It’s now 50 years and counting since the Philadelphia Eagles won an NFL Championship…Yes, I know, there were only a dozen teams in the NFL back then, and the regular season was only 12 games, and the “playoffs” were only one game: the Championship game between the winners of the two divisions. But the 1960 Eagles won the NFL Championship: they beat the Green Bay Packers with a come-from-behind 17-13 win at Franklin Field, led by QB Norm Van Brocklin (the league MVP that year), head coach Buck Shaw, and 60-minute-man (C/LB) Chuck Bednarik.
Younger fans today don’t know the history of the league, so the Eagles’ 1960 Championship doesn’t count for them. Many fans deny the comparison of the old NFL Championship as equivalent to the Super Bowl Trophy…but, in fact, it is. Consider this: back in 1960, you had 12 NFL teams absorbing the same number of college player candidates as you have today. But today, there are 32 teams in the NFL, which means there are many more jobs for players today who would not have made the cut in a 12-team league.
Translation: the old NFL Championship title may have more value than a modern Super Bowl title, since back then only the best of the best college players were drafted and made the roster. There was less dilution of talent. To win, you had to beat teams with a higher concentration of top-flight talent than you would face today.
Granted, today’s players are bigger and faster (not necessarily quicker) than yesterday’s legends. But the relative equality among the talent pools of the NFL rosters back then made winning more difficult than it is today. Comparing size and speed of players from different eras is folly; you can only judge a generation of players based upon how they fared against their peers. And in 1960, the Philadelphia Eagles were the best of the best.
But now it’s 2010…the buzz of doom and the winds of change swirl around the streets of Philly and its airwaves and tabloids. GM Tom Heckert just left to take the job in Cleveland. Andy Reid fired his Special Teams coach and two conditioning and strength coaches, and hired ST coach Bobby April from Buffalo. Fans are calling for the head of McNabb…many want him traded for a high draft pick. Let the Kevin Kolb era begin, they demand…Give Vick a chance… get rid of Vick… Fix the Defense!!!….get us a DE, a CB, a new Safety! Do something!!! Kick Andy Reid upstairs, he’s always been the defacto GM anyway, and hire Bill Cowher…or Tony Dungy…do something!!!
Everyday lately it’s been some new rumor floating around, either stirred up by Howard Eskin of WIP Radio or cooked up by Pro Football Weekly, forecasting the fateful departure of either McNabb, Vick, Kolb, WR Kevin Curtis, RB Brian Westbrook and more, or predicting a holdout by WR DeSean Jackson. It’s as if we’re in the storm before the calm, because it usually turns out not a whole lot changes with the Eagles, and blockbuster moves are rare.
You see, we’re now the Chicago Cubs of the NFL. It’s been a long, long, long time since we won the Crown. Sure, coming close and losing is way better than never coming close at all. But like the Cubs, something always happens…then we spend the whole offseason screaming “Do something…!”
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