For the Birds

This wasn't the Eagles team that lost to the dregs of the NFL in Oakland.

Nor was it the juggernaut that dismantled the Giants last week.

It was somewhere in between. Which pretty much sums up this year's Eagles. Thoroughly mediocre. In a league that has always preached parity, the Eagles are now the poster boys for average.

The Birds were just average enough to blow a perfect opportunity to beat the Cowboys and take a strangle-hold on the NFC East in a dismal prime time performance at the Linc.

The dynamic duo, Andy Reid and Donovan McNabb, were in vintage form. They managed to score all of one touchdown a week after marching up and down the field against the Giants.

Without Brian Westbrook, who was out after developing a headache on Friday after being cleared to play, the lingering result of a concussion, you would have thought the Birds still had enough weapons to win.

Not quite.

Instead, in a game in which they literally came up inches short on several occasions, they lost to the Cowboys, 20-16.

This was supposed to be the game that cured our hangover from the Phillies' loss to the Yankees in the World Series.

Instead we saw Reid lose two more challenges and play the last nine minutes of a close game without any timeouts.

Poor time management. We've never seen that before from this group, right?

And that brings us to the quarterback. Donovan McNabb once again showed his propensity to be maddeningly frustrating, especially when he's missing open receivers and firing passes into the grond.

Hey, look at the bright side. The SEPTA strike is over.

It's just that the Eagles remain strikingly mediocre.

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