Pick, the editor-man ordered.
Pick the greatest Eagles team ever as part of the observance of 75 years of Birds. Go on, pick.
Not as easy as it might appear at first blush. Not even for a franchise that has had more losing seasons than winning, whose record for its existence is still under .500. And doubly difficult because, as the wiseacre editor-man suggested: "I'm guessing you haven't seen them all."
Oh-har-de-har-har.
Each generation of Eagles zealots has had its heroes.
There is the double entry of the 1948 and '49 Birds, those back-to-back champions led by the redoubtable Steve Van Buren, who ran with impassioned fury. When he was tackled out of bounds at the Los Angeles bench in the 1949 title game, he heard the Rams yelling: "Kill him, kill him!" A seething, vengeful Van Buren kept demanding the ball. He ran 31 times for 196 yards. In The Eagles Encyclopedia, Pete Pihos is quoted, picturesquely: "Steve was hell on a leash that day."
For some Eagles zealots, branded in the memory bank is Jan. 11, 1981, a minus-20 wind-chill factor in that mausoleum known as the Vet. Wilbert Montgomery takes Ron Jaworski's handoff and runs 42 yards to the end zone on the second play, launching the Eagles past Dallas and into their first Super Bowl. Of the put-together-with-duct-tape-and-baling-wire Montgomery, linebacker John Bunting says: "Wilbert has the heart of a lion."
And for some of the faithful, there is that gaudy stretch that launched this century when, from 2000 through 2004 the Birds went 59-21, a run splotched by unsightly failures in NFC championship games. Call the roll: Donovan McNabb, Brian Dawkins, Brian Westbrook . . . all the way to Super Bowl XXXIX, only to be tormented by a three-point loss.
So, the editor-man pressed, pick.
So, we select the last and make them first:
The 1960 Birds.
Last to win a championship.
First in our hearts.
The years have spun a Camelot mist around them, and it is difficult to determine exactly where myth leaves off and reality sets in, and vice-versa.
They killed you softly. They weren't overpowering, they weren't especially big or fast, and they would leave you wondering exactly how it was that you had lost to them. They came to be known as the team with nothing but a title.
What they were, were quintessential opportunists.
"We had a lot of intangibles, a lot of spunk and spirit," said Tommy McDonald, the Hall of Fame receiver, who was himself full of spunk and spirit, and still is. "We were close, more like a family than a team.
