The Eagles’ most painful NFC East losses from the past 10 seasons
3 min read
By: Brandon Lee Gowton
Treat yourself to some masochism.
Pain.
It’s inevitable.
Especially as sports fans who put way too much emotional investment into our favorite teams.
On the bright side, though, it’s not a feeling we always have to go through alone when we have fellow fans to commiserate with.
And some of the pain heals with time. Maybe? Sometimes?
Maybe not! I’m still experiencing some frustration after revisiting some of the Philadelphia Eagles’ worst losses for the latest NFC East Mixtape podcast episode with RJ Ochoa.
RJ came up with the idea for him to look back at the Cowboys’ worst losses to the Eagles, Giants, and Washington from the past decade while I did the same for Philly’s three division rivals. You can (and should) listen to the pod mostly to revel in RJ’s pain but here are my picks in written form as I still try to work through unhappy memories that I had to dig up.
And, don’t worry, we’ll flip the script and get to the Eagles’ most enjoyable NFC East victories in next week’s recording.
NEW YORK GIANTS
The game: The 2011 Eagles drop to 1-2 with a Week 3 home loss, 29 to 16.
So, there wasn’t exactly a long list to pick from here considering the Eagles are 15-5 in their last 20 games against the G-Men. Losing to the Giants wasn’t incredibly devastating at the time because it was still early in the season. But the loss certainly did raise real concerns about the self-proclaimed Dream Team. What makes this loss most painful to me is the hindsight of it all. The Giants just barely made the playoffs this season. The Eagles could’ve feasibly made it instead to prevent New York from going on what should be considered the flukiest championship run in sports history. I’ll never get over how the Giants managed to get incredibly lucky break after incredibly lucky break en route to winning that Super Bowl title. One of the biggest gaslighting experiences of our lifetime. I hate it!
WASHINGTON FOOTBALL TEAM
The game: The 2020 Eagles drop to 0-1 with a Week 1 road loss, 27 to 17.
This awful experience set the tone for a truly terrible Eagles 2020 season. Things were pretty nice when the Eagles got out to a 17-0 lead. It looked like Carson Wentz was picking up where he left off late in 2019. The Eagles were going to start the season out on a good note with a win over a divisional rival. But then Wentz threw two awful picks and the Eagles saw Washington score 27 unanswered points to lose instead. The Birds should be embarrassed to go down as one of only three teams that Dwayne Haskins has ever beaten.
DALLAS COWBOYS
The game: The 2018 Eagles drop to 6-7 with a Week 14 road loss, 29 to 23.
The freaking “No clear recovery” game. I’m still legitimately mad about that ruling. It’s just unconscionable how the refs could give that ball to Dallas. Watch the clip and tell me which Cowboys player could you even argue may have gotten the ball instead of an Eagles player. A terrible ruling like this one made it feel like an unfair fight from the jump and totally sucked the wind out of the Eagles’ sails. To their credit, though, Philly fought back and took the game to overtime. Only for Rasul Douglas to somehow deflect a pass into Amari Cooper’s hands for the game-winning touchdown (pictured above this article). Ugh.
What really pained me coming out of this game was people perpetuating the false narrative that Dak Prescott “owns” the Eagles. If you go by #QBWinz and eliminate two meaningless Week 17 games, Dak is 4-2 against Philly. Two of those wins came in overtime where the Cowboys were lucky enough to win the coin toss. From a statistical perspective, Prescott’s 83.5 passer rating against the Eagles is his lowest against teams he’s faced more than once. Eight touchdowns, seven interceptions, and five fumbles. But, yeah, he’s truly been some Eagles Killer.
Anyway, here’s to hoping the Eagles will be inflicting the pain as opposed to adding more bad NFC East memories to their catalog this season.
