If it’s not over “till the fat lady sings”, she was singing at just about the time that Eagles backup receiver Josh Huff appeared to give a half-hearted effort to make a tackle on Packers kick returner Micah Hyde.  Had Huff actually made the tackle, Green Bay would have had the ball at its own 25.  Instead, Hyde juked and jived and ended up in the end zone, giving the Packers a 17-0 lead with two minutes still left in the 1ST QUARTER.

Unfortunately for Birds fans, the game for all intents and purposes was sealed then, and wives/girlfriends who have no interest in football were surprised to find that their significant others were actually conversing with them during the whole second half.

But sorry ladies, while you might have thought that your plan to “change” your man was actually working, it was more a result of a rather boring one-sided contest being played out on the television…something the Eagles have not seen since last year’s 52-20 blowout loss to Denver in the Mile High City.

That game took place very early in the Chip Kelly era, and the Eagles rebounded from a 1-3 record after that shellacking to go 9-3 the rest of the way and win their division, something no one expected.

This team is better than last year’s edition, and while a Super Bowl may be a reach, there is no reason the Birds should not be playing in January for more than just one weekend.  While a blowout loss is never a good mark on your resume, the Packers are this year’s Seahawks when it comes to home-field advantage, and had beaten their previous three opponents at home by an average of 31 points.

The lesson learned for the Birds is to avoid a rematch with the Packers at Lambeau Field in January, and the first step in doing so would be to win their division, which at a minimum would give them a playoff game at home in the 1st round.

Both the Eagles and the Packers currently sit with a record of 7-3, and while many permutation combinations still exist for playoff seeding with six weeks left in the regular season, the most simplified way for the Birds to avoid playing the Packers on the road again is to win more games than Green Bay the rest of the way.

If the Eagles win their division and end up in a 2-way tie with EITHER the Arizona Cardinals or the Packers for conference seeding, they would lose the tiebreaker since they’ve lost to both of those teams.  But should they end up in a 3-way tie with BOTH of those teams, the fact that they lost to both won’t matter since the Cardinals and the Packers don’t play each other this season.  In that case, the tiebreaker would be based on the conference record of each of the three teams.  Got that???  I may need an expert in calculus or statistics to figure all this out.

The one thing we can figure out is that the Birds need to win this week against a lowly Titans team and keep pace with the Cowboys, who are tied with the Eagles for the division lead.  Tennessee almost beat Pittsburgh at home last Monday night, but the Steelers seem to have a tendency of playing down to the level of their opponent.

Some have called this a “trap” game for the Eagles (in between playing Green Bay last week and Dallas on Thanksgiving) but the trap factor would have only come into effect had the Eagles actually won last week and come into this game overconfident and on a high.

The Birds should be angry after last week’s debacle and will take their frustrations out on the Titans, winning 38-20.  And then it’s onto Dallas for a friendly Thanksgiving feast with the Cowpokes…

Amit’s Top 5 Power Rankings:

1. Cardinals (2)

2. Broncos (1)

3. Patriots (3)

4. Chiefs (4) Pre-Raiders game

5. Packers (new)

Amit’s Marquee Matchups of the Week (all times in EST and on Sunday unless noted otherwise):

Lions at Patriots 1:00 PM FOX – Game of the Week

Cardinals at Seahawks 4:05 PM FOX

Dolphins at Broncos 4:25 PM CBS