The Eagles last hosted the Rams in the playoffs in 1989. It was the beginning of the end for Buddy Ryan in Philly.

Sunday won’t be the first time that the Eagles enter a home playoff game as favorites against the Los Angeles Rams. One year to the day after the almost mystical 1988 “Fog Bowl” loss in Chicago, the Eagles faced the Rams in an NFC wild-card game at Veterans Stadium.

That day — Sunday, Dec. 31, 1989 — did not go so well for the Eagles. The Rams, 2.5-point underdogs, scored two touchdowns in the first eight minutes and rolled to a 21-7 victory that not only eliminated the Eagles, but also served as the beginning of the end of an era.

Their head coach, the brusque yet entertaining Buddy Ryan, badly wanted a playoff victory that would prove that his rambunctious team was really moving forward. Ryan also badly wanted a contract extension from Eagles owner Norman Braman.

» READ MORE: Ranking the 50 greatest Eagles of all time

Braman, the South Florida luxury auto dealer that Ryan called “The Guy in France” because he spent a lot of time at his villa there, never did give Ryan that extension. Ryan was fired after the 1990 season, which ended with another playoff loss at home, to Washington.

“It is time to stop being a bridesmaid and become a bride,” Braman famously said when he announced on Jan. 8, 1991, that Ryan had been fired after five seasons.

The dismal loss to the Rams that ended the 1989 season — the game was played during a cold mist and in front of around 8,000 empty seats — capsulized the Buddy Ryan era in Philadelphia: Ryan and his players sure talked tough, but they failed to deliver when it mattered.

“We just talked to Buddy Ryan,” Pat Summerall, who called the game for CBS, said during the telecast. “We asked him what they had to do on offense. He said, ‘Just about anything we want to.’ What do you think of that?”

John Madden, Summerall’s broadcast partner, quickly replied, “Well, I think that’s what Buddy thinks — they can do anything they want on offense.”

The 20-12 playoff loss to the Bears a year earlier at fog-blanketed Soldier Field was so bizarre that at least the Eagles had a novel excuse. There were no excuses for the shabby playoff effort against the Rams. And the Eagles’ pregame bluster merely incited the opponents.

“We read things in the paper, stuff about the warm-weather beach boys from L.A. We didn’t like that,” said Kevin Greene, the Rams’ Pro Bowl linebacker. “We played basic, physical football and kicked their butts. Any more questions?”

It was the Eagles’ first home playoff game in eight years. Forty years had passed since their first playoff game against the Rams — the 1949 NFL Championship game, which the Steve Van Buren-powered Eagles won, 14-0, in the mud before just 22,245 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

The Eagles were susceptible heading into the 1989 playoff game — by their own doing. Earlier in December, cornerback Eric Allen had injured his ankle while roughhousing in the Eagles’ locker room with Sammy Lilly, a backup. Allen missed all or parts of three games.

Even worse, Allen had been slow to recover: “He didn’t practice worth a lick today,” Ryan said four days before the game. So Ryan’s best option was to start Eric Everett at cornerback in place of Allen. The other corner was Izel Jenkins, so often burned he was nicknamed “Toast.”

So the Rams went right after the cornerbacks: “That’s called strategy,” quarterback Jim Everett joked. Everett passed for 167 yards in the first 12 minutes. Less than three minutes in, Jenkins mistimed a leap to deflect a pass, allowing Henry Ellard to catch a 39-yard touchdown.

Eric Everett, a second-year player who would play 75 games for four NFL teams, was beaten so badly on the Rams’ first three drives that Ryan replaced him with Allen. “When things were happening the way they did, he had to come in because there were no tomorrows,” Ryan said.

Meanwhile, the Rams defense quietly stifled Randall Cunningham and the Eagles offense, making the Eagles’ vaunted and mouthy defense look inept in comparison. The Eagles only scored a fourth-quarter touchdown, which was later matched by the Rams.

» READ MORE: Hayes: Jalen Hurts’ return and Saquon Barkley’s presence make this the best Eagles team to ever pursue a Super Bowl

Jerome Brown, the boisterous and budding third-year defensive tackle, declared that the Eagles’ front four deserved the blame for failing to get to Jim Everett enough, saying, “We didn’t get the sacks we really needed. That’s it. I take the heat off everyone else.”

Eagles fans knew better. The stands had all but emptied by the end of the game, which ended with Everett taking three snaps and kneeling on the fuzzy green concrete that served as the Vet’s artificial turf surface. It was still only the middle of the afternoon on New Year’s Eve.

The Guy in France was quite displeased. Braman said after the game, “It’s something that concerns us; we’re not happy about it. It’s not a question of winning the big one,” meaning the Super Bowl, “we’re obviously not quite there. We have to figure out why we’re not quite there and do something about it, either in the draft or through Plan B” free agency.

Ryan said a day later that he doubted he would return in 1990 without a contract extension (and a nice pay raise from his $200,000 salary), but Braman adopted a wait-and-see attitude — and kept it through the 1990 season, which ended with the playoff loss to Washington.

Rich Kotite, hired as an offensive coordinator in 1990, became the head coach, and he named Bud Carson, the so-called architect of the mighty Steel Curtain defense in Pittsburgh, as defensive coordinator. The Eagles talked less and had the league’s No. 1 defense in 1991.

Had the Eagles beaten the Rams on that gloomy December afternoon 35 years ago, they would have played a divisional-round game in San Francisco against the 49ers, who’d trounce Minnesota, the Rams, and Denver to win their second straight Super Bowl and fourth overall.

So it is quite possible that the Eagles would have lost their next playoff game, in yet another city famous for its fog. But a playoff victory that day against the Rams would surely have given Ryan more negotiating power with Braman (who is now 92, by the way).

The Eagles did finish 10-6 in 1990, Ryan’s last season. That the loss was in a listless performance at home against Washington — a team the Eagles literally battered in the notorious “Body Bag Game” at the Vet eight weeks earlier — made that season feel like a huge waste.

“I’m sure he was just waiting for us to stumble and fall before he made that decision,” Seth Joyner, the emotional outside linebacker, said of Braman’s decision to oust Ryan.

(Braman also did not particularly like the Eagles’ 120 penalties in 1990, nor how Ryan clearly sided with his players in a 1987 strike.)

Ryan died in 2016. Five of the defensive starters in that Rams game — Brown, Reggie White, Mike Pitts, Andre Waters, and Wes Hopkins — are gone, too, as are Carson and club president Harry Gamble. Four of the six Inquirer reporters at the game have passed on. Braman sold the Eagles in 1994 to Jeffrey Lurie, first identified as an “heir to a publishing fortune.”

» READ MORE: Jerome Brown has been gone for 30 years, but his joy endures for this former Inquirer Eagles writer

The Eagles would play the Rams in the playoffs one more time, losing to them, 29-24, in the NFC championship game at the end of the 2001 season, but the Rams had moved to St. Louis. It was the first of four straight NFC title game appearances for former Eagles coach Andy Reid.

I was in the dank and chilly Vet press box that day, on sidebar duty for The Inquirer. The start of the game was such a nightmare for the Eagles that, combined with the weather, the setting seemed surreal, as if the Eagles would be doomed not just that day, but forever.

Of course, that was not true. They’d just gone as far as they could under Ryan.

“Don’t feel too sorry for Buddy Ryan,” he told all of us the day he was let go.