By Steve Lienert
The Phanatic Magazine
I believed.
I believed that the Eagles were a team of destiny; that they were going to win a Super Bowl.
I dreamt of a large, flashy, gaudy, diamond-studded ring on my right hand. I dreamt of being on a float for the championship parade the city has been waiting for 48 years.
You thought the Phillies parade was big? An Eagles’ parade would make the Phillies’ parade look like the Soul’s parade.
As it says on one of my cousins t-shirts that he bought in the parking lot of the Vet, Philly is a drinking town with a football problem.
It’s a problem with which I’m afflicted.
When the Eagles fought back to take a one-point lead against the Cardinals in the NFC Championship game at University of Phoenix Stadium on Sunday, tears welled up in my eyes.
I have never been more proud to be an Eagles fan.
As I wrote in my story while waiting for the team plane to take off on Sunday evening, “The Eagles have weathered their fair share of violent storms during the course of this long season, but perhaps none was as vicious as the one Arizona quarterback Kurt Warner and the Cardinals put on them in the first half on Sunday. But just when it seemed the Eagles had their faith tested one too many times, their belief in each other helped them overcome yet another daunting obstacle.”
With the game in the hands of the defense, I thought the Eagles had risen from the depths of despair once again; that this team was the most resilient team I’d ever witnessed.
Every time they traveled through the Valley of Darkness, they did it together and emerged on the other side stronger. They were the anti-Cowboys – when things got tough, they didn’t start pointing fingers at each other.
Instead, they picked up whoever was down. The relied on each other like they were in a fox hole during a gun fight.
This time, though, it wasn’t in the Cards.
On 2nd-and-1 from midfield, The Cardinals tried two consecutive running plays between the tackles. They were stuffed both times.
Cardinals head coach Ken Whisenhunt, to his credit, went for it on 4th-and-1. This was the defense’s biggest chance to win the game. It didn’t happen.
Whisenhunt didn’t try to slam it between the tackles a third time. Like Eagles president Joe Banner said after the game, if you do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result is the definition of insanity.
Instead, the Cardinals ran a version of the Redskins’ stretch play, running back Tim Hightower gained the edge and got the first down.
It was like a dagger in the back.
Later in the drive, the Cardinals had a 3rd-and-goal from the Eagles’ 8-yard line. A stop there and Arizona would have to settle for a field goal and a two-point lead.
That would allow David Akers to make amends for missing an earlier field goal and extra point. Instead, Warner hit Hightower on a screen pass and he weaved his way into the end zone to essentially hand the Cardinals their first Super Bowl berth in franchise history.
For all intents and purposes, the game was over.
Hightower and Larry Fitzgerald now join the Rams’ Aeneas Williams and Kurt Warner, the Bucs’ Ronde Barber and Joe Jurevicius, the Panthers’ Ricky Manning Jr. and DeShaun Foster as guys that made their postseason bones killing the Eagles in championship games.
This one doesn’t fall on Donovan McNabb. This isn’t like the picks he threw to Williams (2001), Barber (2002) or Manning (2003). This one falls one the one thing we take pride in here in football-mad Philadelphia: the defense.
That’s why this one hurts in a more profound, spiritual way.
This defense is what got us believing in the first place. For them to let us down the way they did makes this NFC Championship loss unique.
It makes it hurt that much more.
Steve Lienert spent the last six months covering the Eagles on PhiladelphiaEagles.com. He can be reached for comment at stevelienert@hotmail.com.
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