"It's one thing to only have to beat Jay Cutler to get to the Super Bowl, but it's quite another to only have to beat Caleb Hanie to get to the Super Bowl.

The Green Bay Packers aren't going to toss this one back, however. They'll take the Super Bowl trip just as if they really earned it, and 15 other members of the National Football Conference would be happy to trade places.

The Eagles are among those teams, and among the teams that, with a break here or there, can legitimately say it could have been them hoisting the Halas Trophy on Sunday.

If Michael Vick had thrown a touchdown instead of an interception at the end of the wild-card game against the Packers, everything changes. Prior to that, if the Bears had knocked Green Bay from the playoffs in the last game of the regular season, the postseason house of cards would have been built completely differently.

But that's not the way it played out, and the conference championship was won by a team whose great offense didn't score a point in the last 41 minutes of the game. It was won by a team whose great defense couldn't keep third-string quarterback Hanie from leading the Bears to two fourth-quarter touchdowns that kept the outcome in doubt long after it should have been decided.

The Packers did just enough to win, though, and their 21-14 margin buys them the same right to play in Cowboys Stadium in two weeks as if it had been a 40-point rout.

It's not a new thought that the best teams in the NFL are pretty good, sometimes a little better than that, but far from great. The difference between the top seven or eight teams in the conference is really not that significant. How great can either the Packers or Bears really be if both lost to the Redskins this season? (Of course, that's a question you can ask about the Eagles, too.)

You can't blame the Eagles' organization for feeling it came very close to the Super Bowl, and after watching the Packers and Bears wrestle around somewhat artlessly, it is difficult to argue.

It wasn't much of a game when you take it apart. Too many penalties, too much sloppy work. Some coaching decisions that didn't make any sense, and then the unintended quarterback comedy that the Bears chose to unleash."