PHILADELPHIA — Of all the weeks for the Dallas Cowboys to walk into Lincoln Financial Field, the schedule picked this one. Monday night. National television. A four-game losing streak hanging around the Eagles’ necks like a wet coat. And on the other sideline, the one opponent this city has never once accepted losing to, no matter the record, no matter the circumstances, no matter what.
Next Monday, October 26, at 8:15, the Birds host Dallas on ESPN, and I want to be honest with you about what’s really on the table. This is not just another game in a bad month. At 2-4, coming off a home loss to Carolina that I’m still not over, the Eagles are standing at the exact spot where a season either turns around or quietly ends. You don’t come back from 2-5 in this division. You just don’t. So whatever this team has left, it needs to find it in the next six days, because the schedule is done being polite.
McKee’s team now
Here’s the backdrop, and it isn’t pretty. Jalen Hurts is on injured reserve with blood clots, first found in his calf and now in both lungs, and the realistic reading of the timeline is that we have seen the last of him this regular season. Three months, the reports say. Do that math against a 17-game calendar and you understand what Tanner McKee is being asked to carry. This is his team now. Not for a week. For the stretch that decides everything.
And look — I’m not here to bury McKee. The kid went 26-of-45 for 215 and a touchdown against the Panthers in his first start of the season, and he did not lose that game. The offense around him lost that game. Two hundred twenty-two total yards, a blocked punt, drive after drive going nowhere. McKee kept getting back up. What he needs now is for the men around him to do the same, because Dallas is going to test every soft spot this team has shown for a month.
I grew up in Camden watching this rivalry, and I’ll tell you what it taught me. The Eagles-Cowboys game doesn’t care about your injury report. It doesn’t care that Jordan Davis is hobbled or that the offensive line is held together with tape. There is no bye week built into hating Dallas. You either answer the bell or you spend the whole winter hearing about it from that one cousin at Thanksgiving who bought a star jersey in 1993 and never let it go. Every family in South Jersey has one. You know exactly who yours is.
What turning the corner looks like
What would turning the corner even look like? It starts on the ground. Saquon Barkley has to be the entire personality of this offense Monday night — twenty-five carries, control the clock, keep McKee out of third-and-long and keep that banged-up defense off the field. It continues with the simplest thing in football, the thing this team forgot how to do: don’t beat yourself. Carolina handed the Eagles a 13-penalty, 149-yard gift and the Birds still found a way to lose. Dallas will not be that generous. A blocked punt against the Cowboys on Monday night isn’t a mistake. It’s an obituary.
A blocked punt against the Cowboys on Monday night isn’t a mistake. It’s an obituary.Samuel Banks
The beautiful, maddening thing about this franchise is that it has risen from exactly this kind of ditch before. Nobody picked the 2017 team to matter after Carson Wentz went down, and we know how that December ended. I’m not promising lightning strikes twice. I’m saying the door is still open, barely, and the thing about a door that’s barely open is that it does not stay that way for long.
So here’s where we are, Eagles fans. Your quarterback is gone, your record is upside down, your rival is in town, and the whole country is watching on Monday night. That’s not a death sentence. In this city, with this history, that’s a dare.
Answer it.
Based on reporting from The Philadelphia Inquirer, CBS Sports, Bleeding Green Nation, NBC Sports Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Eagles.