Oh man... This again. I HATE the Cowboys. I hate their Gomer Pyle-looking coach. I hate their beady-eyed, no-eyebrow-having QB (he's got George W. Bush eyes- perfect for Texas). I hate their plastic-faced owner and his paean to Capitalism. That said, I kind of hate my own team right now. I have a wide range of emotions moving forward towards Saturday night.

A couple of months back, I had lunch with the lord and master of SportsFanLive, David Katz ‘Pajamas’ and we discussed my frustration with the Eagles. This was after the consecutive bad wins against Chicago and Washington, I believe.

I said (and I’ll throw quotes up here because I said the same thing many times), “no matter how well we do. No matter how many consecutive wins we put together now, and how much success we have, there’s not a single one of us (Birds’ fans) that doesn’t know, as an unequivocal fact, that somewhere down the road- maybe next week, maybe in a month, maybe in the NFC Championship game- that we are going to absolutely {crap} the bed once again. Five’s going to throw the ball at receivers’ feet and smile, pounding his chest, ‘My bad… My bad…’ The fat man is going to ignore the fact that Shady and Big Weave can run the ball and throw the ball 70% of the time to our detriment. He is going to call terrible timeouts earlier than he has to. He’s going to stare up at the abyss of the crowd with red flag in hand like he’s staring at the menu board at Pat’s, deciding between provolone and Wiz. Our awful linebackers and safeties are going to have trouble stopping tight ends and power runners. Basically, we’re going to see the same thing we’ve seen for ten years, no matter how much success we have in the short term. That’s Eagles football.”

Well, the bed crapping happened last week. With a chance to wrap up the bye week and the second seed in the NFC, the Eagles, instead, didn’t show up to Cowboys Stadium.

I was at a concert last Tuesday. A buddy of mine was trashed and punched me in the nuts as a goof. Let me tell you, the punch in the junk that the Eagles delivered later in the week was much more painful.

All this said, knowing the Eagles as well as I do, I’m thankful that it happened Week 17 rather than in the playoffs. The way I see it, after discussing this game with a multitude of fellow fans, there are two schools of thought leading into the Saturday Night Redux in Jerry Jones’ pleasure palace.

1) Andy Reid is 7-0 in the first round of the playoffs, Red Beaulieu, over there on the Dallas sideline, is 0-4. Donovan McNabb has more wins vs. the Cowboys than any QB in the history of the NFL. Tony Romo has never won a playoff game. After Souper5 fumbled the snap down 14-0, Reid circled the wagons. Vick was healthy and didn't play a down. There were NO exotic blitz packages at all. Basically, Andy realized it was a near certainty that we would be playing the same team a week later and didn't want to show his hand. One game doesn’t make us a shit team. We left a lot on the table and the game was closer than it appeared. This overrated Cowgirls team can’t beat us three times in a season.

2) The Cowgirls are just better than us. Our secondary looks like dog shit and it just blows that we have the Andrews sisters’ bloated contracts rather than BDawk back there. Moises “Fok Me? Vonnegut, Do You Read Lips?” Fokou is a terrible linebacker. He’s just not an NFL defender. Our defensive line is too small to play against the Cowgirls gigantic O-Line. Five is still the same guy in big games that he’s always been. We’ve played three bad halves of football since Jamaal Jackson went down. How can we beat a team that put such a thrashing on us just a week ago? We have no chance…

I’m not sure which school of thought I subscribe to yet. I’ll make a pick on Friday.

---JAMES T. CHAIRMAN.