Sep 19th 2008 7:05PM by Sportz Assassin (author feed)
Filed under: Cowboys, Eagles, NFC East, NFL FansWhile I rarely agree with anything ESPN’s Bill Simmons says, he did raise an interesting point about Monday night’s Cowboys-Eagles game. After all, it was only the most watched cable event … ever.Again, it was an extraordinary game. But it wasn’t more dramatic or memorable than Baltimore blowing its chance to end New England’s undefeated season on a Monday night last December, right? The more I thought about it, I decided the fantasy subplots propelled the Philly-Dallas game to its record numbers. That had to be it.
There were a ton of subplots going in that game. The Eagles and Cowboys may be the NFC’s two best teams. Both are fierce NFC East rivals. And there is that whole Terrell Owens-Donovan McNabb thing.

Those all contributed to great numbers of viewers. But fantasy football also brought in a ton of others.

In that game, you had Terrell Owens, Tony Romo, Brian Westbrook, Jason Witten and Marion Barber … who are all elite fantasy performers. You also had Donovan McNabb who is no slouch himself. Some owners had Patrick Crayton, Desean Jackson, Hank Baskett, Felix Jones, David Akers or Nick Folk. And that doesn’t even mention the two defenses who, depsite giving up a lot of points, scored some too.

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