That says something about an NFL where regular-season games, especially the first 10 of them, have become devalued. Ask fans of the Denver Broncos how good they feel about the team's 6-0 start now that the Broncs are 6-3. How about New York? The Giants are 5-4 after a 5-0 start. The Jets slid from 3-0 to 4-5.
There are a few teams you can be pretty sure are good and a bigger bunch that are hopeless. The Eagles are in the muddling middle, where it's a coin flip every week.
They are there partly because this is a team that treats September and October as the preseason and November as No Big Deal. Not just this year, but every year since 2004, the year the Eagles made their every-quarter-century appearance in the Super Bowl.
It would be much better to be 6-4 than 4-6 after 10 games, of course. The Eagles can really help themselves by winning this game after losing two very winnable games in a row. But must-win?
After 10 games, the Eagles were:
4-6 in 2005.
5-5 in 2006.
5-5 in 2007.
5-4-1 in 2008.
That is an endless loop of grim mediocrity. Each season had different details - the Terrell Owens implosion in '05, the Jeff Garcia resurrection in '06 - but that kind of consistency tells a pretty convincing story. The really amazing thing, though, is that those 10-game records offer no indication whatsoever of how those seasons turned out.
In 2005 and 2007, the Eagles went on to miss the playoffs with records of 6-10 (with Mike McMahon playing QB at the end of '05) and 8-8.
In 2006, the Eagles won their last five games to win the NFC East title. But first they fell to 5-6 with a humiliating blowout loss in Indianapolis.
If the 11th game of the season wasn't must-win, what is?
