No. Really, no.
The only way this works for the Eagles is if the Cowboys start reveling in all the bouquets they are being tossed, if they come out Saturday less precise, less intent on mayhem than they were Sunday in nailing down the NFC East title. The whole first quarter, Dallas seemed to be moving at a faster speed than the visitors. The score didn't get out of hand early, but the possession disparity did, breeding a kind of panicky impatience in the visitors. If you can change that equation Saturday, maybe other variables change, as well.
Eagles coach Andy Reid didn't sound like a man who thought he had any great advantage in a rematch.
"Familiarity, I guess, is the primary thing" you gain, Reid said. But he also said that in the playoffs, "you don't care who you play or where you play . . . You don't care if you played them last week or 2 weeks ago, you're in the tournament."
Reid warmed to the rematch theme later in his day-after postmortem.
Asked about the mindset he is looking for when practice resumes today, Reid said: "A lot of the guys have already come in. There's a positive to this, amongst the negative. The positive is that you're in the playoffs, and very seldom do you have an opportunity to play a team that just got after you a little bit a second time. We have that opportunity to correct ourselves. That's an approach I expect the guys to take, and I think with the leadership on this team, that will take place."
The Eagles haven't faced a situation even remotely like this since 2001, when they finished the regular season with a meaningless game against Tampa, then played the Bucs a week later in the wild-card round. They won both games.
