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Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Flocking toward Da Iggles
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lose Jevon Kearse for the season.
Lose Donovan McNabb for the season.
Lose enough games to be in danger of posting a losing season.
Bring in Jeff Garcia out of absolute desperation.
Beat the Cowboys convincingly on Christmas day, muzzle T.O., win your division and give yourself a chance to earn a home playoff game.
Check.
WTF?
The Eagles are generating plenty of bandwagon attention after thoroughly dominating in Dallas and rising above the pathetic mediocrity of the NFC.
And there was no booing of Santa in Philly this year.
Andy Reid’s bunch is 9-6, and his improvisational skills virtually are being equated to a riff of spontaneous brilliance from Dizzy Gillespie:
“I look at it one game at a time, so I think anything is possible I felt like we could do whatever we needed to do. We just had to get it going in the right direction.”
Are Da Iggles taking on Garcia’s personality?
Another fan is happy, but cautiously so.
While Da Iggles are flying high, your Atlanta Falcons continue to veer headlong toward the ground, likely crashing out of the playoffs for the second straight year with a spectacular second-half swoon. Even if the even more troubled Giants fall apart on Saturday, the Falcons still need the Packers, Rams and Panthers to do the same, and then win at Philly on Sunday.
High unlikely, but …
They’re in a group of pretenders who are actually contenders.
Yes, the free fall continues at Flowery Branch. And yet …
When you exempt the Raiders, Lions and Browns from the list of worst teams in the NFL, who takes the top (or bottom?) in one man’s poll? The “quintessentially putrid” Falcons, who lost to the latter two teams to start their downward spiral.
A Falcons fan has gone on an Eagles fan message board, begging for the Falcons to be “destroyed” so Mora will be fired, among other things.
Predix: Rams will get the last wild card spot. Why? They’re the only team favored to win this weekend. It may sound lame, but no more so than the teams still alive.
More Predix: Iggles 5-1 favorites to go to the Super Bowl. Falcons: 150/1. In other words, not much better odds than their chances of winning Sunday.
Not everybody’s phanatic about Philly:
“In short, the Eagles are peaking at the right time. They are certainly capable of winning a first-round playoff game, especially if that game is in Philly. The Eagles have had trouble with mobile quarterbacks this season (Vince Young, David Garrard), but they have a long history against Michael Vick and have shut him down in key games before. The Falcons are playoff desperate, but their running game has deteriorated in recent weeks, and Vick won’t have a good game against the Eagles secondary. Throw in the cold-weather element and Jim Mora’s tenuous grasp on his coaching job, and you have the makings of a Falcons meltdown.”
Haven’t we seen this movie before?
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