Fortunately for them, with seven games remaining, there's still time to prevent the civic deflation that followed Sunday night's loss to the New York Giants from sinking into a full-blown depression.

The Eagles' road to recovery will have to begin Sunday in Cincinnati, where Philadelphia will go against the 1-8 Bengals. While last week there was a widespread feeling that a loss to New York would push their playoff hopes to the margins, a loss to the Bengals almost certainly would nudge them over the edge.

"I'm not going to say" that a loss would be fatal or inexcusable, defensive end Trent Cole said yesterday. "It's the NFL. Anything can happen. But we've got to go in there and win and start our winning streak."

A little due diligence would seem to indicate an easy week for the Eagles.

With one win in nine games, their starting quarterback on the sideline, and the NFL's lowest-rated offense, the Bengals would appear to be suffering from a serious competitive disadvantage against a team that ranks in the top 10 both offensively and defensively.

Spin it all another way, however, and the numbers don't look nearly so lopsided. Or, as running back Correll Buckhalter said: "Those guys get paid, too."

The Bengals might have only one win, but it came in their most-recent game. They're rested and ready, having followed the victory, over Jacksonville, with a bye week. They've got two of the league's most dangerous wideouts in Chad Johnson and T.J. Houshmandzadeh. They nearly beat the Giants in overtime at the Meadowlands earlier this season. They've defeated the Eagles all three times they've met in Cincinnati, and they've won nine of their last 11 games against NFC foes.

All that is why Eagles players and coaches have adopted a Joe Paterno-like tone of caution in sizing up what otherwise would appear to be an overmatched foe.

"They should have beaten the Giants" and are "a different team" from earlier in the season, said Jim Johnson, the Eagles' defensive coordinator. "If you watched that game, against a good Jacksonville team . . . Cedric Benson had over 100 yards rushing. They threw the ball well. The quarterback scrambles.

"All our guys have got to do is look at that tape and they'll say, 'Hey, they're playing pretty good right now.' "

In addition, an Eagles team coming off an emotionally deflating loss can't afford to look past an underperforming but talented Cincinnati team.

"The Bengals are a great team," Cole said before recognizing his hyperbole and adjusting his rating to "a dangerous team."

No one will argue with that. Even if Cincinnati does rank 32d in total offense and 30th in passing, it does have wideouts capable of keeping a drive alive (Houshmandzadeh) and breaking a big play (Johnson and Chris Henry).

The Bengals have "a couple of guys who have great speed in getting outside," Jim Johnson said. "And they've got a guy like T.J. that has great inside moves. I imagine those three receivers will be on the field about 60, 70 percent of the time."

Chad Johnson, who spent much of the preseason clamoring for a ticket out of Cincinnati, has just 37 catches and, more surprisingly, is averaging just 9.4 yards a catch.

"He's such a big-play guy that they're double-covering him quite a bit," the Eagles' Johnson said. "He's the deep threat. People are playing him with a two-deep and a safety over the top. Sometimes you do that and T.J. is the inside slot guy and he'll catch a lot more passes."

Left unsaid was that fill-in quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick isn't nearly as effective in hitting the long pass as Carson Palmer, who has a sore right elbow. The Jacksonville win was the first as a starter for Fitzpatrick, the fourth-year player from Harvard.

Still, Jim Johnson noted that the scrambling by Fitzpatrick, the Bengals' third-leading rusher, "will drive you nuts."

Defensively, where they rank 21st in the NFL, the Bengals rely on youth and aggressiveness to counterbalance a lack of depth.

"Once you watch them on film, they fly around," Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb said. "You can't tell that they're a 1-8 team. They play hard. They have two young corners who are pretty physical and like to attack receivers. Dhani Jones is playing well. They have a front four that applies pressure.

"So we have to be able to challenge them and put points on the board and not put a lot of pressure on our defense."

And if they can do all that, maybe the indexes whose arrows were all pointing down late Sunday night, when the Eagles couldn't make a yard on two fourth-quarter plays, will start climbing again.

"It's a long season," McNabb said, still bullish. "You're going to hit the wall sometime, and sometimes things aren't going to go as well as you want them to. But at least we have enough time where we'll be able to correct that and continue on."

Contact staff writer Frank Fitzpatrick at 215-854-5068 or ffitzpatrick@phillynews.com.