"A rematch win in the Saturday wild-card game against the Dallas Cowboys would certainly be a signature moment for the Eagles, particularly since they left an undistinguished scrawl - and a bunch of other nasty stuff - on the turf at Cowboys Stadium last weekend.

As redemptive as that win might be, the Eagles, deep down where they hide the truth, would probably prefer another opponent in the first round of the postseason. Not because they are scared of the Cowboys, not because Sunday's rump roasting made them less certain of their own place in the NFL universe. But because there are certain teams in certain years that just seem to have your number.

It might not be the deciding factor Saturday with the Cowboys, but the Eagles simply don't match up well against them. That's a concept usually applied to basketball, but it holds true in football just as well.

Getting through the postseason in the NFL requires two things: a good team and a lot of luck. Part of that luck is drawing a path that doesn't include a matchup roadblock like the one facing the Eagles.

What if the Eagles had drawn the fifth seed in the NFC instead of the sixth? They would be playing the Arizona Cardinals this weekend, another game that would have a nice redemption story line - and, regardless of the outcome from last season's conference championship, one that would represent a more hospitable matchup for the Eagles.

It's idle speculation at this point, but championships can come about because of just that kind of happenstance. An NFL regular season is 256 games and somewhere around 40,000 plays. Along the way, the outcome of just one play can change everything.

In the case of the Eagles and the Green Bay Packers, who edged out the Eagles for that fifth seed, the difference in playoff paths is just that thin. Both teams were 11-5 this season and both were 9-3 in conference games, which is the initial tiebreaker for teams that do not play head-to-head. In the next tiebreaker, games against common opponents, the Packers were 4-1 in games against the Bears, Bucs, Cowboys and 49ers. The Eagles were 3-2. All those games, all those plays, and it came down to a pair of teams with the same record going through three potential rounds of tiebreakers.

Want to change the outcome? Easy. The Bears led the Packers by 15-13 in the opening game of the season - 76 degrees at game time in Lambeau Field - until Aaron Rodgers threw a 50-yard touchdown pass with less than two minutes to play. That didn't have to happen. In the second meeting between the teams, the Bears had another fourth-quarter lead until a Jay Cutler interception set up the Packers for the winning score at the Chicago 11-yard line."