But we have a whole week to fret about that matchup, and whatever happens next week, you can't win the Super Bowl in November. That game remains nearly 3 months away. Three months ago, did you have the Phillies winning the World Series?
For today, the topic at hand is that the Eagles hit the midway point 5-3, after sinking to 2-3 last month on back-to-back giveaway weeks, and looking lost. Their defense was darned near perfect yesterday after a first-play hiccup, pitching 58 minutes, 11 seconds worth of shutout football. Their offense was solid and competent, if not quite explosive, after starting out as a jumbled, jumpy mess.
"You can always do better," Andy Reid said afterward, when asked to assess his team at the halfway point. "I like the way the team is playing." And then, unprompted, Reid noted that "we have a heckuva game coming up here." He said he was proud of the Eagles for not focusing on the Giants until they had dispatched the 2-6 Seahawks.
In the early going, it sure seemed the Eagles might be doing just that. There might be worse ways to start a game than going three-and-out three times in a row, while the opposition sets a franchise record with a 90-yard touchdown pass on its first snap. Let's hope we never find out.
"Nobody panicked on the sidelines. Everybody just kind of did their thing, they settled down," Reid said. "I've been around teams that get a little nervous when things aren't going well. This crew is always encouraging each other. They did the same thing today.''
Donovan McNabb, who started the game 3-for-13 with an interception and then completed 13 passes in a row, said: "The communication was off, our connection with all the guys was not what we wanted it to be, but as you could see, we got things going."
