Such is the plight of the fan: my favorite football team has played pretty well over the first month of the season, and while they’ve had a couple tough losses, there are tons of encouraging signs and reasons for optimism in re: the length and overall entertainment value of this edition of the Philadelphia Eagles.  And yet I still feel kind of bummed out about the whole 2-2/ last-in-the-NFC-East thing. 

The local blathertariat tell me, somewhat convincingly, that things are looking good.  The nerd rankings at Football Outsiders also flatter the hell out of the Eagles (and should be a fairly strong predictor of future success) — #3 in VOA and # in the DAVE ranking.  Even Donovan McNabb is kindly suggesting, in so many words, “B*tch be cool.”  And yet, as Dunavin points, the losses do seem to linger longer than the wins. 

(Actually the whole McNabb blog post this week was really odd, but in a good way — it was like he was giving the fans a pep talk.  And he actually hit a lot of relevant points: didn’t make excuses, thought the Chicago game was a bummer, but now it’s time to move, plenty of more season left.  He was also about 10x more articulate than his cliche-ridden pressers.  And he even made fun of Andy Reid with the title of the post (”Time’s yours!”).  I dunno.  It was actually a really charming piece.)

So I guess it isn’t so bad after all?  Not now at least, and not assuming the Eagles can win their next two games (leaving them a respectable 4-2 at the break).  Let us not speak of other scenarios, as 3-3 at the break will not feel sweet and 2-4 will border on disaster. 

And thus shall we spend our day anxiously waiting for the latest injury update on the 36 Chambers of Brian Westbrook; without “the best player on the team,” 2-4 feels a lot more likely. 

(Whew.  That felt good.  Got it all out.  Very cleansing.  Time to move on, like Dunavin said.)