Oh my poor dirty birds...they don't get no respect...
Prediction? A Snow-Brainer
By Michael Wilbon
Sunday, January 23, 2005; Page E01
PHILADELPHIA
On the day before The Game, Philly booed Mother Nature, cursed her for dumping 16 inches of snow on the city, accused her of conspiring with the Falcons to challenge the Eagles in Sunday's NFC championship game.
By mid-afternoon it was difficult to get a copy of the Philadelphia Daily News, which ran a story that began, "We have a football game that will tell the world once and for all whether this is a city of mice or men. And we have a storm coming that could bring 10 to 15 inches of snow and along with it another test of the city's intestinal fortitude." Meantime, the Philadelphia Inquirer had a big splash story asking readers to recite a positive chant and to "Decode your Eagles hex sign."
As snow fell into the night and shut down the city, it was clear Philadelphia had exactly what its citizens love most: a crusade.
And that was fitting because so little of what figures to happen Sunday will have anything to do with football. The high temperature Sunday will be around 19 degrees, which would be bad enough. But with winds coming from the north at 30 mph, gusting to 40, the wind chill will hover around zero and could be minus-10 late in the game after the sun has set. So instead of dealing primarily with how to keep Michael Vick in the pocket or how to stop Donovan McNabb from finding his tight ends, the main concerns will be how to run three yards without falling, how to throw and or catch what will feel like an oversized bar of soap.
Football coaches can say whatever they want about ignoring the elements and how the conditions affect both teams the same, but don't believe a word of it. Former Cowboys and Dolphins coach Jimmy Johnson once told me his teeth chattered on the sideline when it was cold. He shivered. He couldn't concentrate on the play-calling like he should have because he was miserable.
The Falcons and the Eagles will be miserable Sunday. And there's nothing anybody, not even the control freak coaches, can do about it.
(The common-sense solution would be to move the Steelers-Patriots AFC championship game to 3 p.m. since the snow had stopped falling in Pittsburgh by late afternoon and put the Eagles-Falcons game on at 6:30, which would give snow removal crews extra time to clear not just the Lincoln Financial Field turf but also the Philadelphia streets, which played host Saturday night to cross-country skiers, ATV riders, snowboarders and sledders. And for those of you in, say, greater Washington who have game tickets and think you can just hop on I-95 North on Sunday morning and drive to the Linc in the usual two hours, forget about it. Driving here Saturday took four-plus hours and was like trying to find the North Pole.)
Dome teams such as the Falcons generally don't do well in these conditions. In fact, no dome team has ever gone to the Super Bowl by winning a championship game outdoors. When the Falcons went to the Super Bowl, they got there by winning at the Metrodome. When the Rams went to the Super Bowl they got there by winning the conference championship game twice in their own dome.
It's a good thing neither the Rams nor Vikings are here because they're both teams that prefer -- make that require -- perfect laboratory conditions, from room temperature to room service. The Falcons, on the other hand, have the best rushing attack in the NFC and can throw the ball fewer than 20 times and still win because Michael Vick, T.J. Duckett and the somehow still underrated Warrick Dunn are perfectly fine with running the ball every single down. If the wind is gusting, throwing the football beyond 10 to 15 yards could be out of the question. And that would appear to put the Eagles, now clearly a passing team, at a disadvantage.
That's the easy story line. Let's see, the Eagles lost on the road to a better team (St. Louis) in 2002, lost when McNabb was returning from injury in 2003, lost when McNabb was injured during the game in 2004, and might now be poised to lose to the weather in 2005?
It's too easy. While McNabb hates running now -- "If I need to run Sunday I will, but don't call me a 'running quarterback,' " he said Friday -- he used to run. He hasn't forgotten how. He's healthier than he's ever been at this point of the season. His rested legs are probably better suited to running. Brian Westbrook, the kid from DeMatha, can run inside and out. Dorsey Levens played his best years in Green Bay, so this weather is a dusting compared to what the Cheeseheads get starting around Thanksgiving.
It's too bad weather has to be the story because the NFC title game has so many cool plots, starting with Philly trying to not lose its fourth straight championship game. McNabb and Coach Andy Reid have the real pressure. They've lost three already. They're in danger of becoming Marv Levy and Jim Kelly Light. You don't want to see anybody lose four straight. At least Steelers Coach Bill Cowher, who has the big pressure in the AFC game, has been to the Super Bowl once. There's a huge difference between 1-3 (Cowher in title games) and 0-3 (Reid in title games). Reid is trying to separate himself from a lot of other really good coaches who came one victory from the validation of reaching the Super Bowl, men including Chuck Knox, Marty Schottenheimer and Dennis Green.
What Reid needs more than anything Sunday is clear skies and diminished breezes, conditions that will take the game out of Mother Nature's hands and give it back to McNabb. Either way, it'll be McNabb who at the end of the game, probably with his feet and perhaps in overtime, who will take the Eagles down the field and into the end zone and confirm Philly's intestinal fortitude -- at least for two weeks when the Eagles and Steelers meet in the Super Bowl in a place where a snowstorm won't intrude on football.
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