Today the NFL revealed their 2025 Season Opener and our beloved Eagles, the reigning Football Champions of the Nation, World, and Galaxy, will host the abhorrent Cowboys, the 40-year-old, peaked-in-high-school, burnouts of the NFL.
Coming to town is a franchise that can't hang its oversized Starter jacket, JNKO jeans, and flat-brim Yankees hat in the closet. Holding onto their past with a King Kong grip and mussied-up hair, bleached blonde at the tips, the Dallas football team must have been the only ones that fell victim to the Y2K virus. The only analytics department that has to unplug its landlines to access the internet. The only film room in the league that has a TV with a glass screen and bubble butt. The only financial team that's trimming the margins to make up for losses to Enron and Madoff investments. Someone wake up Jerry Jones and tell him that the 90's ended a quarter century ago, it's just getting sad at this point.
The last time that Birds fans welcomed the Cowboys into their Temple of Worship, Kenny Pickett and Tanner McKee air raided the Dallas defense to the tune of a 41-point barrage including 34 unanswered from the second quarter on. Zero turnovers, four takeaways, 167 gut-punching rushing yards from Saquon Barkley, and a laughable lack of performance from a once proud organization concluding a nauseating season.
And they're back for more.
It's been over 50 years since the Eagles and Cowboys last played in Philadelphia to kick off their seasons, a game that was played in 1970 on Franklin Field in front of 59,000 patrons. As the Eagles prepare for their title defense and the Cowboys pounce on early deals for flights to Puerto Vallarta in January, here's a look into the history of Week 1 Matchups between these two rivals...
September 3, 2000 - Eagles 41 @ Cowboys 14
The Pickle Juice Game
The last time the Eagles commenced a campaign against the Cowboys was at the turn of the millennium in their second game of the 2000's. Fox sent Pat Summerall and John Madden to cover the clash of divisional rivals - one team aging out of their dominant 90's run, the other looking to turn over a new leaf with a second-year coach and quarterback.
That storyline should've been enough, but a new one developed with the sun beating down on God's Hell-Hole of Irving, Texas. Thermometers reached three digits outside which was further amplified on the turf with temperatures reaching 130 degrees on the sideline.
Coach Reid was young to the head coaching world, but his wit and cunning long out-matured his contemporaries. Big Red had just closed the 1999 season by coaching the hell out of a rookie Donovan McNabb to a 38-31 Week 17 win over Kurt Warner, Dick Vermeil, and the eventual Super Bowl champion St. Louis Rams. That momentum gave Coach the courage to go into Dallas in Week 1 of the following season and say, "Dehydration, I'm not scared of you."
Enter... The Pickle Juice Game.
The Eagles, with zero scientific proof or research for that matter, gorged themselves on pickle juice under the theory that the saline brine and vinegar would help hydrate their muscles and avoid cramps in a more effective way than water alone.
It's not 100% confirmed whether Andy Reid or Duce Staley was the mastermind behind the team's briny anti-cramp elixir, but whoever it was should've been nominated to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology for their innovation in muscular contraction prevention. The Eagles' training staff must've bought the entire selection of Vlasic spears and slices from every Buccee's south of Plano and north of Duncanville in order to fuel the Green Machine to an absolute bashing and barnstorming of Jerry Jones's bygone brigade.
As for the game itself, the Birds bullied their way into starting both halves with the ball by opening the season with an onside kick right on that behemoth eyesore of a star at midfield. Coach Reid and special teams coordinator John Harbaugh dumped their manhood on the table, gave David Akers the nod, and said "Come and get me Dallas." Why dance around and throw jabs when you can uppercut a son-of-a-gun through their jaw one second into the fight?
Onside kick, nine play drive, 7-0 lead, just like that.
Dallas's first play: Troy Aikman sacked. Rookie Corey Simon. Dallas's fourth play: Troy Aikman sacked. Mike Mamula. Dallas's sixth play: Troy Aikman sacked. Hugh Douglas. Punt.
The Birds would close out the first quarter with a 1 yard rushing touchdown by Duuuuuuuuce who was punching 'em in at the goal line long before anyone could've pushed Cambell's soup farts out of McNabb's tush. 14-0.
Dallas's third play of the next drive: Troy Aikman interception...for a touchdown. The Ax Man, Jeremiah Trotter. 21-0.
Dallas's third play of the next drive: Troy Aikman sack. Hugh Douglas, again. Troy Aikman "concussion". See ya on the broadcast mics, buddy.
Then Randall Cunningham took over under center for the Cowboys and I'll be damned if I ever type a scornful word about Randall so I'll leave the synopsis there.
The Eagles would keep rolling to a 41-14 cramp-free victory while Cowboys were dropping like it was the Alamo. Duuuuuuuuuuce managed to rumble, bumble, and stumble his was to 201 yards on astroturf hot enough to fry an egg and the Eagles would leave Dallas sipping Ciroc and Claussen's cocktails on the flight home.
For a guy that looks like he avoids all foods with even a tinge of greenish hue, Andy Reid sure did outsmart the nutritional gurus that day. Thank goodness they put pickles on cheeseburgers, otherwise he may never have had the idea.
September 12, 1976 - Eagles 7 @ Cowboys 27
September 17, 1972 - Eagles 6 @ Cowboys 28
September 20, 1970 - Eagles 7 vs. Cowboys 17
These games are way less cool and fun to talk or write about because the Eagles freakin lost and the Cowboys freakin won so I'm not gonna bother. They also happened way before I was born so they don't count and I reserve the right to take my ball and go home because I'm not held to any form of journalistic code of integrity.
It is kinda cool that the last time the Eagles hosted the Cowboys in Week 1, they played on the same field that saw Jim Thorpe nearly single-handedly beat a nationally-renowned Penn team, housed FDR's democratic nominee acceptance speech, and trained Jesse Owens months before his four 1936 Olympic gold medal wins in Berlin. Either way, this altercation of NFC East adversaries rarely occurs so early in a season, so start getting your minds right now Eagles fans, we've got 115 days until kick off.
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