I think this article sums it up best:
Bill Lyon | Karma won't be lining up on Sunday
By Bill Lyon
Inquirer Columnist
The Eagles have been briefed about their next opponent. You could have heard a pin drop. What you would not have heard was the rustling and flutter of angel wings.
The Eagles' game plan for the Green Bay Packers is being refined even as we speak. Nowhere in it is there a mention of Fate. Or Destiny. Or Karma. Or Intervention.
Or Mojo. Or Magic. Or the Supernatural. Or the ever-popular Some Things Are Meant to Be.
In Cheese Head Nation, a pleasant enough place populated by pleasant enough people, the notion is being advanced that the Packers have officially been placed under divine guardianship and are being watched over by the benevolent dispenser of wins, whomever he, or she, or it, may be.
Anyway, this is a condition that appears to be even more serendipitous than being baby-sat in the witness protection program.
It is a popular practice in sports, whenever stumped for an explanation of the implausible or inexplicable, to assume that other-worldly stuff is at work. Being Irish and a blatant romantic, I confess to having succumbed to this enchantment myself from time to time. It's comforting, somehow.
But in the once-immortal words of the carnivorous linebacker Dick Butkus: "Who'd Destiny ever tackle?"
So there were the Packers, pretty much minding their own business and resigning themselves to spending January ice fishing, what with the playoffs apparently out of their reach, when suddenly Brett Favre burst into flames.
The Pack won and won. Still, their chance to reach the postseason came down to depending on Arizona, which can't beat anyone, beating the Minnesota Vikings, which the Cardinals did, and on the last play of the game besides, on fourth and 25 to boot, and if that's not straight from the Twilight Zone I'll kiss you on your Ouija board.
And then, only hours after his father died, still needing to win to reach the playoffs, Favre lit up the night with a pristine performance that left many of us who watched it in sobbing awe. Then in the playoffs, the Pack won its wild-card game, in overtime, on the runback of an intercepted pass. By a former Eagle, yet.
This should all be set to the musical score of Phantom of the Opera, shouldn't it?
Anyway, the Packers, being football players, will gleefully seize on anything that might remotely produce an advantage.
Favre himself said: "The way we're going now, anything can happen."
The Packers' coach, Mike Sherman, is a realist and, like most coaches in the NFL, abhors the idea of something, anything, being out of the reach of his control. Still, he was moved to hedge all bets by allowing:
"We'll take whatever help we can get."
What he'd prefer to take on Sunday at the Linc is 300 yards from Favre and a buck-fifty from the running back Ahman Green. Then, he'd take his chances.
This all casts the Packers in a sort of candlelight glow, and what has befallen Favre and the admirable way he has handled it all has won him and his team a large following. In a good many precincts, the Pack will be the sentimental favorite.
But the Eagles do not make easy villains or foils. Not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact, for they have demonstrated great resolve and laudable resiliency themselves, dealing with an uncomplaining stoicism with their plague of injuries, recovering from a calamitous 0-2 start, stitching together that remarkable nine-game winning streak.
They should also have earned extra points for sustained excellence. No other team in the NFL has won as frequently over the last four seasons. They also win almost all of the time on the road, a mark of character.
The Birds, in short, have shown true grit. They do not occupy any police blotters. And their coach is an unprepossessing, phlegmatic man whose sideline demeanor hardly invites dislike by the viewing audience.
The Eagles possess, to coin a word, "rootability."
And they, too, are entitled to think someone, or something, is looking down fondly on them. How else to explain one of the most accurate kickers in NFL history blowing one field goal after another against them? Or teams fumbling away the ball at the very rim of the Birds' goal line?
How else to explain opponent after opponent dominating the statistics yet almost always losing?
But on Sunday, the Eagles need concern themselves with none of the extraterrestrial. They need only to play to their capability.
They do that and they win, and it's that simple.
They are the better team. They proved that, head-to-head, on the playing field two months ago. They are the higher seed. They have the better record.
And they have kept on trying these last years. Despite being frustrated and rebuffed in their efforts to reach the Super Bowl, they keep on trying.
Even Destiny might be moved to think that counts for something.
philly.com |
