Eagles hope different path is difference

This is familiar territory to the Philadelphia Eagles. They are about to play in their fifth NFC championship game in the 10 seasons since they hired Andy Reid as their coach and he used his first draft choice to select quarterback Donovan McNabb.

It’s taking the next step or two that has been elusive to the Eagles, who have lost three of their previous four NFC title games and have not won a Super Bowl during the tenure of Reid and McNabb, or before.

So when they upset the top-seeded New York Giants in a conference semifinal Sunday at Giants Stadium, their postgame locker room was self-satisfied but not quite jubilant.

Owner Jeffrey Lurie stood in a corner and talked about there being more work to be done. The Eagles went back to their training complex in south Philadelphia and had a team meeting Sunday night, and Reid told his players to enjoy the moment temporarily but be ready to work hard when they got back to the practice field.

Reid said he would count on the experience some of his players have in these games. He will rely on them to know that their 48-20 triumph over the Arizona Cardinals on Thanksgiving in Philadelphia will mean nothing when the teams meet again Sunday in Arizona, and that the games get faster and more intense as the playoffs progress.

But for the Eagles, perhaps the most promising factor that things could be different for them this time is they have taken a far different path to get to this point this season.

Each of Reid’s previous four teams to make it this far had amassed at least 11 regular-season victories and won the NFC East title. Three were the conference’s top-seeded team in the playoffs.

This club was 9-6-1 and sneaked into the playoffs as a wild card with help from others on the final day of the regular season, then crafted tough-minded road victories at Minnesota and the Meadowlands to advance.

“It’s different probably from the standpoint there’s a different feeling that you carry during the year when you’re the No. 1 seed. . . . There have been a handful of games this year that we were not expected to win, so that makes it different,� Reid said. “But I think the base mental state of the football team is the same from the standpoint the guys have maintained faith in each other. You see them on the sideline encouraging each other.

“Those are all kind of crucial ingredients to get to this point, and they’ve done that throughout the whole season, even with the record being different and there being a slim chance at one point of getting into the dance here. They’ve maintained that all the way through.�

Reid and his players can only hope this season’s bumpy ride to the conference final has produced a more resilient team capable of playing its best now that the stakes are the highest.

Reid said he expects the Cardinals to play far better this time. McNabb said the Cardinals proved their mettle with their convincing triumph Saturday night at Carolina over the second-seeded Panthers.

“We have a feeling of what they like to do, especially on the defensive side,� McNabb said. “We know that they’re a blitzing team, and they’ll probably be blitzing more than they showed in that Thanksgiving game. Just watching their game against Carolina, and the first game they won [over the Atlanta Falcons in a first-round playoff game], this team is continuing to jell.

“Everyone talked about them not being able to win on the East Coast and then to be able to go down to Carolina when everyone expected them to lose by a lot, and to win by a lot, the team just continued to jell.�

Cardinals quarterback Kurt Warner has beaten the Eagles in one NFC title game, that while with the St. Louis Rams in the 2001 season.

That was the first of three straight losses in NFC championship games for the Eagles, who finally broke through in the 2004 season to reach the Super Bowl but lost to the New England Patriots.