The night before Super Bowl XXXIX, New England trainers Jim Whalen, Joe Van Allen and coaches had a mantra for the players: “Drink, drink, drink.'’ Want another reason why the Patriots are so good from top to bottom? The organization knew some of the players would be having their share of drinking fun during Super Bowl week. They also knew the weather in Jacksonville on Sunday was going to be significantly warmer than it was during the week. Whereas the players were practicing in sweatshirts with the 40-degree chill during the week, it was supposed to be in the mid-60s Sunday afternoon when the Patriots would take the Alltel field to loosen up for the 6:38 p.m. kickoff.

“Drink, drink, drink.'’ The Patriots were tuckered out in the fourth quarter, but no players had to miss playing time because of dehydration. For the Eagles, safety Rod Hood had to miss time because of cramps, Jevon Kearse struggled with cramping, Todd Pinkston had to go into the locker room to get an IV of fluids for dehydration … and Donovan McNabb, in the heat of the final drive of the game, couldn’t go no-huddle because he was disoriented and wretching, probably from dehydration.

“It wasn’t just Saturday night either,'’ Troy Brown told me last week. “We were hydrating all week long.'’

What effect did hydration and exhaustion play in the game? We may never know, but the Eagles sure looked beat, particularly McNabb, on the drive when they didn’t go no-huddle and wasted so much of the clock. “That last five, six minutes of the game, we just figured they were exhausted and that’s why they didn’t go no-huddle,'’ Brown said. “We saw they couldn’t run the two-minute offense, and the only reason they didn’t, we thought, was because they were exhausted.'’