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Like many Eagles fans out there, I divested myself emotionally from this year’s team after the blowout loss in Baltimore on November 23rd.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But, of course, they didn’t lose those games, and they started bringing me back.\u00a0 As evidence,\u00a0there was\u00a0the post I wrote on December 11th<\/a>, assessing the chances they had of making a miracle recovery and sneaking into the playoffs.\u00a0 At that point, though, I stayed cautiously optimistic, keeping my guard up.\u00a0 The loss at Washington in Week 16 wasn’t too brutal, I was ready for it.<\/p>\n Then came the somewhat miraculous wins by Oakland and Houston\u00a0this past\u00a0Sunday, and\u00a0by the time\u00a0the game with the Cowboys got underway, I was completely back on-board.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It could’ve come last week, it could come in Minnesota tomorrow, or at the Meadowlands next weekend.\u00a0 Who knows,\u00a0maybe it could come in the NFC Championship?\u00a0 Or\u00a0the Super Bowl<\/em>???<\/p>\n Now,\u00a0expecting a heartbreak (and I\u00a0am, I really am) may seem like something born\u00a0from pessimism.\u00a0 In fact, it’s just the opposite.\u00a0 We here at BSB like to point out\u00a0that we are\u00a0“believers”.\u00a0\u00a0We tend to see the potential in our teams, and I certainly can see a way that this Eagle team can end up\u00a0in Tampa, playing for a title.\u00a0 (Wouldn’t there\u00a0be\u00a0some beautiful\u00a0synergy 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?)<\/p>\n All that optimism aside, as Bry detailed the other day, for all but one team, the season ends in disappointment, if not outright devastation.\u00a0\u00a0It’s highly unlikely that the\u00a0heartbreak 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the thing about it is, even if they do, I’m ok with that.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 As I’ve always suspected, and was confirmed on a cold night in late October, all those brutal defeats are\u00a0worth it in the end.\u00a0 So I’ll keep my fingers crossed, hoping for the season to end\u00a0in Tampa, but if it ends badly, it will still have been worth it,\u00a0it will still have been fun, and I’m keeping\u00a0that Phillies Championship DVD queued up and ready to go.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Like many Eagles fans out there, I divested myself emotionally from this year’s team after the blowout loss in Baltimore on November 23rd.\u00a0 That doesn’t mean I stopped watching the games or following the team, but there wasn’t anything they … Continue reading