North Star Writers Group

To start, it indicates quite accurately the quality of any given team. Football does not generally have as severe a margin between good games and bad as do baseball, basketball and hockey. What you see on the first day can give you a pretty good idea of whether or not your team is going to be a three-to-five-win team or a 10-to-12-win team.

Second, not only is the first game a good indicator, but it actually means something. With only 16 regular season games, every game makes a huge difference in determining who makes the playoffs.

That said, the Eagles are off to a hell of a lousy start. Based on what they showed today in their unimpressive 16-13 loss to an unimpressive Packers team, I doubt they’ll win 10 games this year, which means they might not even make the playoffs.

It was a rather odd game for the Eagles. Usually, they can’t stop the run, they don’t run the ball, their special teams are good and they win. Today, they stopped the run. They ran the ball. They couldn’t pass. Their special teams were atrocious. And most crucially, they lost. This has the makings of a very odd season.

The injury-prone quarterback Donovan McNabb does not have many quality seasons left in him. As a matter of fact, unless he plays extremely well for the rest of the season, this could, quite possibly, be his last full season as quarterback of the Eagles. Kevin Kolb, their recent pickup from the draft, was quite impressive in the preseason. Andy Reid ought to put considerable pressure on McNabb to play well or sit. However, it would be foolish to give up on McNabb based on one lousy game. He has had a wonderful ride in Philly. But it might be just as foolish not to realize that he is 30 years old, and not many NFL quarterbacks flourish after their 30^th birthday.

Based on this, it seems quite clear that the Eagles’ dominance of the NFC East is also at an end. There have been two main reasons for their impressive reign as the team to beat in the NFC for almost six years: McNabb, and their defense. Without McNabb playing like he did during their four straight trips to the NFC championship game, the Eagles are a much different – or put more bluntly – a much worse team.

I may be way ahead of where I ought to be, but I’m already in “let’s start rebuilding” mode. More than any other factor, the quality of a team’s quarterback limits the whole team. For a few years, McNabb was good enough for the Eagles to win a Super Bowl. It didn’t happen. I’m not sure he’s good enough anymore, and if he’s not, he never will be again. I think the Eagles would be wise to understand this season is a last hurrah for McNabb. Unless he blows it out of the water and has an incredible season, and stays healthy, it’s about time to start thinking about a replacement. It’s about time to rebuild.

So what does this mean for the fans? Based on today’s game, I think it means that we must, first and foremost, swallow our immediate hopes and dreams, yet again, and consider McNabb one of the Eagles’ best all-time quarterbacks who, much like every other Eagles quarterback, never won the big game. We might need to start accepting the fact that the Eagles won’t be seriously competitive for at least a few seasons. If the Eagles fail to make a run this year, then they’re not going to make a run until 2010 at the earliest.

It is not uncommon to hear fans at a Phillies game chanting “E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!!” But I had a sort of epiphany today that makes me wonder if the city of Philadelphia is in for some huge changes.

I was watching the Phillies game on my laptop while watching the Eagles game on TV. Depending on how well the network is working, the Phillies game can come in either crystal clear or at around 22 frames per minute. Today, the network was practically on life support. And yet, halfway through the third quarter of the season’s first Eagles game with the score tied at 13, I found myself considerably more interested in the fuzzy images of my laptop than a sagging Eagles team that’s probably on its star quarterback’s last legs.

With the Eagles on the decline and the Phillies on the rise, I can’t help but wonder if the balance of power may finally be shifting in a city more than ready for a fresh start.

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