Beware of the Falcons
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/ne...05-434350.html
PHILADELPHIA - They had stretched their hands to the sky together in the locker room after their victory Sunday, the Eagles standing together and vowing not to let the Atlanta Falcons keep them from the Super Bowl, and Ike Reese had to stop them and say something.
"I talked to the players," Reese, the Eagles linebacker and Pro Bowl special-teams player, said Sunday, after the Eagles had beaten the Minnesota Vikings to advance to one more NFC Championship Game. "I said, 'Sacrifice for a week, man. Whatever it is, sacrifice for the good of the team. We'll live the rest of our lives knowing we have a chance to play in Jacksonville. If you sacrifice this week, put in a little extra time, rest our bodies, we'll go out there and win.' "
In that way, it sounds so easy for the Eagles: Work harder, rest more, and that darned Super Bowl berth will take care of itself, as if the last three NFC title games never happened, as if the Atlanta Falcons - Michael Vick and two fine running backs in Warrick Dunn and T.J. Duckett and a fierce defense - didn't even exist.
Oh, but they do. They were 11-5 this season, undoubtedly the second-best team in the NFC during the regular season, and they were 11-3 before first-year coach Jim Mora Jr. rested a few of his starters as Andy Reid did, before his team, too, lost two games that didn't matter. And even if the Eagles manage to purge their minds of the potential stigma of losing a fourth consecutive championship game, even if they're really as relaxed as they're telling everyone they are, the Falcons still might beat them. Just because, on one Sunday in January, they're the better team.
"It's going to be a big challenge for us," Reese said. "They want to run the ball - no ifs, ands or buts about it. They don't mind throwing the ball 15 times a game. They're going to run the ball. They've got three capable backs back there, including Vick, and they can beat you at any time."
This is not to suggest that the prospects for an Eagles victory Sunday - and for the franchise's first Super Bowl appearance in 24 years - aren't good. Of the four Eagles teams that have reached this point since 2002, this edition is the healthiest, the deepest and the most talented - even with Terrell Owens off convalescing in a hyperbaric chamber somewhere. If they don't end this excruciating tradition of theirs this year, it's fair to wonder when they ever will.
Truth be told, though, there is a realistic chance that this tradition will last another year. It is easy to pooh-pooh the Falcons as the product of a weak division - the NFC South, in which they were the only team with a winning record - and the comfy confines of a domed home field. But their style of play - run the ball, turn the other team's quarterback into a grease spot - is built for the bad weather conditions they'll likely face Sunday, and for all his flaws and inconsistencies, Vick is too dynamic a player to be dismissed as incapable of carrying the Falcons past the Eagles all by himself. When he plays, the Falcons are 25-13-1. When he plays, they are an elite team in the NFL.
Worse for the Eagles, Atlanta enters Sunday's game as an elite underdog. The Falcons - in that clich Mora already has used - are "playing with house money." The Eagles are the ones expected to get to the Super Bowl. The Eagles are the ones facing ignominy and embarrassment if they lose yet again in a title game. In Mora's rookie season as a head coach, the Falcons went from 5-11 to 11-5, a bad-to-good story just like Carolina was last year.
"The biggest factor of all was Coach Mora and the new coaching staff," Falcons safety and Central Bucks East grad Bryan Scott said last week of the Falcons' turnaround. "He turned us into believers the minute he stepped into the building."
So here they come, a dangerous animal, a formidable foe with nothing to lose. One team with a clear conscience facing another carrying a heavy history on its shoulders.
"There's a little bit of attitude there, a bit of tickedoffedness with the fact that we haven't gone to [the Super Bowl] and not being so happy about it," Reese said. "It's kind of having a little edge to you and saying, 'Hey, it's tough to get back to the title game every year.' We need to seal the deal."
Can they, finally?
They can. They should. But don't believe for a second that a stern opponent doesn't stand in their way.
January 18, 2005ha7:27 AM