Reflecting back to 2005, I can't honestly accept that anyone in the NFCE actually owned the Philadelphia Eagles! Oh, just about everyone beat us up, slap us, spanked us and beat us down pretty bad -- but you don't own us!
I guess you could argue that owning equates to the scroe board, or sweeping us at your house and at the Linc. However, my interpretation of "owning" goes beyond winning numbers on a score board. In my view, owning a team is a mentality; it's an expectation that two healthy teams met on the grid iron, both evenly matched ...mano-e-mano, your "A" team against our "A" team.
Of course I expect resistence about my perspective. But if your best is injured, you have to send in a replacement, but you don't have expectations that they will perform at the exact same level as your best.
Then they'll be those who'll say ..."a win is a win!" "we got the W," or our team was just a better team! And you know what ...it's absolutely correct! I'm not trying to say that you didn't have better teams in 2005, I'm just saying that you didn't play the best that the Philadelphia Eagles have to offer.
But owning us is something that no one did in 2005. The Cowboys, Commanders & Giants got an easy ride on the 2005 NFCE Regular Season. That said, even in 2005, the way through to the NFCE Championship playoffs came through the Eagles; remember that game where if we won the Cowboys would have made the playoffs ...but the Skins tweaked out (even injured, we gave them a game) a victory.
So, I say to you that aside from what the Skins did in the FA, TO, and anyone else ...the road to the 2006 NFCE Championship playoffs is through a
healthy Philadelphia Eagles!
We're your real test to determine just how tough the NFC-East has really become in the last two years.