Happy Birthday

The Philadelphia Eagles have been playing since 1933, which means that they have played 76 games that have qualified as home openers. They have never had an easier one than today.

How dominant was this beatdown? Just look at the numbers. 26 to 8 in first downs. The Rams did not convert a third down (0 for 11). Total yards were 522 to 166. Donovan McNabb was not sacked; Marc Bulger went down four times. The Eagles won the time of possession battle by 10 minutes, and just looked like a hot knife through butter all day.

When you beat a team by five touchdowns without a single turnover, special teams or defensive score, you've utterly humiliated them. And when Orlando Pace went to the locker room in the third quarter, it was hard to not see how the Rams were going to recover from this long enough to win more than four games the rest of the year. If you have Bulger, Stephen Jackson or Torry Holt on your roto team (or worse, all of them at once), it's looking like 2007 all over again.

Here's the intriguing thing about this Eagles team, that makes me think that what happened in this game was more than a beatdown of a bad team. They just had a swarm, a feel to them that was plainly visible. It's more than the adrenalin of a home opener. it's what you get when a healthy Brian Dawkins and Assante Samuel turn Sean Considine and Lito Sheppard from iffy starters to outstanding nickel backs, and Joselio Hanson into a fantastic special teamer. For the first time in years, the Eagles look dramatically more talented at the tail end of the roster.

It's also on offense, where rookie DeSean Jackson just has this poise and presence as he runs his routes and adds to their time of possession with home-run hitter (and, to be fair, big misses) punt returns. His presence, added to the ferociously inept Rams secondary, gave the Eagles three wideouts with over 100 yards -- Jackson, Greg Lewis and Hank Baskett. And even the special teams look like world-beaters today, with Sav Rocca playing punt and catch on two downed balls inside the five with Quintin Demps. I'm even down with the fact that the world seems to just be ignoring the whole thing, between The Brady Nightmare, the Favre Start, the Cowboys and all the rest. It's hard to under the radar with a 35-point win, but there it is.

Oh, and it all went down on the Shooter Mom's birthday, as me and my siblings wrapped up a weekend of good times away from our kids and spouses, to just roll with the remarkable person that made us all who we are. It was nice of the Eagles to add the present of an utter laugher to everything else that we did this weekend... and to make me cautiously optimistic going into next week's showdown in Dallas. But only cautious.