One way to measure the difference between a winner and a loser in football is in yards; another is in seconds. Another still, is in luck.

It wasn’t as if the Philadelphia Eagles should have won Sunday’s Super Bowl against the New England Patriots, but they could have, with a little luck. The difference between the two teams came down to three points and maybe 60 seconds.

The Patriots used their time wisely; they thought and acted like champions the entire game, even in moments when they were outplayed. The Eagles were sloppy and careless, even when they were getting the best of things, and in the end, inside the final two minutes, the Eagles’ chickens came home to roost.

With 1:55 left to play and the Patriots leading 24-14, Philadelphia had the ball in a desperate situation, 2ndand-10 at the Patriots 30. Donovan Mc-Nabb, throwing off the wrong foot under pressure, made a beautiful flat spiral down the middle to wide receiver Greg Lewis, who beat his man on a post pattern to make the score 24-21. History won’t remember this, but it was the third time in three Super Bowl victories that a team has come back late to score on the Patriots’ vaunted pass defense.

The point is that on none of these occasions did the Patriots get rattled. In each circumstance they played the percentages, coolly, and ended up winning.

The Eagles did not. Earlier, with about three minutes remaining in the game and the clock running, the Eagles lurched back into their huddle after each play as if sleepwalking. The game announcers and apparently every Philly fan in the stadium were urging them to move faster.

“It’s unbelievable,” Chris Collinsworth said, “how much time they’re spending in the huddle.” Troy Aikman: “I don’t understand this at all, they’re not getting into a no-huddle offense.”

With McNabb just walking up to the line of scrimmage, the Eagles lost nearly 1:20 on that drive that proved to be precious after they scored their touchdown. With 1:48 and two timeouts left, they were forced to try an onside kick – a play whose chance of success is never higher than 15%, and probably half that against a team as well schooled as the Patriots – instead of kicking deep, trying to hold the Patriots, and getting the ball back in decent field position.

New England, of course, fielded the on-side kick cleanly; the Patriots may blow a coverage late in the game, but they’re never going to blow an on-side kick. The Eagles’ defense did hold, the Pats did punt, and their superb special teams coverage downed the ball at the Eagles’ 4-yard line. That’s where McNabb got the ball with no timeouts and 46 seconds to play. Two plays later, he was intercepted and the game was over.

Think about it: if the Eagles had been able to save just half a minute more on their final touchdown drive, they would have had the luxury of kicking deep after their touchdown and probably would have had a timeout left, as the two-minute warning would have stopped the clock automatically. When the Patriots punted, it probably would have been from their own 15 or 20-yard line instead of midfield, the Eagles probably would have gotten the ball between their 30 and 40-yard line instead of their four, and they would have had a decent chance at tying the game with a field goal and sending it into overtime. Instead, they squandered their time, their yards, and their luck.

In those final minutes, neither McNabb nor head coach Andy Reid and his staff played as if they really expected to win. Even after the spectacular touchdown catch by Lewis, they didn’t react as if they expected to win: the camera showed McNabb resting on the bench, helmet off, gazing off into the ozone.

Where was his offensive coordinator? Where was his head coach? Why were they not all in a sideline huddle anticipating what they would do if they got the ball back? If it had been New England in the same situation, Tom Brady would have been studying charts of percentages and opposition tendencies, with Bill Belichick calmly pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of each scenario.

There were several points in the game in which the Eagles looked like better players than the Patriots, and each time the Patriots adjusted and demonstrated that they were the better team. Early in the second quarter, when the Eagles took a 7-0 lead and were befuddling Brady with a dazzling series of blitzes, the Patriots went to basics, flipping consecutive screen passes to Corey Dillon for 31 yards and then, one possession later, completing three short sideline passes to single-covered wideouts.

All this came while the Patriots were feeling their way through the intricacies of the Philadelphia blitz. On the first possession of the second half, they decided they had it figured out: The Eagles’ safeties were playing soft as a precaution while the linebackers blitzed. The Patriots struck back with post patterns to the wideouts right on the seam where the Eagles cornerbacks dropped off and the safeties picked up.

With the game tied at 7 early in the third quarter, it became clear that the Patriots had completed their adjustment. On a 3rd-and-6 play, Brady hit Deion Branch for 27 yards and a first down; on a 3rd and 10, he hit Branch on a similar play for 16 yards and another first down. On 2nd-and-10 he hit Branch on an identical but slightly shorter pattern for 12 yards and a first down at the Eagles 2. That set up the touchdown that made it 14-7, after which the Patriots never trailed.

The Eagles yesterday were unlucky; the Patriots, had they been in exactly the same situation, would have been lucky. Exactly the kind of luck that Branch Rickey meant when he said, “Luck is the residue of design.”