Eagles are focused.
Eagles are focused.
Bob Ford
The Eagles take Arizona seriously - really
By Bob Ford
Inquirer Sports Columnist
ROSS D. FRANKLIN / Associated Press
The Cardinals' Kenny Iwebema (left) and Antonio Smith laugh it up. The Eagles, meanwhile, said all the right things about taking Arizona seriously.
The Eagles are saying the right things this week about the Arizona Cardinals. If you look deeply into their eyes, there isn't even a glint of a hint of dishonesty when they say they are taking the Cardinals very, very seriously. And then they nod. Very, very seriously.
It could be that when they get behind the tinted glass of their monster trucks and leave work, they turn up the music so no one can hear and scream, "All we have to do to get to the Super Bowl is beat the stinking Arizona Cardinals! Mwah-ha-ha-ha!"
And could you blame them? I mean, really, the Arizona Cardinals? One of the most inept franchises in the history of the National Football League? A division champion by default in the tattered ruins of the NFC West? The Arizona Cardinals?
Yes, those guys.
That is not what they are saying, however, and it is true that any team with bruised toes from a season of unexpected stumbles shouldn't be taking anyone else lightly.
You know the refrain. If you can't beat the Cincinnati Bengals . . . if you can't get one stinking yard against the Chicago Bears . . . if you can't slip past a broken and empty Washington Redskins team . . . yes, all of that.
That was then, however. Now the Eagles are riding the wave of confidence they have built from the still water around their ankles after the Nov. 23 loss to Baltimore. The first rising tide came just days later - a 28-point win over the - that's right - Arizona Cardinals.
Now the streak has reached six wins in the last seven games, including solid playoff victories over Minnesota and the defending champion New York Giants. The Eagles are being carried by their defense, but quarterback Donovan McNabb is healthy and the offense is dangerous as well. Against Arizona in November, McNabb threw four touchdown passes and had his second-highest passer rating of the season, behind only the season-opening rout of St. Louis.
Still, what you get this week is what you expect to get, and what you should get. You just wonder if they really believe it.
"There is no time for looking past anybody," Brian Dawkins said. "We're on the road, in hostile environment. We're not looking at that last game and thinking the same thing is going to happen again. We understand it's going to be tough to win and we will have to have our A-game to do it."
Over the long history of the NFL, it has usually taken only a C-minus or D-plus game to beat the Cardinals. Even this season, as the Cards reeled to the finish line, it wasn't that difficult. In the final five weeks of the season, Arizona lost games by 21, 28 and 40 points. Forty points!
Beyond that, the collective unconscious of the franchise represents a sticky spider web of failure across the players' faces. The most recent division championship before this season came 33 years and a time zone ago. It was 1975 in St. Louis under coach Don Coryell.
Current coach Ken Whisenhunt is the 11th head coach for the team since that last division title, and the 9-7 record this season is just the second winning record since 1984.
If the Cardinals should win on Sunday, it will be the franchise's first serious championship since Harry Truman was filling out Franklin Roosevelt's final term. They beat the Eagles in Chicago's Comiskey Park in 1947. I think Arizona was already a state back then, but I'll have to check.
The Eagles are having none of it, of course. Not only aren't the Cardinals the team that lost games for all those years. They aren't the team that lost games this season. Again, you just wonder if they really believe it.
"When you put on their last two games, you see a team dominate . . . unless you can't see," Andy Reid said. "We have to be very aware of how well they're playing right now. That whole thing with the last time we played them. You're asking a team to come off a huge game against the Giants, and travel on Wednesday, play on Thursday, on a holiday. That's a tough thing to do."
The Cardinals didn't really dominate the Falcons in the first playoff game. Atlanta led at halftime and it was still a 21-17 game, Cards leading, until a long drive - one that featured four third-down conversions - put some distance between the teams very late in the third quarter. Last week against Carolina, well, the Cardinals can be credited for catching the passes that Panthers quarterback Jake Delhomme threw to them. Was it a great game? It looked great, and perhaps that's all that matters.
"I think their first [playoff] game could have gone either way," linebacker Stewart Bradley said. "And I think Carolina . . . might have thought they had an easy opponent. I don't want to make that assumption that's what they thought, but that's the way it looked when I watched the tape."
The Eagles promise the same thing won't happen to them. They won't let the ghosts of the Dave McGinnis-coached Cardinals trick them into thinking this will be easy. They have studied and learned their clich?s, and know they are their friends.
"On any given day, any team in the NFL can come at you," receiver Greg Lewis said.
Those are the right things to say. Even better, those are the right things to believe. Maybe the Eagles do believe them, but who could blame them if they didn't?
I mean, after all, the Arizona Cardinals. Nothing else between the Eagles and the Super Bowl. Shut the door, turn up the music. Mwah-ha-ha-ha.
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