The Sporting Philadelphian

I have avoided this. I have sat in front of my computer, curled up, fetally, and gazed with bleak despair, I've questioned the existence of Howard Eskin, I've eaten Tastykake, I've become overtly, haggard. But no more. No more dilatory avoidance, no shirking of a blogger's duties to his fanbase. No excuses. But first, a primal roar: "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!! Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaahahahaha...."

Oh, jeez. Why, oh why do they do it? Why do our bumbling birdmen blow the damned opportunities they are given, after rising from the ashes to engage our hope and guarantee our interest and love captivity for life? Why do we do this?

I thought that I could watch McNabb grow. I thought that the years I had put in, watching McNabb scramble up to the cusp of greatness, watching him make the most of things, watching him come damned close so many times, I thought that I would see him take advantage of this year's weak playoff field, and come out a legend in this town. There were signs of this. McNabb had been on one hell of a run. He had blown up the Cowboys to get into the playoffs, and had done what needed to be done in Minnesota. He was facing the same quarterback he'd faced in his first NFC Championship game oh so many years ago, and he looked ready to me. I thought he could pull a Manning (either payton of Eli apply here) and cement his playoff reputation with one hot stretch.  But gosh I was wrong.

Say what you will about the end of the game, and much has been said, the fact of the matter is that it isn't really important that Curtis was held. This isn't the issue, and it obfuscates the point. McNabb's Eagles have always lacked the killer instinct, that extra gear to become great. This is true. It has been true for years now. The question is wether or not McNabb can find it. I don't know.

I think, at a point, and we are at this point, past it even, you accept what you have in a quarterback, and you know that you have reached the envelope of his skill and capabilities. You can push him no farther. McNabb, we now know, as we have all suspected, cannot put a team on his back and win it all without another weapon or weapons on the offensive side of the ball. The one season he had help, we ran into one of the best teams of the past two decades, and damn near walked away champions.

I thoughthe could do it. Before that last drive, there was that dumb Manning commercial, where he agrees that he is going down, he won't choke, that he will take that hike. I thought it was a sign-potentially. I was wrong. Where do you go from there?

Much has changed in Sixertown since last they have been discussed here. When last we spoke of them, the Sixers were a deeply dysfunctional rabble whose marquee free-agent had the unfortunate effect of pushing everyone else out of their accustomed roles, a team whose very identity was in question, a team that, in firing a coach who was a class act and a gentleman, seemed to be dodging essential questions about how to play the game as a unit. Were they a running team who, in the most significant free agency acquisition since Moses Malone, maxed out on a lumbering free agent mistake? Or had they simply not figured out how to run the offense with a big, brawny bear clogging the lane?

It was at this juncture, with these questions very much up in the air, that Cheeks was shown the door. I wrote at the time that this was a shame, that the classy thing to do would have been to give Cheeks a slightly longer leash, to show him some more faith. I was very unsold on the idea of giving the reins to some dude named DeLillo, who seemed to have some serious Randy Ayers potential, and I fretted that the only thing there was to do was to trade Young, and hope for the best. And then the Sixers all read my column, got all pissed off, and went out and started playing excellent basketball. Well, I feel like a jackass, thanks for asking. But, as we all know, the truth is never that simple.

There might, in some alternate universe, be some thread of reality where Brand stayed healthy, the Sixers gelled under their new coach, and this recent run of incredibly good play came with no elephants in the room. This is not that universe, and the elephant in question is named Elton.

No one seems to know quite what to make of the imminent return of Elton Brand. The reasons for this uncertainty abound. In this recent run of good basketball, the team has played with a new sense of purpose and tenacity, with real abandon. Watching the team clobber the Spurs, I found myself feeling that watching the team, a chore such a little time ago, had become a joyous exercise of being delighted by successive tough defense, well-run fast breaks, heads-up plays, and the dramatically improved and more dynamic half-court offense. The Sixers looked complete, looked like they did not need any more weapons.

In Brand's absence, several things have gone right. Igoudala, sprung from his unnatural prison at the 2, has been more free to do what he does best, playing heads-up, hard-nosed defense, and finding great opportunities in entropy. Speights, whose minutes have increased dramatically, has really looked good. Lou Williams has improved. The reason for this is that Brand, like any other low-post banger, must be fed the ball consistently to be effective, which has the converse effect of changing the rhythm of the game to a slower, more deliberate game, which for a team with such raw athleticism as the Sixers possess, is not necessarily a good thing. Remember the play in the third quarter when Igoudala spun around Bowen, narrowly missing the giant fork sticking out of Bruce's back, on the way to a reverse jam? With Brand on the court, there would not have been the space, within either the defense or the halfcourt offense, to do that.

Right now, the ball moves around like a pinball, the offense move like water down a mountain, swallowing and circumventing everything in its path, inexhorable; they are shooting the lights out, and the buckets are coming in bunches. It's been very fun to watch. When Igoudala sank the ball from behind half court tonight, it almost seemed like par for the course, the Sixers were in such a groove.

Interviewed after the Blazers' game, Andre Miller asserted that the team was not yet "around the corner." He was right. The Sixers did not yet have a statement victory. While they took care of that order of business tonight, the Sixers need to continue this stretch, need to prove that they can win without nailing nearly every shot they take, need to prove that they can battle a tough team and win in a close game when they are not at their best. They have not yet proven themselves as a playoff team. But for the first time in a while, maybe the first time since Iverson was here, they look good. They really look good.

Reports are that the Sixers will ease Brand back, that they don't want him to test his shoulder before he's really ready. In other news, Bush is leaving the White House because of a moving letter written by El Paso second grader Ellen Mifflin, which explained to him, in terms he could understand, that his presidency has been "kind of like poop." I mean, it make all the sense in the world not to test Brand's most-recent near death experience any more than is absolutely necessary, since he is at this point an investment on par with Bank of America's recent acquisition of Merrill Lynch, but this explanation smells more than a little bit. Given that the Sixers are now as hot as hot can be, and integrating Brand into the offense has already proven to be a problem, does it not make sense to hold Brand out until Doctors Ross, Green, House, James Andrews and of course Doctor J, have all been convinces that he is shipshape and seaworthy? Of course it does. You're with me or you're against me.

I think that Brand will be healthy when he comes back, for the simple reason that the Sixers have the luxury of easing him back in, holding off until he's fully ready. This is a good thing, a cushion wrought by the Sixers' recent good play. Whether he will ever be a part of a lean, mean, halfcourt machine is another question entirely, one that I am afraid to answer. Let me just mention that in a recent game of 2K against my bestest buddy Andyroo, I went with a Phoenix Suns lineup of Nash, Barbosa, Hill, Diaw and Stoudamire, effectively pretending that the Shaq trade never took place, since I wish ever so much that it had not. But alas. 

It's tough to integrate a guy like that, since it effectively changes the offensive dynamic of a team. The only successful running teams with a lumbering big man that I can think of are those Chris Webber Sacramento teams. With all due respect to Andre Miller, he's no Mike Bibby, and the Sixers haven't got a Peja either. Well. At a point, this is all academic. Brand will be back. The Sixers must find a way to integrate him. He is, let us not forget, a fabulous player. Time will tell, but I think that, with the Sixers on a roll, confident, sure of themselves, Brand is arriving under very good circumstances, with the team having proven that it can be successful independent of him. We must hope for the best.

The Eagles, Flying...

Sometime after McNabb's triumphant phone call, and Buckin' Aikman's bizarre grudge against the coming of 20th century telecommunications, or else any semblance of lightheartedness regarding a moment of gleeful exuberance, I found myself sitting on a couch, looking outside, a dumb little grin on my face, considering the world almost wholly anew. What a bright and beautiful world this is, when redemption can come so sweetly, when you hope for a thing so badly for so long, when, even as you cease to believe, you find a way through all the vagaries of life, of the NFC East, to see, clearly, a path to what you seek. I am blindsided by this. I keep knocking on wood, looking for the stains under carpets, looking the gift horse in the mouth, wondering where the anvil is lurking. But I can't seem to find anything.

I tried to explain this to my girlfriend. My girlfriend who occasionally wonders why "association football" is called soccer here. I tell her: "Katie, the Eagles are playing a team they crushed on Thanksgiving in the NFC Championship game." Katie replies: "That's great. How many wins before they get to the Super Bowl." Aaargh. I keep trying to explain the idea of conferences to her. Oh well. Even she can't believe that the Eagles are this close. "But wasn't the quarterback almost finished just a couple of months ago?" She gets some stuff right, does Katie.

The funny thing about all this is that it scarcely makes sense to me, either. A month ago, this state of affairs, the Eagles just one very manageable win away from the Superbowl, would have sounded ridiculous. But now? One reliable constant of football, over the years, has been the presence of some monolithic great team. Some team that was solid, that had guards at the door. Some team you really had to be special to beat. There were the Niners, the Cowboys, the Rams, the Pats. This year, that team went down with Tom Brady's knees, to the unending delight of everyone who feels that the word "door" ought to have an "r" sound in it. I remember telling Katie this, all the way back in August, that this was an opportunity for everyone else, not really thinking of the Eagles as being in that category. But now? Opportunity is knocking on the Eagles' door with both fists, hammering to be let in. This is the year, this is the moment.

Over the course of the next week, there will be an ample amount of commentary proclaiming the fact that Arizona played very badly on Thanksgiving, that they had no time to prepare for the game, that they just didn't show up, that they will most certainly show up for the next game. All of this is obviously true, and the Eagles must not look past their very talented opponents, or Kurt Warner will turn around and bite the Eagles in the ass faster than you can distract him with Bingo, shuffleboard and other things more appropriate for hobbling old men. Having said all of that, this upcoming game in the desert really ought to be a much easier game than the behemoth grudgematch in those Meadowy lands of Jersey. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but wasn't "No Country for Old Men" set in country that could well have been in Arizona, rather than west Texas? I'm just saying.

The Cardinals are coming off of a big win, having handily knocked off Carolina, the number 2 seed in the NFC. This was most certainly a big deal, and I was personally thrilled to see it. I would much rather go through the Cardinals than the Panthers. Having said that, these two teams, the Cardinals and the Panthers, are both soft seeds. They are very much overrated, according to the BCS formula, or would be if they were seeded that way. They have not proven themselves to be winners against good teams. One of the several wonderful things about the NFC East is the abundance of challenging games, of really tough matchups that really test your team and force you to prove yourself from Week 1. The flip side of this, of course, is the fact that the Eagles nearly missed the playoffs this year, due to the really tough regular season schedule, with New York and Dallas twice, and the Redskins no slouches either. But I digress.

The Panthers and Cardinals did not have this problem. The Cardinals, whose ridiculous division features the Niners, Seahawks and Rams, had the weakest conference schedule in ages. Their two best wins of the regular season, against (get this) Buffalo and Dallas, came in mid-october, and came after a) Knocking Trent Edwards out of the game, and b) blocking a punt, after having almost giftwrapped the game for Dallas. In other regular-season news, they were torched by Tavaris Jackson and his assorted cast of hoodlums, before being creamed by New England. (When you are lit up by Tavaris Jackson and Matt Cassel in back to back weeks, something is wrong with your secondary. Write that down.) The Panthers won against San Diego before the Chargers turned things around, split with the Falcons, beat the Cardinals, Bucs and Packers, and that's about it. These aren't very convincing wins. In the playoffs, the Cardinals beat a rookie QB and an incredibly shaky QB, and chewed up yards with the thoroughly over-the-hill Edge James. Call me crazy, but none of this really impresses me. Mcnabb is neither young nor shaky. The Eagles' LBs will haul down the Edge like so much dead old meat. Are the Cardinals a playoff team? Yes. A Super Bowl team? Not at all. 

I know the Eagles lost to the Redskins twice, lost to the Bears, goddamned tied the Bengals, but you know what? Football can be a chancy game, things can bounce strangely, breaks can go against you, Quarterbacks can forget the rules. We don't like to talk about luck, but if you look back at the year, the only game we could not have won easily was the Baltimore game. Think about that. There was only one game all season where, at the end of the day, you couldn't honestly look in the mirror and wish things had turned out differently. The reason we were getting so frustrated, all along, was that we knew that these boys had talent, that they were good, but they couldn't go for the jugular. They couldn't close teams out, they couldn't play good fourth quarters.

All that is changed now. The Eagles, though still frustratingly imperfect in the red zone, prone to sputtering on offense, look good. They look commanding. They look like world-beaters, to me. Of the other three teams, they've beaten two. Knowing that, knowing that McNabb is still more than pissed about the benching, in the Ravens game, knowing that he might get a shot at redemption, isn't there a lot to look forward to here? I can't wait to see this all unfold.

I will tell you this. As we all advance in years, as our lives come to be more about what has already happened that what might yet happen, as we look back across the sweep of our lives and find the good and bad nuggets that our Eagles have left us, we will remember these next three weeks. We will remember them for their hope. Whether we will remember them also for their joy, or for their pain, is in the hands of McNabb, of Westbrook, of Dawk, of Samuel. If we can extrapolate anything here, it is this: That's a hell of a lot better than Allstate.

Antonio Pierce Is a Big, Fat Idiot.

Just between you, me, the lamppost and everyone else we know, Sunday's rumble in the Meadow(lands) is really shaping up to be one of those old-fashioned cataclysmic NFC East grudge matches. You know the kind of game I'm talking about. Two teams who know and loathe each other intimately, going after each other over a frozen gridiron, each side trying to grimly outlast the other. Over my years as an Eagles' fan, I've seen a lot of games like this, all of them filled with good, old fashioned hate. Gosh, I can't wait for it. Who doesn't love to hate the Giants?

In an interview conducted the other day, Antonio Pierce stuck his foot halfway down his mouth, perhaps as a way to further spice this matchup. For once in my life, I feel grateful for his presence. In an interview that was posted yesterday on the Giants website, Antonio Pierce had this to say about his team's "psyche." According to the Giants' defensive captain: "The psyche of the [Giants] this year is a group that understands what it takes to win the championship.  We have 35 or 40 players that were on this team last year, coaching staff, front office, everybody. They know what it takes to win the championship.  So what we have this year is experience. And that is what we are going to use this Sunday."

The way that Pierce phrases this golden little nugget just about kills me. Up to a point, this is a perfectly logical, even bland, assessment of what he feels to be the strength of this year's crop of Giants. I can see where he's coming from, since the Giants are a veteran team that very closely resembles the team that won it all last year, (give or take a village idiot) most of whom do remember knocking off the Pats in Arizona. I can even follow Pierce in his thinking that the Giants feel themselves to be in possession of the sort of collective unconscious social memory that a championship brings. Winning it all is not an impossible thing to them, since they just did it last year. Fine. But let's do some unpacking of his narrative thread.

Does Antonio Pierce really mean that he expects David Tyree to catch another ball in his hat again? If you took Mel Kiper Jr., Stephen A. Smith, Michael Bloomberg, Kramer, my dead mother, Niko Bellic, Boris Yeltsin and Chewbacca into a room to reach a consensus about the single moment in which the Giants broke the Pats' back last year, they would come to agree on Tyree's catch faster than you can say "Giants suck, Eli swallows." Does Pierce mean to suggest that the experience of watching that play has so galvanized and inspired the Giants as to give them a decisive edge when the Eagles come to town? Let's consider Pierce's use of the term "psyche." According to those wonderful people who are responsible for the Oxford English Dictionary, the noun "psyche" derives from the Greek "psukhe," meaning the breath, life or soul of a thing, and has over time come to mean the human soul, mind or spirit. Huh. 

Applying this definition to the awkward phrasing of Pierce's statement, one might reasonably come to the conclusion that the soul, mind and spirit of the Giants (I didn't know they had a soul either, but bear with me here) hold the cherished memory of the most unlikely and unsatisfying championship in the history of the NFL so close that they feel armor-plated, ironclad protection from the assassins that will come in to kill them and their dreams of a repeat on Sunday. Remember this, when you hear the Giants talking about their title. They were one really, really lucky play away from letting the Pats go 19-0. So, from the horse's (ass's) mouth, the Giants are pinning their lives, souls and collective spirit to the hopes of getting similarly lucky again. Luck is what it took for them to win the Super Bowl, luck is apparently what they will hope for this time around.

This is all good news to the Eagles. Brian Dawkins knows nothing about luck. Brian Westbrook is under the impression that luck is what comes when you want it more than those other guys. McNabb is determined to make his own luck. I have it on a reliable source that Andy Reid is more or less an agnostic on the subject. Someone told Saint Samuel that he is lucky to be on a playoff team this year, and he just took their balls with him to the endzone. Point is, the Eagles know that this game is about more than skill, more than determination, even. This game is going to be brutal. This game will be elemental, it will be a classic, it will be a battle over the soul of our conference, simply a fight to see who hits who the hardest. And you know what? When I remember Westbrook scampering away from Pierce just a little while ago, when I remember Pierce's excuses and protestations that Westbrook has  "put up a a hall-of-fame career," I agree with him, I concur with his insinuation that he has not, and I start salivating, thinking about the game to come. Think that play was "irrelevant," Antonio? We'll find out.

Jesus Christ, Romero!

As I write this post, I'm wearing a shirt I got as a giveaway at the Phillies' second home game last year, which they billed as "Opening Night." It was probably the most-frustrating Phillies loss I've ever seen in person. My girlfriend and I got standing-room tickets (I almost said seats here) and were treated to the spectacle of Hamels holding the Nats to 1 run over eight innings, only to be outdueled by, of all people, Tim Redding. The Phillies only got 1 hit that night. Lost amid this recounting is my best memory of that game, in which JC Romero came in with 1 out and runners on base in the ninth, then induced a double play with 1 pitch, getting Cole off the hook and giving the Phillies new life heading into the bottom of the ninth, down by a run.

I remember turning to the guy next to me, who was also turning to me. We both had 1 finger up, as if to tell each other "1 pitch!" We high-fived instead, and I noticed that my girlfriend had made eye contact with his girlfriend, and the pair of them were looking at us like we were crazy. "Jesus Christ Romero," this guy announced, "has just saved my soul." It was pretty incredible. Far and away the best thing that happened all night.

Romero has been exactly that over his time here, a saver of souls, if not games. As fans, we worry about things. Pitch counts, motivation, talent or lack thereof, the psychological makeup of people we will never meet. We obsess, a little. Over my years as a Phillies' fan, I have probably worried about the bullpen more than anything else, have fantasized about Jose Mesa and Rheal Cormier being taken to the woodshed by a guy named Vito, have wished Wayne Gomes would go on a diet, have wanted to kill Mitch Williams... you get the point.

The real difference between this year's team and the team that was bounced in Colorado was the bullpen. I remember listening to WIP two years ago, when Eskin was hosting a contest to nickname the bullpen, as a way to perhaps breathe some life into Mesa, Alfonseca et al. While I didn't partake in this cathartic exercise, not wishing for Eskin to rip my idea ("The Murdered Row") to pieces, it did highlight the Phillies major weakness that year. The Phillies consistently built a lead, then tried to weather the storm for nine outs or so, trying to outrun the inevitab meltdown on the road to Myers' uncertain relief. Even if they'd swung the bats against Colorado, this was not a team built for success in the playoffs.

Romero, even then, was the only reliever you felt confident with that whole year, and he was even better last year. Since he's been in the bullpen, the Phillies have had a soothing constant, a guy they could rely on. While the Phillies have addressed the bullpen, while he is no longer the lynchpin, he was absolutely crucial to the dominance of the bullpen in the playoffs last year, second only to Lidge. He was Pepto Bismol.

There are, as I said, things it is normal to worry about with bullpens, things that just come with the territory. But this? This 50-game suspension, handed down inflexibly by Selig and his goons, stands as an absurd example of corporate thinking run amok. The story, if you haven't heard, goes as follows: some time last year, Romero bought an over the counter supplement called 6-OXO Extreme from the GNC in Cherry Hill, looked on the label, found no ingredient that was banned by baseball, and took the supplement. Sometime later, Romero was tested for steroids, and it was discovered that his urine contained trace amounts of androstenedione, a banned steroid. Since this test occurred before the World Series, and the powers that be MLB did not want a player with a positive drug test in the Series, a deal was offered, which Romero declined, to reduce the suspension to 25 games, provided they included the postseason.

There are reasons for the hard line taken by the MLB. Romero DID piss andro. Andro IS a steroid. The MLB does have a blanket policy for positive steroid tests, a policy basically foisted on Selig by Congress at the height of the era of Bushian hubris, when Congress put its nose in all manner of places where it did not belong. They do not care how the andro got there, the fact is that it is there, and must be paid for.

This is really sad. It helps no one and nothing to avoid any distinction between Bonds, Clemens, players who knowingly stuffed massive amounts of steroids into their bodies, people who will need some luck to avoid ending up like Ken Caminiti and Rod Beck, people who cheated both the game and themselves, and people like Romero who unwittingly took a supplement with an amount of andro so small it didn't even rate an entry under active ingredients. This is madness. An Inquirer source indicated that the amount of andro, which was again not even listed on the bottle, "was well below any level that would enhance an athlete's performance." Romero made a reasonable assumption that something as hazardous as ando would have been mentioned. It was not. And he is being punished for it.

This suspension is a HUGE, HUGE problem for the Phillies. They will need to find a way to fill the void until Romero is back, which looms as the biggest potential headache moving forward. It's notoriously hard to predict things with bullpens, but this thing could easily snowball. There seem to be some hexes hanging over the Phillies already, and this is certainly one of them. 

A Kiss to Build a Dream On

Give me a kiss to build a dream on

And my imagination will thrive upon that kiss.

Sweetheart, I ask no more than this

A kiss to build a dream on.

Give me a kiss before you leave me

And my imagination will feed my hungry heart

Leave me one thing before we part

A kiss to build a dream on.

So says Louis Armstrong to the one he loves, and who are we to disagree? After the Eagles beat the Viking horde, I had some trouble deciding what it meant. Watching McNabb dance on the sidelines, rejoicing in this, his most redemptive performance of his entire career, I felt like I needed to go back to my little personal drawing board, redraw my criteria, reconsider the wheels and pulleys that now define my feelings towards the birdmen, and come to terms with this win.

My feeling, I have determined, may best be diagnosed as a crisis of commitment. Naturally, in sports as in love, one protects oneself. We've been burned by this team so many times before. Every season they come knocking, telling us that they've changed, a new flirtation ensues, they get us TO (as opposed to flowers), then Curtis, and ask us to come back. And we do. We come back. But we have doubts lurking within us, bad memories, questions holding us back, and we protect ourselves. A friend of mine is reading a book called Better Single than Sorry. I totally divested my heart from the Eagles after the 'Skins game. And now this. What do we do with it? It's a good sign, certainly, but do we go all in, now, and risk our hearts anew?

There is, as I said, a part of myself that delighted in watching McNabb jumping around after the game, Andy Reid looking relieved, and the local scribes falling all over themselves to say they told us so, that this was a wonderful moment for the franchise. There is also a part of myself that feels that this is deja vu all over again, with echoes of the Superdome in January of 2007. Remember that? Jeff Garcia pulling rabbits out of his ass to get us on his back and carry the team to the playoffs after 5 went down (again) and coming so close to knocking off the Saints? It was, while it lasted, one hell of a ride. Garcia was fabulous down that stretch. He was the first really talented quarterback whose approach to the position matched Reid's approach to moving the football. Garcia made the West Coast sing.

As much as we liked Garcia, we knew that he was not without flaws. He ran the offense like a swiss watch, but he lacked the sheer athleticism to change the game, to get the ball downfield. In the playoffs, he was maxed out. Sheldon hit Bush, Reid mismanaged the clock, we lost, we felt burned but not surprised, angry maybe, and went home. I remember ending the night throwing up PBR into a trash bag outside my girlfriend's room, cussing about how we needed to make a frankenquarterback out of McNabb's arm, athleticism and physique, and Garcia's poise and resourcefulness. It was a bad night. 

For all of his devotion to becoming a pocket passer, McNabb, who is a far better player than Garcia can even dream of being, remains an athletic gunner in the Brett Favre mold, trapped and shackled within an overcautious offense that too seldom makes use of his rocket arm, which remains his greatest strength. I have always assumed that the central problem of the ReidNabb era lay somewhere therein. We had enough of a quarterback to thrill us, but not enough of a quarterback to overcome a relatively weak supporting cast. As of the end of the Vikings' game, I still felt that I hadn't seen enough to feel like we were outside the GarciaNabb trap. McNabb remained the nearly-great QB as ever, surrounded by Westbrook, a great defense, and wide receivers that Reid met at a Mormon Church group, if such things exist. But then, a funny thing happened.

  Looking around at the rest of the league, I had the sudden realization that, on any given Sunday, the Eagles have a more than fair shot of taking down any of the other seven teams that are still alive. Right now, of course, come the Giants. This game is huge. Absolutely apocalyptic. But, having split the regular season with the Giants, watched them fall from an unstoppable force into a controversy-riddled team that limped into the postseason, we know we can beat them. We need to play well, better than we did against the Vikings, but there is no reason to think that we don't have a very good shot at this team. Aside from this matchup, the Eagles are looking at two teams they have already beaten soundly, (Arizona and Pittsburgh) a paper tiger that just lost to Kansas City, (Tennessee) a team no one seems sold on that will struggle to move the ball against the Eagles (Sand Diego) and a pair of teams that are scary, but could be beaten in Baltimore and Carolina. The '07 Pats ain't walking through that door.

Arizona was our Thanksgiving turkey, and is not a threat at all, even if they get past Carolina. Carolina is the scary team from the NFC, but if we can stop the run and Steve Smith, they are completely beatable. As well as the defense is playing, with the secondary that is just suffocating and the front seven that almost completely collared Adrian Peterson, that doesn't sound so far out. Don't look now, but if things break the Eagles' way, they could be headed to the Super Bowl.

Should they get that far, they will probably face Baltimore, Tennessee or Pittsburgh. I don't believe that the Chargers, without a healthy LDT, will get through the Steelers. The Baltimore-Tennessee game will be great, but I like Tennessee with the Ravens starting a rookie QB on the road. The Eagles have beaten Pittsburgh already, and the Titans remain a team that peaked in week 10 or thereabouts. Should the Eagles play the Ravens, can't you picture McNabb salivating at the chance for a rematch? Wouldn't that be an awesome game?

Let me be clear. I am not at all predicting a championship. This year's team is probably not as strong as the 2004 team, as they lack a big-time receiver, the linebacking corps is not as strong, and Dawkins' recent discovery of the fountain of youth should not obscure the fact that he is close to the end. Having said that, I am saying that this postseason represents a tremendous opportunity. This year is a window of sorts.

The Eagles might not need to surpass greatness to win it all this year. There is not a world-beater among the teams left standing. The Giants proved last year that if you peak at the right time, anything is possible. The 2006 World Series Champions were the 83-win Cardinals, who were not nearly the squad they had been as recently as 2004, when they ran into the white-hot Red Sox and were swept in the World Series. I remember Mike Kryzewski explaining how Duke had been knocked out of March Madness short of the Sweet 16, saying that, of the 64 teams, 30 or so could, on any given night, beat any team in the field, but that only five or so teams could do so five times in a row. The margin of error for even very good teams was so small. The NFL, in the present era of parity, is that way right now. No one is untouchble. The Eagles have what amounts to a good shot here, a rare and precious moment in the history of this franchise where they will not be confronted by a clearly superior team on the path to a Championship. Like the Phillies ad on the SEPTA buses say, Dreams Do Come True. Could this be the moment?

The truth is that we just don't know yet. But we have our kiss, we have plenty to build a dream on. I always wondered about that song, though: is the kiss really enough to heal Louis' hungry heart? As any Eagles fan can tell you, you take what you can get.