If you're an Eagles fan, there's nothing worse and nothing better than the Dallas Cowboys' being good.
Sure, it was fun in the late 1980s, when Buddy Ryan wiped the smirk off Tom Landry's face in the iconic coach's final few seasons. And there was the first half of this decade, when the Eagles won nine out of 10 games against Dallas. That kept your uncle (the Cowboys fan) quiet, but all it really proved was that Andy Reid's a better head coach than Dave Campo.
For a rivalry to be worth the name, it requires an opponent worthy of respect and maybe a little fear. And the Cowboys are that once again.
Looking back over the decades, the consummate Eagles-Cowboys game has to be that NFC championship contest at Veterans Stadium in January 1981. The stakes were high and, best of all from a Philadelphia perspective, the Eagles won.
There have been a couple of playoff meetings since then, although the Eagles would like to forget about those.
The regular season has brought some unforgettable matchups, but few have shaped up any bigger in advance than Monday's showdown at doomed Texas Stadium. It's almost as if the teams' Sunday blowouts of St. Louis and Cleveland were extra preseason games.
For the Eagles and the Cowboys, the season really begins on Monday.
For the fans, the drama has begun already. This is an ongoing soap opera, with compelling characters like Tony Romo, Terrell Owens and Pacman Jones - not to mention the Cowboys' Botoxed owner, Jerry Jones - giving the proceedings that extra edge.
It's early, and although the regular-season finale here on Dec. 28, against the Cowboys, could make this look like a scrimmage, there is a lot on the line in this game.
Several times in their history, the Eagles have held and then lost the upper hand against the Cowboys. The worst of it was after the 1992 season. The Eagles of Reggie White and Randall Cunningham, fresh off their only playoff win, in New Orleans, were crushed in Dallas a week later.
The Cowboys, a team the Eagles had been beating up on regularly for years, had morphed into the dynasty that would win three Super Bowls in four years. The Eagles took most of the 1990s to recover.
