The beauty of today's game between the Eagles and the New York Giants is that the outcome is so unpredictable."These teams aren't going to fool each other," Fox analyst and former Dallas quarterback Troy Aikman said by phone yesterday as he pulled into the Meadowlands complex to prepare for the NFC divisional playoff game.
"They just know each other too well. They could play 20 times and they'd each win 10 or maybe 11 to 9. They're just evenly matched with quarterbacks who have played in big games and outstanding defenses."
In the previous nine seasons – the Andy Reid era in Eagles history – teams from the same division have met a total of 10 times in the postseason. The road team has won half the time. The Eagles and Giants have accounted for two of those 10 meetings. The Eagles won at home in a 2007 playoff game and the Giants won at home on their way to the Super Bowl in 2001.
Reid made the point at his Monday news conference that there was a time when having the home-field advantage and a week off meant more than anything, but that time seems to have passed. Four of the five instances in which NFC road teams have won in the conference semifinals have taken place in the last seven seasons.
The Eagles went into Chicago and won in 2002, the Carolina Panthers won in St. Louis in 2004 and Chicago in 2006, and the Giants stunned the Cowboys in Dallas last January. Four of the last eight Super Bowl champions won on the road in the conference divisional round.
"One advantage of having time off is that you give your guys an opportunity to rest, in particular the injured guys," Reid said. "But old trends showed that mattered, and the new trends show that doesn't matter, so who knows? I think you just take each game by itself."
The Giants and Eagles both have injury issues that could impact today's game. The Eagles have spent the week trying to get Brian Westbrook (swollen knee), Asante Samuel (sore hip) and Jon Runyan (sprained knee) healthy enough for the game. All three are expected to play, but Runyan didn't practice the entire week.
The Giants, despite their week off, have injury concerns about defensive end Justin Tuck (knee) and defensive tackle Fred Robbins (shoulder). The Giants, a team that won last year's Super Bowl behind the play of its defensive line, had just six sacks in their final four games. Tuck, limited during the Giants' practice week, had just a half sack in four December games. Robbins hasn't dropped an opposing quarterback since Week 7. The Eagles did not allow a sack in either game against the Giants this season.
When asked about his knee, Tuck said: "It's not good." But the defensive end will play and it could help that he's going against a gimpy Runyan.
Aikman played in his share of these games during his Hall of Fame career with the Cowboys, and he remembers what his former coach Jimmy Johnson used to say.
"Jimmy would tell us it's not about the team that makes the most big plays," Aikman said. "It's about the team that makes the fewest bad plays. When the game is over, that's what you look at as players. Fans and the media will remember the 70-yard screen pass to Brian Westbrook, but they forget about the interception thrown by Minnesota. Playoff football is about the team that makes the fewest mistakes."
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