Opinion: Eagles vs. Cowboys is Just Another Game in 2021
This isn’t much of a “Dallas week,” since the Eagles and Cowboys are playing on a Monday night.
But if you include the entirety of last week in the buildup to tonight’s game, do you feel the energy? The excitement? The anticipation?!
There isn’t much. Very little juice. No “oomph” for Birds vs. Dallas, at least not nearly as much as there used to be. Sports radio feels oddly subdued and non-emotional about this game, and there just wasn’t a lot of talk on social media, which was dominated by Ben Simmons headlines and the Phillies making themselves relevant in September.
Eagles vs. Cowboys feels like just another game these days, which is sad, but true, as James Hetfield once said. You don’t sense the pure hatred for the Dallas Cowboys that once emanated from the Delaware Valley, threatening to waft over and then engulf any local cucarachas who had the audacity to support “America’s Team.”
The truth is that Dallas week is dead. It’s been dead for some time now. Younger fans don’t hate the Cowboys because the Cowboys totally stunk when they were growing up. If you’re 25 years old right now, then you weren’t even alive the last time Dallas won the Super Bowl. In the entirety of your life, the Cowboys have won a grand total of four playoff games and have never made it past the divisional round. All four of their playoff wins were wild card triumphs, one of which was a victory over Donovan McNabb and his air guitar.
That is, more or less, the heart of the matter. A burgeoning generation of Eagles fans do not share our grumpy distaste for the Dallas Cowboys because the Dallas Cowboys have mostly been shit. If you ask around, it seems like the portion of Birds fans age 15-30 have more disdain for the Giants and Patriots, the former being a successful division rival and the other being universally abhorred. Both have combined for myriad rings over the past 15 years and have enjoyed infinitely more relevance and prominence.
In a brief Twitter foray, I found this sentiment to be common:
Hate the Giants more than the Cowboys, I’m 25
— Tuddy 🤌 (@OG_MattD) September 23, 2021
Heck, I’m on the older end of Gen X so I remember the heyday of the Dallas rivalry, and I’ll tell you that the Giants game matters much more to me and has much fresher memories.
— Wodes (@PatWodes) September 23, 2021
A 25 year old would have been 11 when Eli Manning won it all in 2007, and 15 when the Giants won it again in 2011. Those are much more recent memories vs. harkening back to the halcyon days of Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin.
The other thing is this:
It’s always been less about hating the Dallas Cowboys and more about hating their fans. It’s about the people who have zero connection to Texas but jumped on the bandwagon. People like “Angry Al,” who should have been banned from Sports Radio 94 WIP years ago. It’s the idea that frontrunners are antithetical to the core value of this region, which is supporting local and basing your fandom on something that actually has substance.
For that reason, it’s always been kind of a one-sided rivalry. A bizarro proxy war, if you want to call it that. It’s always been Eagles fans vs. bandwagon Dallas fans, because they are an affront to everything that sporting culture means to us. But if you go down to Texas and spend any time with Cowboy fans who grew up in the region, you will find that they are actually very welcoming and knowledgeable people. I was lucky enough to go down there in 2018 and 2019 for college football games, and Texas and Oklahoma fans who doubled as Dallas Cowboy supporters were incredibly sincere and polite. They did not see Eagles/Cowboys as much of a rivalry, and instead seemed to share more disdain for the New York Giants and Washington Football Team. It was a very intriguing experience.
In that regard, you can’t really have a rivalry unless it goes both ways, and this one doesn’t. They just do not care about us. There are actually three separate factions here, and only two are at war – Eagles fans vs. bandwagon Cowboy poseurs. The Texas-based, legitimate fans aren’t even really involved. And you don’t want to get into a “we hate them but they don’t hate us” kind of thing, because then it looks like some bogus one-way college rivalry. It’s like Cincinnati wanting to beat Ohio State, but Buckeye fans only care about the Michigan game.
That’s not to say that our distaste for the Cowboys is unjustified. There have been so many losers to represent that franchise over the years. Dez Bryant. Zeke Elliott. Greg Hardy. Roy Williams. Jerry Jones, etc. Punchable faces and questionable off-field behaviours abound! Make sure you ration your ire, lest it be spread too thin. Dallas remains a loathsome organization with many individuals worth tossing into the bagster.
But the juice just isn’t there anymore. It’s not the “rivalry” it used to be. Eagles vs. Cowboys is just another game in 2021.