The Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles are set to meet for the first time this season on Sunday.
The drama is always high for a Cowboys-Eagles clash. In the 64-year history of the rivalry, Dallas leads the series 74-56. The Cowboys and Eagles split the two meetings last season, but in the end both teams were first-round ousters once the playoffs started.
Before the 131st meeting between the two teams on Sunday afternoon, here’s a ranking of the 10 most memorable moments in the history of the rivalry:
10. McNabb takes ownership
Late in the 1999 season, the Eagles sent rookie QB Donovan McNabb out against Dallas for the fifth start of his young career. He completed only seven of his 17 pass attempts for just 49 yards in a 20-10 loss.
After that, he lost to Dallas only once over the next five years.
McNabb went 9-1 against the Cowboys between 2000-04, and that doesn’t tell the whole story. Among those nine wins were scores of 41-14, 40-18, 36-3, 44-13, and 49-21.
A Monday Night Football play on 3rd-and-10 in a 2004 win (49-21) aptly sums up the frustratingly dominant period McNabb had against the Cowboys in the early ‘00s. McNabb dropped back to pass and nearly went sideline-to-sideline to avoid the Cowboys’ rush, scrambling for 14 seconds of game time before unleashing a pass 60 yards downfield and finding WR Freddie Mitchell behind the defense.
9. Emmitt’s scary-good night
On Halloween night in 1993, in the middle of a torrential downpour in Philadelphia, Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith trudged through the rain-soaked AstroTurf at Veterans Stadium to gain 237 yards in a 23-10 Dallas victory.
It was the highest single-game rushing total in Cowboys franchise history to that point, and it stayed that way until DeMarco Murray’s 253 yards vs. the Rams in 2011. Smith’s night in Philly is tied with Barry Sanders and Jim Brown for the 21st-highest single-game rushing effort in NFL history.
8. 44-6: ‘The worst thing’
Cowboys fans, and football fans in general, were given an early Christmas gift in 2008 when the stars aligned to have Dallas and Philadelphia squaring off in the final week of the regular season in a win-or-go-home battle for a playoff spot between division rivals.
The Cowboys had failed to clinch a playoff spot the week before during an embarrassing loss to the Ravens in the last game played at Texas Stadium. But they’d be given a chance for a reprieve if they could sneak away from Lincoln Financial Field with a win against an Eagles team they’d already beaten earlier in the season.
Instead, the Cowboys trailed 27-3 at halftime and finished the year with one of the worst losses in franchise history, by significance or by margin of defeat or by whatever other measuring stick can be used. A 44-6 final ended the Cowboys’ season.
Quarterback Tony Romo was criticized for his comments after the game: “If this is the worst thing that will ever happen to me, then I’ve lived a pretty good life.”
7. 1980 NFC Championship
Between 1968 and 1979, the Eagles lost to the Cowboys in all but three matchups. In the NFC Championship game for the 1980 season, the teams met in the latest stage of the playoffs in series history.
In perhaps a bit of gamesmanship, the home team Eagles elected to wear their white road jerseys, forcing the Cowboys to wear the dreaded “Bad Luck Blues,” which had been a narrative dating to Dallas’ Super Bowl V loss to the Colts.
The Blues struck again. Dallas was shut out in the second half as Danny White and the Cowboys fell 20-7 to Ron Jaworski and the Eagles. It’s the only time Philly has beaten Dallas in the playoffs.
6. Barry Switzer’s fourth-down fail
That’s what legendary broadcaster John Madden said in the booth after the Cowboys and head coach Barry Switzer botched a December 1995 game against the Eagles.
With the score tied 17-17 and just over two minutes remaining, Dallas faced a 4th-and-1 at its own 29 yard-line. Switzer, in a move that surprised pretty much everyone watching, opted to go for it. Troy Aikman handed off to Emmitt Smith, who dove for the yard needed and was stuffed. Luckily for Switzer and the Cowboys, the clock had struck 2:00 just before the snap, ruling the play moot thanks to the two-minute warning.
Switzer then took a deep breath, came to his senses, and punted the ball away. The Cowboys came up with a big defensive stop, and managed a late score to win ...
… Not really. Switzer trotted the offense right back out on the field after the two-minute warning, ran the same play and watched the same result. Smith was stuffed at the line of scrimmage, the Eagles took over deep in Cowboys territory and kicked a winning field goal to steal one from a befuddled Switzer.
5. Eagles fans jeer Michael Irvin
In what may be regarded as the moral low-point in Eagles fandom (in a close race with throwing snowballs at Santa Claus), much of the Philadelphia crowd at Veterans Stadium cheered after Michael Irvin’s 1999 cervical spine injury that ended his career.
Irvin was driven head-first into the turf after a short reception and remained motionless for several minutes afterward before eventually being stretchered off the field. He would later learn that a narrowing of the spinal column made it too dangerous for him to continue his career.
To Irvin’s credit, he’s never taken Philadelphia’s jeers personally.
“It was a compliment for Philly to cheer me,” Irvin said. “Philly wasn’t cheering my injury. They were cheering my departure. ‘Thank God he’s leaving the field; he’s been killing us.’”
4. The pickle juice game
The Cowboys and Eagles opened the 2000 season at Texas Stadium with on-field temperatures as high as a stifling 109 at game time. To combat the heat, more than 20 Eagles players reportedly drank pickle juice before the game to help stave off dehydration.
“It’s kind of like using Epsom salt for a sprained ankle,” said Jim Maurer, the Cowboys’ trainer at the time. “It’s an old grandma’s remedy.”
Turns out grandma might know a thing or two.
The Eagles jumped all over the Cowboys from the beginning, starting with a season-opening surprise onside kick recovered by Philly, and they eventually handed the Cowboys a dill-flavored 41-14 defeat.
3. Drew Pearson trolls Philly
Cowboys wide receiver and Hall of Famer Drew Pearson served as a guest announcer for Dallas’ second-round draft pick in the 2017 NFL draft, which was held in Philadelphia. When he took the podium, he showed just how deeply the colors can run with these old-school football guys.
Former Cowboys WR Drew Pearson should’ve been flown immediately to Canton after this moment in Philadelphia during the 2017 NFL draft. Finally gets his due today. A Hall of Famer. pic.twitter.com/tqmwx7C3Gg
— Michael Gehlken (@GehlkenNFL) February 7, 2021
Pearson spoke “on behalf of the five-time Super Bowl champion Dallas Cowboys” then fought through a chorus of boos, which peaked as Pearson thanked Jerry Jones, to announce the Cowboys’ second-rounder.
2. Playoff drought snapped
Between the Cowboys’ Super Bowl XXX victory and the 44-6 loss in 2008, Dallas had won only one playoff game, a Wild Card victory against Minnesota in 1996.
That drought came to a merciful end in the 2009 season.
Dallas beat Philadelphia twice during the regular season, the first time it’d swept Philly since 2005, including a win in Week 17 that set up a first-round playoff rematch the following week.
Dallas won a rather drama-free Divisional Round matchup over the Eagles, the franchise’s first postseason victory in 13 years. Perhaps not wanting to spoil the fanbase with playoff success, Dallas got crushed 34-3 by Minnesota the following week.
1. Bounty Bowls I and II
Tensions between the teams ramped up in the late ‘80s, primarily due to a spat between Cowboys head coaches Tom Landry and Jimmy Johnson and Eagles coach Buddy Ryan.
Ryan thought the Cowboys and Landry ran up the score during a Dallas win in the 1987 strike season, one in which the Eagles played mostly with replacement players. In the waning moments of the second meeting, Ryan had quarterback Randall Cunningham run a fake-kneel play with a 30-20 lead that led to another Eagles touchdown and a 37-20 victory.
The two Cowboys-Eagles games in 1989 became known as “Bounty Bowl” due to Jimmy Johnson’s accusation that the Eagles had set a bounty on Cowboys kicker Luis Zendejas and quarterback Troy Aikman. The Eagles won the first matchup 27-0, and an incensed Johnson said this after the game:
“I have absolutely no respect for the way they played the game. I would have said something to Buddy, but he wouldn’t stand on the field long enough. He put his big, fat rear end into the dressing room.”
In the second game, a loss in Philadelphia, Eagles fans pelted Cowboys players and coaches, referees, and the game’s broadcast crew with snowballs, ice, beer and even batteries, by some accounts.
Honorable mention
1991: Troy Aikman’s longest day ever. He was sacked 11 times as the Eagles trounced the Cowboys 24-0.
2003: The Cowboys’ Randal Williams scooped up a surprise onside kick to open the game and scored a touchdown with only three seconds elapsed, the fastest touchdown in NFL history.
2006: Cowboys WR Terrell Owens made his much-anticipated return to Philly, but it’s Eagles CB Lito Sheppard who steals the day. Sheppard picked off a Drew Bledsoe pass on the Cowboys’ final drive and returned it 102 yards for a game-sealing pick-six. All of Philadelphia did the Lito Shuffle.
2007: Jason Witten lost his helmet after a big hit on a 53-yard gain in an eventual 38-17 Cowboys win.
2008: Desean Jackson casually dropped the ball inches short of the goal line after a long pass play, resulting in a turnover. The Cowboys went on to win 41-37. It would’ve been Jackson’s first career touchdown.
2016: In the first-ever matchup between rookie quarterbacks Dak Prescott and Carson Wentz, Prescott found Witten for an overtime touchdown and a 29-23 Cowboys win.
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