Sunday is the day that wasn't supposed to happen, not to the people who love Dawkins. Because there is a football sense of things and there is a cosmic sense of things - and while it is hard to make a football argument that the Eagles would have won even one more game if Dawkins had been here this year, it is just as hard to argue that it is somehow right and proper and normal to see Dawkins' last Philadelphia game play out like this.
The arguments were made and remade over the summer, when the Eagles watched Dawkins take a big bag of money from the Denver Broncos, and the purpose is not to remake them here. But it shouldn't have happened.
Months later, Lurie was asked if he was confident that everything had been done to avoid it happening. The expectation was for a simple, declarative "yes" in reply. And, well, you be the judge.
"You know, I don't have an answer to that except that I trust the guys that were involved in it, and Andy [Reid]," Lurie said. "I remember in the end, my last conversation with them was encouraging them to . . . "
Then Lurie changed directions in midsentence.
"That's an unbelievable arrangement he had with Denver for this year, just great," Lurie said. "At some point, you've got to sort of let go, and he has to do what is best for his family there."
But did Lurie ever tell his negotiators just to pay Dawkins whatever it took to keep him?
"It never works that way," he said. "It just doesn't work that way. I mean, listen: I would have loved to have had him forever. But I have great respect for Andy and the guys, and they know. They usually deal with things very well. It's hard. You see it in the league with almost every great player. It's rare for that player to do his last 12 or 24 months with that team because of the free-agency system . . .
"Go through the list," Lurie said. "Hundreds. Hundreds."
