There have been a few articles on this site about how younger Eagles fans maybe don’t have the same level of hatred for the Dallas Cowboys as older fans. Well, as one of those younger Eagles fans, I’m here to tell you that YES WE DO.

I’m 20 years old. In my lifetime, the Philadelphia Eagles have been the FAR superior franchise to the Dallas Cowboys. The regular season records might be close, sure; since I was born, the Eagles are 190-139-2 and the Cowboys are 188-142. But the difference in playoff performance is the real story. The Eagles are 13-12. I’ve been alive for six NFC Championship games, three Super Bowl appearances, and one Super Bowl victory. The Cowboys are 4-9 and I have yet to see them advance past the divisional round.

Some people might look at those playoff numbers and assume the younger generation must not carry the same amount of vitriol for the Cowboys. True, I didn’t watch Troy Aikman or Emmitt Smith or Michael Irvin, and I wasn’t alive for Buddy Ryan vs. Jimmy Johnson, but those stories carry. There’s a generational effect here. The stories my family tells about the Eagles and the Cowboys are told with a level of intensity that makes it impossible NOT to hate the Cowboys. Maybe they were sensationalizing, maybe not, but it impacted me enough that even as a little kid, I knew the Dallas Cowboys were public enemy #1.

Also, when you look around at the rest of the NFC East during my lifetime, there’s pretty slim pickings when it comes to actual rivalries! Since I was born, the Commanders are 135-194-2 in the regular season and 1-5 in the playoffs, and the Giants are 151-179-1 in the regular season. Admittedly, the G-men are 9-6 in the playoffs, but since I started consciously following football in 2013, they’ve only been to the playoffs twice. All but one of those wins came from their two Super Bowl runs. The one exception is their wild card win this past season against the fraudulent Vikings. I choose not to count that. 

A rivalry, by definition, has to be two-sided. Whenever the Giants and the Commanders come up on the schedule, based on my personal experience, I view them as wins. They’ll be hard-fought games, for sure, but they will more than likely be Eagles wins. When the Cowboys come up, I’m never sure. They’re the only NFC East team that the Eagles have a losing record against in my lifetime. If you ask any Eagles fan my age who their #1 rival is, they’ll say the Cowboys, if only because they’ve actually been competitive against the Birds in the 21st century.


I also think a big part of what keeps the rivalry going among younger fans is social media. Having to deal with Cowboys fans is a rite of passage. Now it’s simply happening online, instead of dealing with your neighbor down the street who decided to jump on the America’s Team bandwagon. Cowboys/Lakers/Yankees fans on social media are so insufferable that it’s entertaining to see them lose just to see what they’ll come up with to cope. Recently, they’ve been debating whether to go with ‘Jalen Hurts is carried by his supporting cast’ or ‘CeeDee Lamb is better than A.J. Brown.’ Very entertaining stuff. 

Personally, I think Jason Kelce properly explained the dichotomy of the fanbases best last year:

“You have the Philadelphia fanbase, which is this extremely localized, die-hard fanbase that is authentic to all of them growing up together in this community and this environment that breeds authenticity. And you have the Cowboys fanbase – which they have in Dallas – but the majority of that fanbase is built on commercialism and all of this pop culture, Lakers/Yankees-type fandom that I think is the complete opposite of what the Philadelphia Eagles’ fanbase stands for.”

Rest assured, older Eagles fans: the rivalry lives on. Trust me, I hate the Dallas Cowboys every bit as much as you do, and for all the same reasons.