The Eagles' rivalry with the Dallas Cowboys is a big deal for fans in Philadelphia. It is much, much less so for the players who will actually line up Sunday night in Jerry Jones' gaudy monument to Jerry Jones.
Michael Vick talked about the rivalry in the locker room Wednesday. But Vick took a handful of Wildcat snaps in the Eagles' two season-ending losses in Texas last year. In his previous NFL incarnation, that storied Falcons-Panthers rivalry was about as bitter as it got.
Vick was a kid when the Cowboys blasted the Eagles, 34-10, in a playoff game after the 1992 season. Jeremy Maclin and LeSean McCoy weren't born when Tom Landry's picket-line-crossing varmints embarrassed Buddy Ryan's replacement squad during the 1987 strike. Only six Eagles, including Vick, were alive when Wilbert Montgomery blasted through that hole in the 1980 NFC championship game at the Vet - and one of them, Sav Rocca, was in Australia at the time.
It is the fans who wear the old scars and bear the old grudges in this rivalry. Eagles fans came to hate the Cowboys during that period between 1967 and '78 when Dallas won 21 of 23 meetings between the two teams. Worse, the woebegone Eagles took those beatings at the hands of the prim Landry and too-good-to-be-true Roger Staubach, among others. The whole "America's Team" conceit and the softcore cheerleader porn - it made fans here seethe in a way the gritty rivals in New York and Washington never could.
The rivalry has always been more about the uniforms than the cast of players who wear them for brief periods at a time. That is truer all the time, as free agency turns players into itinerant workers.
When you say rivalry to Asante Samuel, you think his first reaction is Cowboys? It's more likely Colts because of his time with the Patriots. And it's most likely Deion Sanders because Samuel, like a lot of players, sees himself as an independent contractor rather than a part of something bigger.
In one of the stranger developments of a season full of them, the Eagles are awaiting Samuel's return to the lineup as if he were some combination of Brian Dawkins and Seth Joyner. After seeing this defense strafed in Samuel's absence, his dislike of contact and occasional bad gambles seem like endearing quirks.
