One week after the big two-part grudge match against New York - and just days after the Phillies' dismissal from the World Series - the Eagles face the NFL equivalent of those Damned Yankees.
Yes, the Eviler Empire. The Dallas Cowboys, the self-styled America's Team with the blustery owner and the brand-new gazillion-dollar stadium, come to Lincoln Financial Field tonight for a game that could help define the season for both participants.
To juice it up, ESPN.com's NFC East blogger, Dallas-based Matt Mosley, mined a quote from a new book about the Eagles. In Game Changers: The 50 Greatest Plays in Philadelphia Eagles Football History, veteran beat writers Reuben Frank and Mark Eckel interviewed former Eagles assistant John Harbaugh about the rivalry with the Cowboys.
"Andy Reid is the guy who ruined the decade for the Cowboys," said Harbaugh, now head coach of the Baltimore Ravens. "Think about it - they've been trying to get back to where they were the whole decade, and the Eagles have been the ones keeping them from getting there. They've stuck daggers in the Cowboys year after year."
That would be plenty of bulletin board - or is it message board? - material to get the folks in the Metroplex riled up. But Harbs went on:
"Why is that? Because what Andy Reid and his program stand for is the opposite of what the Cowboys stand for. The Cowboys are a star system. It's all about building around individuals first and collecting talent, collecting great players. And over the long haul, it's a team sport, and one of the greatest examples of that is what's happened with the Eagles and the Cowboys over the last 10 years. The Cowboys stand for everything that's wrong in the NFL."
Is it quibbling to point out that the New York Giants are the only NFC East team to win a Super Bowl in the last decade?
Indeed, it is the Eagles' odd distinction to be the best team in the NFC East during the division's longest championship-free stretch. Since the AFL-NFL merger, NFC East teams won two Super Bowls in the 1970s, three in the '80s, and a remarkable five of six in the first half of the '90s.
The 2007 Giants won the division's lone Super Bowl in the last 13 years.
Nevertheless, if the Eagles hope to return to the championship round during the Reid-Donovan McNabb era, they must start with their division. During the team's excellent 2000-through-2004 era - five playoff appearances, four trips to the conference championship, one Super Bowl appearance - the Eagles' regular-season record against NFC East opponents was 27-7.
Since then? They went 0-6 in 2005, the year of Terrell Owens' meltdown and McNabb's sports hernia. The next year, with Jeff Garcia at quarterback, the Eagles won three NFC East games on the road in December to finish with a 5-1 divisional record and another title. In 2007, the Eagles went 2-4 and missed the playoffs. Last year, despite going 2-4 against the division, they rallied for a wild-card berth.
For the most part, though, the division record has been a pretty accurate barometer of the Eagles' overall success in a given season. And that's what makes tonight's game all the more intriguing and important. It is a throwback to a time when these two teams routinely met with first place on the line.
After six fuzzy weeks in which the Eagles faced four bad teams, one very good one (without McNabb), and had their bye week, they have beaten Washington and the Giants back to back. Last week's 40-17 dismantling of New York was as encouraging about the state of this team as the previous week's win in Washington was unpersuasive.
So the Cowboys should be a revealing test. They are 5-2 and winners of three in a row. Of course, those wins came against Kansas City, Atlanta and Seattle - of whom only the Falcons have much chance of going to the playoffs. The NFC East is matched against the NFC South and AFC West, so every team gets to pad its record against the likes of the Chiefs, Buccaneers, Panthers, and Raiders.
Well, almost everyone gets to beat the Raiders.
In a sense, tonight's game features two teams in different stages of T.O. decontamination. The Cowboys' well is still poisoned, as evidenced by wide receiver Roy Williams' Owens-esque claim that Tony Romo throws better passes to everyone but him.
The Eagles, set back at least a year by Owens fallout, are completely recovered. In DeSean Jackson, Jeremy Maclin, Brent Celek, LeSean McCoy, and this Westbrook fellow, McNabb finally has a full complement of homegrown talent to work with.
It is true the Eagles have gotten the better of the Cowboys lately, but it will take a Super Bowl win to claim they've truly been the best of the rivals.
Contact columnist Phil Sheridan at 215-854-2844 or psheridan@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/philsheridan.
