All those ingredients mixed together make the Eagles' victory on Jan. 11, 1981, over the Cowboys the greatest game in the team's 75-year history.
Jim Murray, the Eagles' general manager at the time, described the event perfectly the evening before the game.
"Playing Dallas here for the NFC championship?" he said. "Are you kidding me? This is the Super Bowl. The indoor game [the actual Super Bowl in New Orleans] is nice, but for Philly, this is the Super Bowl. This town is going to explode tomorrow. Absolutely explode."
The precise moment of eruption came on the Eagles' second play from scrimmage when quarterback Ron Jaworski handed the ball to Wilbert Montgomery and he broke up the right side of the field for a 42-yard touchdown.
"When you say Wilbert's name, that's the play that comes to everybody's mind," Murray said during a recent interview.
The crowd, which endured a wind chill of minus-20 degrees that day, knew at that moment that this day belonged to the Eagles. Dick Vermeil, the popular head coach who left UCLA in 1976 to take control of a franchise that had had one winning season in the previous 13 years, knew before his team left the locker room that the Cowboys didn't have a chance.
"I don't think I've ever been in a locker room that was more focused than that locker room was," Vermeil said. "When we left there, I didn't think there was any way in hell the Dallas Cowboys could beat us."
Montgomery, whose 5-foot-10, 195-pound frame had taken a beating during the regular season, finished with 194 yards rushing. The Eagles' defense held Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett to 41 yards, one fewer than Montgomery had on his unforgettable first-quarter run.
