By Ron Borges

Reportedly, the Philadephia Eagles are insulted to be coming to Foxborough on Sunday as the biggest non-expansion team regular-season underdog in the history of the La Cosa Nostra Point Spread (Isn’t everything sponsored these days?).

When you’re allegedly a professional football franchise and you’re a 22-point underdog (23 ½ when the week started) one can understand this might not set too well. In fact, former Eagle Pro Bowl kick returner Brian Mitchell groused earlier in the week on television that if he was still playing for the Eagles somebody would leave the stadium Sunday night in more pain than they arrived in.

That’s probably exactly what’s going to happen.

To the Eagles.

Emotion is an important part of pro football…for about the first minute of the game. It’s big in the pre-game introductions, when bouncing counts more than bruising, but once the game begins it really doesn’t matter all that much how peeved you may be. That is particularly true when one team is being talked about as perhaps the greatest ever assembled while the other is being talked about as, well, a whole lot less than that.

Somehow the Eagles are 5-5 but it beats me how. Well, they’re in the NFC LEast division, along with the 10-1 Cowboys (who were already pasted by the Patriots), the 7-3 Giants (who figure to be pasted by them on the final night of the season) and the 5-5 Redskins (need we go there again?). So what are the Eagles going to do about being a 22-point underdog to New England?

Probably not much but prove the oddsmakers overrated them.

Surely the Buffalo Bills were no less embarrassed a week ago to be 16 point underdogs at home while on a four-game winning streak but they weren’t as embarrassed as they were after making a mockery of that spread by losing 56-10. In case the math is troubling for you, that means if you doubled that 16-point spread they would have only lost by two touchdowns, 56-42.

By now the Eagles certainly should understand that the Gates of Mercy are locked in Foxborough. If they think otherwise they should listen to Tom Brady’s WEEI rant this week about not wanting to win 42-28. As Brady so inelegantly put it, “We’re trying to kill people.’’

That’s a nice way to look at athletic competition. What ever happened to Bob Kraft’s “We do it the right way’’ thing in Foxborough? Must have disappeared with the new mortgage payments for the Ice Fishing store they opened next door to the stadium.

The Eagles probably didn’t help themselves when several of them said during the “VideoGate’’ fiasco that maybe they could now exchange their NFC championship rings for Super Bowl ones because, as punt returner Reno Mahe said, “We won the Super Bowl.’’

Afraid not Reno. Nor will you win Sunday night. In fact, you’ll be lucky to escape Death Valley with your dignity. Dignity is in short supply down there these days but points are not. New England figures to get a lot of them and the Eagles, with or without Donovan McNabb, figure to get few. Will 22 be enough to cover the difference between them? I wouldn’t count on it.

In fact, there are those in Philadelphia who aren’t quite sure McNabb is hurt anywhere near as badly as the Eagles have made it sound but rather are holding him out of the game to preserve him for more winnable contests. Certainly if A.J. Feeley replaces him, as it appears he will on Sunday, this will not be a winnable contest nor will it be a contest. As Brady suggested however, somebody may get killed so lock up the women and children.

It will very likely be a game where insult is added to injury, Belichick adds to his hard-earned reputation for distemper and Vegas will go down hard again because they’ll have to give the Eagles more than a 22 handicap to coerce anyone but a lunatic fringe to take the points in this game.