In NFC, Eagles Fly Over the Pack

There is no shame in giving up five touchdown passes to Donovan McNabb in the first half, or losing by 10 points to the Chicago Bears’ fourth starting quarterback this season, or getting shut out, 27-zip, by a seven-loss Tampa Bay team because, as everyone knows, there is no shame in the NFC.

If there were, they’d shut down the schedule right now, for the good of NFC self-esteem and the sport of football in general, and start stockpiling microphones in Jacksonville for Terrell Owens’ Super Bowl Media Day debut.

Sometimes, it’s over before it’s over.

Sometimes, it’s over by halftime of Philadelphia’s 12th regular-season game.

The NFC, once-proud bastion of the great Packer, Cowboy and 49er dynasties, is now a one-horse conference, though it has lots of donkeys, and the Eagles left the barn a long time ago.

In case there was any lingering doubt, the Eagles played host to the Green Bay Packers in the so-called NFC championship game preview, presumably because the Packers had won six in a row and still have Brett Favre and somebody has to go play Philadelphia in late January and the Packers have a track record of playing reasonably well in the cold -- unlike, say, the Atlanta Falcons, Minnesota Vikings, Seattle Seahawks and St. Louis Rams.

Halftime score from Lincoln Financial Field: Philadelphia 35, Green Bay 3.

McNabb completed his first 14 passes, threw for 303 yards in the first half, threw for five touchdowns in the first half, and did you know this will be the Eagles’ first Super Bowl appearance in 24 years? The Eagles are going, because they are 11-1 after thrashing the Packers, 47-17, and because the next-hottest team in the NFC is Carolina and the Panthers are 5-7.

Updates on the “NFC elite”:

* Atlanta, which began December with a 9-2 record, went down to Tampa to clinch the NFC South title and lost, 27-0. The Falcons larded that record with victories over the likes of San Francisco (1-11), Arizona (4-8), New Orleans (4-8) and the free-falling New York Giants (0-3 in the Eli Manning Era). But look at the Falcons’ three losses: a home loss to Detroit, a 56-10 loss to Kansas City and a 27-0 defeat at Tampa Bay.

Put it this way: No team that gave up 56 points in a regular-season game against Kansas City ever won the Super Bowl.

* Minnesota, supposedly back on track with Randy Moss back on the field, skidded off the rails in Chicago, which is something that usually happens only to Bear quarterbacks. Coming off an impressive home victory over Jacksonville -- important here: home for the Vikings rhymes with “dome” -- Minnesota stepped outside against the Bears and lost, 24-14, to a team quarterbacked by Chad Hutchinson, stepping in for Craig Krenzel, who had stepped in for Jonathan Quinn, who had stepped in for Rex Grossman, who was probably scratching his head this week when he heard the Bears had pulled Jeff George in off the street.

Yes, the Bears are kind of desperate at the quarterback position. How desperate? They gave Hutchinson jersey No. 9, which used to belong to Jim McMahon, hoping to conjure up the spirit of ‘85, or, if not, perhaps conjure a couple of first downs in between punts and interceptions.

Surprise -- or maybe not, considering the Vikings’ late-season outdoors tradition: Hutchinson, the 20th man to start at quarterback for the Bears since 1990, passed for three touchdowns and Chicago won. At the same time, Minnesota quarterback Daunte Culpepper threw three interceptions and the Vikings remained winless since 1999 in December games played outside.

* St. Louis, another dome-sweet-dome team, barely held off the NFL’s worst team, San Francisco, 16-6, and had to use backup quarterback Chris Chandler to do it. Chandler is 39, or so old, he quarterbacked the Rams back when they still played in Anaheim in 1994. He had to play three quarters against the 49ers because Marc Bulger hurt his shoulder in the first.

Bulger started the game as the league leader in passing yards, 3,267, more than even Peyton Manning, yet the Rams came into the game 5-6. Why? You mean besides Mike Martz’s routinely bizarre midgame decision making?

Well, there was this: Whenever Bulger throws the ball, that means Marshall Faulk and Stephen Jackson aren’t rushing with it. Whenever a Ram running back rushes for 100 yards, the Rams usually win. It seems a simple proposition, but Martz refuses to pander to the conventional wisdom, so he keeps Bulger in there throwing (exception: crunch time in the red zone in the playoffs against Carolina), unless Bulger isn’t in there.

Then, he figures he’d better keep the ball on the ground. This happened Sunday, when Chandler was sent in to hand the ball to Jackson. Result: Jackson gets 26 carries, rushes for 119 yards and the Rams move to 6-6. That might not sound like much, but in the NFC, 6-6 translates into “playoff-bound.”

The Rams would be in the playoffs, seeded sixth in the NFC, if the season ended today, which, again, is an idea the NFC really ought to explore.

In the AFC, where five of pro football’s six best teams bang heads, re-seeding the playoffs and/or realigning the conferences again are beginning to sound like subjects for further research. Seattle made the move across conference lines during the last realignment and wasn’t keen about it at first, but look at the Seahawks now: They are an underwhelming 6-5 heading into tonight’s game against Dallas, and they are seeded fourth in the NFC.

Jacksonville is 6-6, but that’s an AFC 6-6. The Jaguars took their sixth loss Sunday night -- by a point, by a few feet -- against 11-1 Pittsburgh. They were defeated, 17-16, after Josh Scobee’s game-ending, 60-yard field-goal attempt sailed far enough, but just wide.

The Jaguars probably won’t make the playoffs in the AFC but might be seeded second if they played in the NFC.

The NFC is 0-4 this season against Indianapolis; Jacksonville defeated the Colts in Indianapolis. Philadelphia’s only loss this season was a 27-3 drubbing by Pittsburgh; Jacksonville pushed the Steelers to the final play.

The NFC is 18-32 in games against the AFC this season, but Sunday, at last, there was some encouraging news for the downbeat conference on that front.

The NFC did not lose to the AFC during Week 13.*

(*There were no interconference games on the NFL schedule for Week 13.)