‘Super Bowl high’ proving beneficial to Birds again
PHILADELPHIA >> As it too often will, another Eagles season was into a skid. That’s when a failed defensive back with long Dallas Cowboys ties and an idea of how to create a cyber-stir chose to claim a minute of attention.
Orlando Scandrick is his name,
10 years a Cowboy, about 10 minutes an Eagle, nine of them ineffective in a sagging secondary.
Given a chance to help, then released when he was unable, Scandrick unloaded this, among other critiques, of the team no longer interested in his help: “I still feel like they’re living on that Super Bowl high. It’s over. You’re living in the past.” The Super Bowl high. That’s what Scandrick called it, and what enough others accepted as reality.
He meant it as an insult. It should have been a compliment.
There is one way to win a football championship. That’s to reach a point where there is no other way to survive but to win games, and then do exactly that. The Super Bowl high of 2017 that Scandrick mocked required the Eagles to steady themselves behind No. 2 quarterback Nick Foles in late December, then to win three playoff games, including a survivaltest in the Super Bowl on a day when Tom Brady would throw for 505 yards. If that continued into 2018, it showed, with the Eagles winning their last three regular-season games and what once had seemed an unlikely postseason bid.
Then, there has been this season, a swirl of troublesome inju
ries and earlier-season losses. It has also has been a demonstration of some inner championship drive that reveals itself only in moments of deepest football crisis.
After a loss in Miami that had even devoted fans murmuring about coaching changes, lost opportunities and basketball season, the Eagles have responded with three important if imperfect victories. With their 17-9 triumph Sunday over the Dallas Cowboys, they put themselves in position to win the NFC East and its automatic playoff slot in a Week 17 visit to the New York Giants.
That meant the season that looked to be over not only is stirring, but has a chance to yield all manner of fulfillment.
“Obviously, you don’t want it to come down to the month of December,” Doug Pederson said. “You’d like to play a little better in September, October and November. But I just think this is a team that, when their backs are to the wall, will be fighting. Whatever it takes. Sometimes, it’s not always pretty. And it doesn’t have to be.
“Just put some plays together, score more points than our opponent, hold our opponents down and just play great team football. If we don’t beat ourselves, we give ourselves a chance. And that’s what happened.”
If the Eagles win the NFC East, and that is the likely outcome, they will be subjected to Scandrick-like snark and charges that they won an inferior division. OK. There will be some truth in that. But with the way the schedule had unfolded, the Eagles were aware early that if they’d just hung around the race for a while, December could be kind. There would be the Miami game, two against the Giants, and a visit to Washington. Dallas would present its own rivalry challenges. But that five-game late-season opportunity was so inviting that it almost seemed the Eagles could take advantage of it with their second string. As it has happened, they have been winning exactly that way, with practice-squad graduates Greg Ward and Boston Scott having provided a fresh, locker-room spirit.
Sunday, the Eagles’ offense was not at its best. But the defense ensured that the Cowboys were even less effective. Thus, Pederson’s team would end the day with an NFC East magic number of one.
“Nobody gave us a chance,” said Brandon Graham, in what quite possibly was a phrase that had been used once or twice in sports history. “But it’s about us. We just have to keep believing. We have one more left. It isn’t over. I’m just enjoying the win because I knew we had a great week of preparation. We knew that the last game we played (in Dallas), that wasn’t us. That was the message this week, that it wasn’t us and we had to go out there and prove it.
“So we went out there and proved it today.”
There is the Giants game to play, and second-time-around division games can prove sticky. Mix in the natural exhale that could come with a victory over Dallas with first place as the prize. Then brace against the natural pull toward Christmas-week family time. All could become coaching challenges.
But Wentz has been playing at a high level, spending the last three weeks clicking off clutch touchdown drives and victories, not unlike Foles was able to do late in 2017. And Sunday, the defense, dirtied by 37 points in an October visit to Dallas, did not allow a touchdown.
Buddy Ryan once famously announced that the great teams will be revealed only when the snow falls. It’s snow season again, and the Eagles are elevating.
“We’re focused on moving forward,” Malcolm Jenkins said. “We’re looking at what is right in front of us: Winning the division. And we’re not going to let that opportunity slip.”
It’s how championship-level teams behave.
It’s how Super Bowl highs, to borrow a phrase, continue.