MINNEAPOLIS -- If you long ago surrendered to the most passionate New England cult since the Salem Witch Trials, then what happened Sunday night will take more than a little explaining.
Think of it as the night the dog bit the dog catcher, when down morphed into up and when the most downtrodden fan base in the NFL's world world finally found the key to America's 100-yard Nirvana.
We are talking Philadelphia Eagles here, and the team they beat in Super Bowl LII was the New England Patriots, who always win, who always come back when the clock still has a final tick or two and Tom Brady has the ball.
The Eagles won the Super Bowl.
The Eagles?
The Eagles from Philadelphia. The Eagles, who, time and again, came close enough for horseshoes but not close enough for football. They represent the city where the Philadelphia Phillies once staggered to a record of 23 straight defeats, a city that once put its municipal hopes for some kind of victory on a horse name Smarty Jones -- only to see him blow the Triple Crown in the Belmont Stakes.
This is the city that played in and lost two Super Bowls and, more recently, three NFC Championship Games.
Eagles' Super Bowl studs & duds
Sunday night, with the world watching, they won a game that seemed to be more adding machine than contest. Two teams in an incredible competition in which they combined to cover 1,151 yards.
And the part of their they thought would help them win -- their pass rush -- didn't surface until it absolutely had to.
Twice in Super Bowls I had seen the invincible Patriots crash under the stress of inexorable pressure by the New York Giants. And all year, the Eagles have made teams wilt with the same kind of pressure.
Bill Parcells, who won two Super Bowls, knows what that can mean:
"They don't rush four. They rush eight," he said.
The Eagles use two platoons of defensive lineman who rotate until they feast on tired offensive lines. But it didn't look that way last night until crunch time.
That's because the Patriots used their hurry-up offense to keep the Eagles winded and unable to substitute.
The quarterbacks threw the ball 93 times. The Eagles led almost to the end, but the feeling in U.S. bank Stadium was still that the Eagles were the Eagles and the Patriots were history's team about to make history again.
So when Brady hit tight end Rob Gronkowski to give the Patriots their first lead of the game, 33-32, with 9:22 remaining, a great silence began to settle on the Eagles fans -- in Minneapolis, Philadelphia and wherever anyone was wearing a green jersey.
But these weren't their father's Eagles.
Nick Foles may not be Carson Wentz, but he sure as hell did the job. He was accurate. He was cool. And in seven minutes, he engineered a 14-play, 75-yard drive back in the lead, 38-33, and back in the noise business.
But history tells us that Brady is a force for as long as the game clock has breath. Down five points with at least two minutes left, he is money in the bank. So where were those ferocious Eagles who get paid to put quartrebacks on their backsides?
The Eagles were without a sack.
Where was Fletcher Cox, the best inside rusher in football? Where was the versatile Brandon Graham? The talented Vinnie Curry? Where were the hurries, the hits, the sacks, the forced fumbles?
The Pats' offensive line, perfect in its protection aside fom a few dings, had not been beaten down by Philly's hole card. Where was all that beef to which Parcells referred?
Brady and the Patriots trailed by five points, and he had 2:21 left. Did anyone doubt the Patriots, unstoppable all night, were going to score?
Brady threw short to Gronkowski, who picked up eight yards to the Pats' 33. It looked like the start of a scenario out of the Bil Belichick playbook.
But on the next play, the sleeping dogs of Philly came awake. Fueled by necessity and ferocity, they overwhelmed the Patriots' offensive line. Brady saw it coming. As Graham came closer and closer, Brady looked desperately downfield, cocked his arm and then:
Wham!
Graham reached out and punched the ball free. Derek Barnett grabbed the ball like it was a free cheesesteak. That was followed by a field goal. But the Patriots weren't done until Brady's Hail Mary pass fell to the ground at 0:00.
"The main thing was," Cox later said, "I just told Brandon to do his thing. Do whatever you want. I just tried to create some disruption by busting up the middle and that freed Brandon."
It also won the game. It liberated the fans of Philly from a burden they had borne far too long. Rocky's "Yo, Adrian!" is yesterday's battle cry. South Philly has a brand new one: It's an underdog's bark.
(Jerry Izenberg is one of two newspaper columnists to cover ever Super Bowl. He is Columnist Emeritus for The Star-Ledger.)