The 39th renewal of the AFC-NFC World Championship Game pitted the New England Patriots, two-time defending champions, against the Philidelphia Eagles, who hadn't won a championship of any sort in almost 50 years. The Eagles had star quarterback Donovan McNabb to lead the team, opposite star Patriot quarterback Tom Brady. The Patriots were seven-point favorites and had won fourteen of sixteen regular-season games, based in large part on the running of new fullback Corey Dillon, acquired from the Cincinatti Bengals in the off-season. The Eagles, meanwhile, had made their own big-name free-agent acquisition in wide receiver Terrell Owens from the San Francisco Forty-Niners; the Eagles' new receiver was as famous for his flashy behavior and penchant for speaking out to anyone as for his play on the field. Thanks to him, McNabb, and running back Brian Westbrook, the Eagles won 13 games, the most in franchise history. The Patriots' new fullback was long judged to be a source of trouble in Cincinatti, a view that changed as the 2004 season went on. The Eagles had climbed a major mountain, winning the NFC Championship after three consecutive losses in the conference's title game, while the Patriots had defeated the heavily-favored Indianapolis Colts with the league's strongest offense and the 15-1 Pittsburgh Steelers with the league's strongest defense and running game in AFC playoff action, thus setting the stage for a long-awaited showdown between the two most capable teams of the league in the first half of the 2000 decade.
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Cast of Super Bowl XXXIX
