Cowboys-Eagles Matchup
December 28, 2008
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Cowboys at Eagles
UPDATE: Check out the Gameday Running Blog!
This game has plenty of serious implications for the Dallas Cowboys. First off, it’s an NFC East division game against the Eagles and it’s being played in Philadelphia. These two teams have a lot of animosity towards each other, going way back. The fact that it is a home game for Phillie has to be a disadvantage for the Cowboys, if only because of the notoriously abusive fans in Philadelphia. Thankfully for Dallas, if the game starts to go in favor of the opponent, those same fans are generally just as abusive of their own team.
This is, of course, also the last game of the season and a play-game to the postseason for the Cowboys. By gametime, depending on the outcome of the Tampa Bay and Chicago games, it could be a play-in game for both sides. Philadelphia needs Chicago to lose to Houston (which is possible, but not likely), and they need the Bucs to lose to Oakland (which is not likely at all, but then again, “any given Sunday”). Even if the Eagles are out of playoff contention, though, with the history of animosity between these two teams, they would love nothing more than to dash Dallas’ playoff hopes. They will certainly play hard to achieve that result.
History, in my opinion, is neither for or against Dallas. The Cowboys haven’t won a season-ender in 8 years, but none of those have been win-and-in games. The last one of those the Cowboys had, they won. Also, the Cowboys haven’t won a December game in Phillie since 1994. However, Tony Romo has never had 2 bad games in a row. He had a horrible 3 quarters against the Baltimore Ravens last week, and so history says that he will have a good game today.
The Cowboys Defense will need to continue to play to the level they have in the past several weeks, but they will have to do it for the entire game and not surrender the big plays that they gave up at the end of the Baltimore game. The offense will need to be in sync and play to the level that everyone knows they are capable of, but that they have rarely showed since Romo’s return from his !#%&!@ pinkie injury. Speaking of injuries, it looks like Marion Barber will again be a gametime decision and Tashard Choice will receive the majority of the carries again. That’s not a bad thing, necessarily, because Choice has surprised everyone with his exceptional play since Barber’s injury occurred.
Overall, this is certainly a winnable game for the Cowboys, but so was last week’s game against the Ravens, but the Cowboys have been playing like a bipolar manic depressive this year. You don’t know which team will come to the game, the lights-out team that destroyed Philadelphia in a shootout early in the season or the bumbling, pass dropping, Keystone Kops-like team that we saw last week. Luckily for the Cowboys (potentially), the Eagles have been just as unstable this year, with McNabb even being benched mid-season for half a game. I’ll leave off with this quote that comes from a sports article on a non-sports website. It comes from the blog for the VH1 show “Best Week Ever”. They put up a post called The 10 Funniest Sports Franchises Of 2008, and it lists both the Cowboys and the Eagles. This is what they have to say about the Eagles:
The Eagles are never outright terrible, but they always lose exactly enough to lower expectations before a surprising win, then win exactly enough to raise expectations before a surprising loss. It’s truly one of the most awe-inspiring balances in nature; I think there’s an entire Planet Earth episode dedicated to it.
It’s so funny because it’s true….
Tune in around 4:00 PM EST for our last Gameday Running Blog (soon to be renamed the Gameday Wrapup due to the new format I settled on last week). Once again, I will be posting some thoughts pregame and I’ll update after each quarter with my thoughts on the action, along with some game stats.
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December 28th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
[...] Bay and Chicago, this becomes a Win-and-In situation for both the Cowboys and Eagles. Check out my earlier post for my thoughts on this game. Kickoff is in a [...]