Competition creates two things: Winners and losers. Typically, those results are temporary, and when it comes to the Washington Commanders and Philadelphia Eagles this season, both sides experienced each fate going 1-1 in their two matchups against each other.

In fact, both teams held the fourth-quarter leads in each one, with the Commanders taking the lead into the final stretch in the first game and the Eagles doing the same in the second.

Both teams failed to stave off the other’s comeback as well, leading most to believe Washington and Philadelphia will probably compete in a close matchup this weekend. But not if you ask former Eagles linebacker Seth Joyner.

“By the way, they don’t stand a snowballs chance in hell in winning here on Sunday. You know that right?”  while making a guest appearance on the WIP Morning Show on Sportsradio 94WIP recently. “Make sure you take that, and you play that all damn week, alright?”

But before any Commanders fans get mad at Joyner for the outlandish comment, remember you’re talking to a wounded person.

Granted, Joyner was selected to two Pro Bowls in his eight seasons with Philadelphia, but before he left for the Arizona Cardinals, then the Green Bay Packers, and finally the Denver Broncos, the linebacker had to wear the loser tag more times than not.

At least when it came to Washington, and especially when it came to the biggest moments in the sport.

You see, in his day, the Eagles actually beat Washington more times than not. But where it mattered most, in the postseason, Joyner’s squads just never measured up.

Having to watch from home as Washington added two Super Bowl titles to the one it already had from just a couple of seasons before he joined the NFL was painful enough. Going one-and-done in the postseason himself in 1988, 89, and 90 is worse. Losing that 1990 playoff game to Washington, well, you can imagine the bitterness that can be born from that type of jealousy.

Even when Joyner’s Eagles finally won a playoff game in 1993, they immediately fell to the hated Dallas Cowboys, who eventually won the Super Bowl.

You might say Joyner was a good luck charm for the rest of the division, in fact. During his eight seasons in Philadelphia, the NFC East won five Super Bowls – two for Washington, two for the New York Giants, and one for the Dallas Cowboys. None for the Eagles.

Even when Joyner left Philadelphia to play for the Cardinals, the blessings for the rest of the division continued. He spent 1994, 95, and 96 in Arizona, and the Cowboys won two more titles. Really, the hayday of the NFC East is all tied to Joyner’s presence in it, if you think about it.

Seeking a ring of his own, Joyner latched on in Green Bay and lost in the Super Bowl. So he joined the Broncos, the same team that beat his Packers, and contributed five tackles to the team that figured out how to break the ‘Joyner curse,’ just don’t play him.

Really, Commanders fans shouldn’t be upset with Joyner. Nor should the players or coaches. While he lives vicariously through this Eagles roster, just remember all of the times he had to watch burgundy and gold-clad players celebrate while he struggled to get just one postseason win in Kelly green.

Stick with CommanderGameday and the Locked On Commanders podcast for more FREE coverage of the Washington Commanders throughout the 2024 season.

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Then, there are the rank-and-file supporters of the winning party. Wearing transparent plastic raincoats, they have to brave the weather conditions and slosh around icy sidewalks, often being misdirected by police transferred from other cities and states to assist the security operation — it’s a far cry from the well-heeled taking high tea in the lobby of the Willard Hotel, listening to harp music a stone’s throw from the White House. 

But with this inauguration, more than any other, there’s sense of a profound break with the past. The crowd who’ve descended on Washington, donning their red MAGA hats, Trump-adorned shirts and American-flag regalia, seem more like an army of sans-culottes — the working-class who played a significant role in the French Revolution.

They feel they’ve conquered, and they mean to take the nation’s capital back.

Whether that’s how it will play out isn’t clear, though. As Trump bragged at a campaign-style pre-inaugural rally on Sunday night, his electoral coalition has expanded. Railing against his adversaries, from Democrats to journalists and immigrants to never-Trump Republicans, he promised his cheering supporters: “Once and for all, we’re going to end the reign of a failed and corrupt political establishment in Washington, a failed administration.”

Other speakers at the raucous rally were even more belligerent, denouncing opponents who stood in Trump’s way. “They did everything they could to stop this movement, and they failed,″ Eric Trump, the president son, said.

“Accountability is coming,” said senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller. “The whole federal bureaucracy is about to learn that they don’t work for themselves; they work for you, they work for President Trump, and they work for the American people. We are about to get our country back and our democracy back.”

But a bigger coalition risks tensions and flare-ups. The MAGA crowd may like the spectacle of tech and Wall Street titans coming to them cap-in-hand, but who will co-opt who? Republicans have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, but the five-seat majority they have in the House of Representatives will make life difficult — and Trump strategists have already walked away from attempting what Trump dubbed “one big, beautiful bill” to enact a huge raft of reforms.

“At the moment Trump doesn’t have to choose between competing parts of his coalition,” Sean Spicer, a former Trump aide who served as press secretary for part of the president’s first term, told POLITICO. “There’s nothing making him have to pick … at the moment.”

President Donald J. Trump began his second term with a dramatic pledge to sweep away the liberal gains made by Democrats under Joe Biden, saying in his inaugural address Monday that he planned to sign a historic number of executive orders right away to begin reshaping American society in his image while ushering in a new “golden age” for the nation.

Trump, who is expected to sign as many as 100 executive orders on his first day in office, said he’d focus immediately on his main campaign promise to crack down on illegal immigration and deport millions of undocumented people.

The president said he would declare a national emergency at the southern U.S. border, and a separate “national energy emergency” to increase domestic oil and gas production, part of an effort to roll back policies enacted by his predecessor to fight climate change.

With his second inaugural speech and the deluge of promised executive orders, Trump put Washington on notice that he plans to move swiftly on several major policy fronts at once, while also taking steps to put conservative values around diversity and inclusion at the center of government and public life.

Trump enters office riding a wave of political momentum with a Republican Party that’s largely united behind his policy proposals — unlike the start of his first term, when the GOP controlled Congress but was divided over his status as a political outsider and neophyte.

Now, Republicans also control the House and Senate, but the party’s leadership and rank-and-file is filled with MAGA loyalists.

Trump also now enjoys the support of powerful tech executives who are expected to have an influential voice in his administration. The list of business leaders on hand to watch Trump get sworn in included the billionaire Tesla CEO turned close Trump ally Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The tech titans were part of a paired-down group of dignitaries who packed into the Rotunda at the U.S. Capitol to attend the inaugural ceremony after it was moved indoors due to extreme cold — the first time that has happened since Ronald Reagan’s second inaugural in 1985.

The formal transfer of power Monday completed one of the most remarkable political comebacks in the country’s nearly 250-year history. Trump is just the second American president to serve two nonconsecutive terms. The other is Grover Cleveland, who accomplished the feat back in the late 19th century.

Trump made history in other ways as well. He is now the first occupant of the Oval Office with a felony conviction. Trump, who turns 79 in June, also became the oldest president at the time of his swearing-in ceremony, beating by approximately six months the record Biden set when he took office in 2021.

Trump’s return to power comes after an embattled four-year hiatus out of office following his failed effort to overturn the results of his 2020 election loss to Biden.

The setting of the swearing-in ceremony offered a stark reminder of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, when an angry mob of Trump supporters took over the building — including the Rotunda, where Trump was sworn-in for his second term — in an unsuccessful attempt to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s election victory.

The violent insurrection overshadowed the final days of Trump’s first term and seemed at the time almost certain to rule out any future bid for the presidency.

But now, instead of ending his political career on a losing note — as a twice-impeached, one-term president — Trump will have four more years to put his stamp on the nation and a chance to further cement his legacy as the most consequential Republican president since Reagan.

Trump’s relatively brief remarks felt at times more like a wishlist-laden State of the Union speech to Congress than an inaugural address.

In addition to the plans to declare states of emergency around immigration and energy, Trump also said he would designate drug cartels as terrorist organizations; bring back “law and order” to American cities; end what he called the “chronic disease epidemic,” and send U.S. astronauts to Mars.

Trump said his administration would “end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public life,” adding, “we will forge a society that is color blind and merit-based.” He also declared it would be official U.S. government policy that there are “only two genders, male and female.”

The vision Trump laid out amounted to a stark repudiation of Democrats and represented a reversal of a yearslong effort by the party to address systemic racism, sexism and other societal issues in the economy, education and other areas.

Trump also warned the rest of the world to prepare for a return to the “America First” approach to foreign affairs that defined his first term as president. He said he would strengthen the U.S. military and claimed that “our power will stop all wars,” while saying he hoped he would be remembered as a “peacemaker and a unifier.”

That point was driven home by a ceasefire and hostage deal in the process of being carried out thousands of miles away in Gaza, which was said to be heavily influenced by Trump’s return to power and the behind-the-scenes machinations of his Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, who worked closely with the Biden administration in its final days to secure the deal.

Trump’s speech differed from his first inaugural address in 2017 in other ways as well. When he took office eight years ago as a political outsider, Trump painted a dark picture of a failing nation crippled by poverty and crime. “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” Trump famously said at the time.

The president echoed that message to some degree in his second inaugural address, but in other moments he sought to strike a more optimistic tone. “We stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history,” Trump said, then added, “We’re going to win like never before.”

The smaller indoor ceremony meant that thousands of people who traveled to the capital for the inauguration missed out on seeing Trump take the oath of office in person from the National Mall. But Trump supporters still blanketed the city at parties and events in his honor that will continue through the night Monday, signaling the changing of the guard.

After Trump was sworn in, Biden departed the Capitol to deliver the traditional farewell address before leaving Washington to start his post-presidency. After speaking to supporters downstairs from the Rotunda, Trump was set to attend a Congressional luncheon before signing the first of his many expected executive orders from the Capital One Arena across town, where thousands of his supporters had gathered in anticipation.