Like many Eagles fans out there, I divested myself emotionally from this year’s team after the blowout loss in Baltimore on November 23rd. That doesn’t mean I stopped watching the games or following the team, but there wasn’t anything they could do that would hurt me at that point. If they had lost to Arizona on Thanksgiving night, or to the Giants a week later, I would have probably shook my head, shrugged, and forgot about it a few minutes later.
But, of course, they didn’t lose those games, and they started bringing me back. As evidence, there was the post I wrote on December 11th, assessing the chances they had of making a miracle recovery and sneaking into the playoffs. At that point, though, I stayed cautiously optimistic, keeping my guard up. The loss at Washington in Week 16 wasn’t too brutal, I was ready for it.
Then came the somewhat miraculous wins by Oakland and Houston this past Sunday, and by the time the game with the Cowboys got underway, I was completely back on-board. From that moment on, there was very little chance that this Eagles season wasn’t going to end in heartbreak for me, like so many before it. It could’ve come last week, it could come in Minnesota tomorrow, or at the Meadowlands next weekend. Who knows, maybe it could come in the NFC Championship? Or the Super Bowl???
Now, expecting a heartbreak (and I am, I really am) may seem like something born from pessimism. In fact, it’s just the opposite. We here at BSB like to point out that we are “believers”. We tend to see the potential in our teams, and I certainly can see a way that this Eagle team can end up in Tampa, playing for a title. (Wouldn’t there be some beautiful synergy between the Phillies defeating a team from Tampa to win it all, then the Eagles getting it done, just over 3 months later, in that same city?)
All that optimism aside, as Bry detailed the other day, for all but one team, the season ends in disappointment, if not outright devastation. It’s highly unlikely that the heartbreak of this year’s Eagles team will match those of the ’02 and ’03 NFC Championship losses to Tampa Bay and Carolina, or the Super Bowl loss to New England.
But the thing about it is, even if they do, I’m ok with that. It’s a tough thing to take at the time, but the gut-punch losses are what make us fans and attach us to these teams. As I’ve always suspected, and was confirmed on a cold night in late October, all those brutal defeats are worth it in the end. So I’ll keep my fingers crossed, hoping for the season to end in Tampa, but if it ends badly, it will still have been worth it, it will still have been fun, and I’m keeping that Phillies Championship DVD queued up and ready to go.
