Can this Eagles team extend Reid's streak after byes?

On Jan. 2, 2000, the Eagles hosted the St. Louis Rams at Veterans Stadium. The Rams were 13-2, the Greatest Show on Turf, and on their way to winning the Super Bowl under Dick Vermeil.

The Eagles were 4-11 in Andy Reid's first season. Because of their miserable 3-13 record the year before, they had a ridiculously late bye, in Week 16. They wanted to finish strong. Rookie quarterback Donovan McNabb, who had suffered a sprained knee a couple of weeks earlier, donned a brace to make a statement that the Eagles were on the rise.

The Eagles won, 38-31. Vermeil, focused entirely on the postseason, rested quarterback Kurt Warner, superback Marshall Faulk, and others in the second half.

And so was born Reid's remarkable run of victories after bye weeks. As trends go, perfection is a compelling one. In his 12 seasons, Reid is 12-0 in the first game after a bye. With a pivotal matchup against Dallas on Sunday night, the Eagles and their fans are hoping that trend holds for at least another season.

The alternative - a 2-5 start to this once-promising season, with losses to the Cowboys and Giants in their own division - is too grim to contemplate.

But what does this streak really mean? Reid himself is always talking about how every year is different. By now, there are zero players, zero personnel people, and just four assistant coaches remaining from the team that started this streak.

"I get asked that every year," Reid said Wednesday, "and I don't think there's any secret. You do what you do. We're going to practice just like we did last week and the week before that. I don't know if there's any secret to it."

There are several factors. The first shouldn't be underestimated: Reid is a really good NFL coach. He has won 60.6 percent of his regular-season games, so it already is more likely for him to win than to lose any given game.

The schedule has helped a bit. Of those 12 post-bye wins, nine were played in Philadelphia. Two of the three road games were against teams that finished the season with double-digit losses. Six games were played against teams that finished the season with winning records, which includes those playoff-focused Rams.

If you are playing lesser teams at home, after a week of rest, you're bound to have a high success rate.

Nevertheless, perfection is perfection. The real question is whether this trend has any relevance to this drastically remade team. And the answer is no. And yes.

No, because most of those games were played with Jim Johnson coaching a defense led by Brian Dawkins and Troy Vincent and Jeremiah Trotter. They were played with an offense led by McNabb and Jon Runyan and either Duce Staley or Brian Westbrook. They were played with John Harbaugh coaching special teams and with Brad Childress and Steve Spagnuolo assisting on offense and defense.

Yes, because perhaps the most impressive of all Reid's post-bye victories came in 2010, with Michael Vick and DeSean Jackson and Trent Cole on the field.

Before that game, the bye week was full of chatter that Reid should fire or demote his seemingly overmatched defensive coordinator. Only it was Sean McDermott, not Juan Castillo. With Peyton Manning and the Colts coming, it was easy to imagine an embarrassing blowout.

But the Eagles got Vick and Jackson back from injuries in time for the game. And McDermott had arguably his finest hour with the Eagles, fashioning a sound plan that rendered Manning mortal. The Eagles won, 26-24, and Reid's streak was alive.

A win against the Cowboys will knock that game down one spot on the list of impressive post-bye victories. Not because Tony Romo is as good as Manning, but because this is a must-win division game with immense implications for the Eagles' season.

Win, and they're suddenly on a two-game, three-week winning streak with several home games in a row.

Lose, and that feel-good win against Washington instantly becomes viewed as one bad team beating up on another. With five losses, the Eagles almost certainly would have to win eight of their nine remaining games to earn a playoff berth. And how likely would that be after winning just two of seven?

The deeper meaning behind the post-bye streak is that it represents Reid's knack for identifying and addressing early-season problems. The Eagles would then typically get better as fall gave way to winter, then peak for the postseason.

That trend hasn't held the last two years, in the absence of many of those cornerstone players and coaches. The Eagles lost important December games, then got flushed out of the postseason in the opening round.

Not all trends hold forever. For now, though, the Eagles need to rely on just one.