terrific young quarterback in Matt Ryan. They've added Julio Jones and all those guys. They're loaded.

"New Orleans, great offseason, coming off a Super Bowl win 2 years ago. Spectacular quarterback in Drew Brees. They add [draft picks Mark] Ingram and Cam Jordan. Loaded for bear.

"Green Bay is going to get all of those star players back that were injured last year, with a quarterback that's off the charts. Then you've got a potential superstar quarterback in St. Louis [Sam Bradford], who could be as good as any of those guys.

"Not to mention the fact that going into last year, everybody said Dallas was the best team in the conference. And you've got the Giants, who manhandled us in the Meadowlands in the most important game of the year.

"That's how I see it when I go to bed at night. I see it as an extremely competitive NFC. I'm sure there'll be some surprise teams I didn't even mention. That's the dose of reality I have."

Lurie's comments were not unexpected. He was just trying to calm the waters in the wake of Vince Young's asinine "dream team" comment last week, and Jason Babin's equally asinine, "I feel like we are the Miami Heat of the NFL . . . except we win the final game" tweet that have prompted every dot.com and newspaper that still has a few bucks left in its travel kitty to send somebody up to Lehigh to chronicle the NFL's Next Great Team.

Like swallows to Capistrano and fat guys to Golden Corral, many of the league's top free agents have flocked here to join Andy Reid's never-ending quest for the Lombardi Trophy. And while this impressive influx of talent probably does make the Eagles the team to beat in the NFC right now, Lurie knows it's way too early for either he or his players to start going all Rex Ryan on people.

Young's and Babin's remarks already have ruffled feathers around the league. Rex' twin brother Rob, who is the Dallas Cowboys' new defensive coordinator, called the Eagles the "all-hype team" and promised that his team is "going to kick their asses when we play them."

In response to Young's "dream team" comment, Packers cornerback Charles Woodson said, "I know one dream team and that was with Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley. This is the National Football League and there's going to be a lot of people who have something to say about that."

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, Lurie said.

"Yeah, those were players that don't know us that well," he said, referring to Young and Babin, ignoring, of course, the fact that Babin played for the Eagles 2 years ago. "We're about as far from being a dream team as you can be. We're playing catch-up.

"The only dream team I know about is the Green Bay Packers. We dream to become as good as the Packers and hold that [Lombardi] trophy. And before last year, you could say the New Orleans Saints. Those are the dream teams. We're just trying to play catch-up in an aggressive way."

A very aggressive way. Thanks to the uncapped year in 2010, which changed the rules of free agency and kept fourth- and fifth-year players off the market, this year's free-agency class ended up being the largest and most talented in history.

Armed with ample cap space, the Eagles went to work addressing their needs, adding the likes of Babin and cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha and defensive tackle Cullen Jenkins and running back Ronnie Brown and offensive tackle Ryan Harris. They also got cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie from Arizona in the Kevin Kolb trade.

"It was taking advantage of the marketplace," Lurie said. "We thought there was a real potential for a buyer's marketplace. We were very well positioned salary-capwise to take advantage of this very unique situation that occurred.

"We knew if we could be disciplined and have a zone area for each player that we focused on, and the marketplace entered into a zone that we thought was a strike zone for that player, we became extremely aggressive and tried to be creative."

Lurie stressed that they have not sacrificed the future for a one-shot run at the Super Bowl. Some of the free agents they've signed were for 1-year deals. None of the new contracts is outlandish. Asomugha, who signed a 5-year, $60 million deal, took slightly less from the Eagles than he could have gotten elsewhere because he wanted to play in Philadelphia.

"Every contract was structured with an eye toward maximizing our chance to win this year, and at the same time, staying extremely strong going forward," Lurie said. "We don't believe in contracts that create dead money, and we don't believe in sacrificing next year and the year after [for the present]."

Lurie insisted that his team has not undergone a philosophical lobotomy here. He said the "all in" approach they've taken this year is the same one they take every year.

"We're doing what we always do," he said. "We're spending to the max [up to the cap limit] because that's our blueprint. But you try to be as efficient as you can in doing it. We've always had an aggressive mentality."

The Eagles have gone into past seasons believing they had enough talent to contend for a Super Bowl title, and the fact is they usually have. They've been to the playoffs 9 of the last 11 years. Been to five conference championship games in those 11 years.

But after a second straight first-round playoff exit last January, Lurie said he recognized that his team needed to get better if it was going to make a Super Bowl run in 2011.

"Even though we won our division last year and even though we played the Packers evenly in the playoff game, the way I looked at it and a lot of us looked at it, Green Bay won in a year in which a lot of their best players were injured," he said. "So, last year was not an accurate assessment of the Packers and they still ended up holding the Lombardi Trophy."

He also said the Eagles' come-from-behind 38-31 win over the Giants in mid-December was an eye-opener for the organization. Not the fact that they won after trailing 31-10 with 8 minutes left. The fact that they were down 31-10 to the Giants in the first place.

"I look back to that game in the Meadowlands, if it weren't for that amazing, unbelievable 8 minutes, we [would've lost]," he said. "We were down [31-10] in a very important game. Then we lost the next week to the Vikings in a game that would have given us a [playoff] bye.

"I tend to look at, where are the gaps? So, in the offseason, let's make sure we're not in a position to be down [31-10] again in a very important football game. We just want to win a Super Bowl and go from there."