how they'll lose

NFC Championship Game vs. Atlanta

by Brian Hickey

(Season record: 3-14)

It’s almost sadistic the way this city is again whipping itself into a pep-rally-attending, Modell’s-binge-shopping, delusions-of-grandeur-creating frenzy. Hey people -- PEOPLE! -- what in the name of everything that’s sane are you doing?!? Do you really want to feel the way you felt last year, and the year before, and the year before that again?

Shouldn’t logical humans: A. Build up emotional barriers; B. Temper their enthusiasm; and C. Make plans to curl up into a fetal ball so Merrill Reese can rock them into a peaceful sleep before halftime? Well, it’s probably too late for all that since somebody’s obviously already poured the lime Kool-Aid. Now, it’s just a matter of waiting to see just how the Eagles will crush your spirits and leave the city for sporting dead. Again.

But since you’re here, you probably want to know how I think it’ll go down, right? Well, here goes nothing:

All you can take from last week’s game against Minnesota -- other than the fact that this defense just keeps on getting better -- is that the Eagles are good enough to pick on a choker franchise’s bad D. Guess what folks? Atlanta does not have a bad defense. And when they get to the NFC Championship Game, even on the road, they don’t cough it up. (Just ask Randall.) Now, what I’m about to say has absolutely nothing to do with this batch of Philadelphia Eagles. I just think it’s about time that we consider the possibility that better teams, teams of destiny, just come along at the wrong time for these squads of ours. And we also have to admit that Michael Vick’s Atlanta Falcons just happen to look like one of them, blizzard or not.

Sorry, the realist inside keeps reminding me of how it felt walking out of the Linc, aka Ricky Manning’s house, at the end of last season, a stark contrast to the mood of this city this week. And, says that realist, you know what they say about those who don’t remember the past.

Falcons 14, Eagles 3

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