From the very first series, when Andy Reid didn't challenge DeSean Jackson's first fumble of the night - not his most memorable, mind you, but his first - when there appeared to be no risk in doing so, it was clearly going to be a night of questionable decisions, small turning points, big plays, and a total eclipse of the expected.
By the end, when the two teams had combined for 78 points - the last 10 of which were scored by the Cowboys in the 41-37 win - there were more good things than bad to say about the Eagles. They are a good football team, not because they beat the headlights out of the St. Louis Rams, but because they held their own in a high-level shoot-out against Dallas. They didn't win, but they could have won, and there are only a handful of teams in the entire league that would have gone into Texas Stadium last night and come out saying the same thing.
Maybe that's not enough for you this morning, but it's what you've got.
Early on, it didn't look promising for the Eagles when Drew Rosenhaus' favorite receiver-cornerback tandem of Terrell Owens and Lito Sheppard hooked up on the first Dallas possession, and Owens lost Sheppard with a stutter move on a pump fake and pulled in a 72-yard touchdown pass. It was client-on-client crime, but it gave the Cowboys a lead, and they extended it when Felix Jones ran a kickoff back 98 yards for another touchdown.
That was mere prelude to the madness, though. Neither side was going to run away from the other this time. The officials got into the fun, too, forgetting to call face-mask penalties and messing up other rulings, but it was all in the spirit of the night.
