Philadelphia ? Losing isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.

Quotes like that won’t get big silver trophies named after you, so Vince Lombardi went with “winning” for his famous epigram. For an awful lot of coaches, in football and in every other sport, dealing with defeat is a big part of the job.

“They got a name for the winners in the world,” Steely Dan once sang. “I want a name when I lose.”

Nobody suggested naming the Super Bowl trophy after them, although the Steely Dan suggestion does have a certain ring to it.

The question: Can losing be good for a team? If it’s only occasionally and only at the right time, can there be medicinal benefits to swallowing a big, bitter tablespoon of defeat?

The question seems especially relevant today, for two reasons.

The Indianapolis Colts lost their first game of the season on Sunday, after starting 13-0 and rousing the ghosts of the 1972 Miami Dolphins.

And the Eagles are getting a big dose of losing after five consecutive playoff years, four appearances in the league’s final four, and one trip to the Super Bowl.

So you wonder. Can losing, so distasteful in the short term, benefit these teams in the long run?

For the Colts, that means a little setback now that helps gird them, mentally and physically, for the playoffs. Especially if they have to face their nemeses, the New England Patriots, sometime in January.

For the Eagles, it means a one-year sabbatical from winning that refocuses the entire organization, brings some perspective, and forces some changes that were easily delayed while the team was winning.

Can losing be good for you?

Most players and coaches will say no. Certainly that was the tack taken by Colts coach Tony Dungy after Sunday’s loss to the San Diego Chargers. It is the public stance taken by almost every college basketball coach whose top-ranked team loses a conference game in the weeks leading up to the NCAA Tournament.

Deep down, though, you suspect the coach might just be a little pleased by a loss that gets his players’ attention without ending anybody’s season. If any of the Colts had come to believe that their team was unstoppable, they were disabused of that notion by the Chargers.

Watching Peyton Manning panic in the face of a pass rush, aside from being just plain fun for the rest of the world, is bound to embarrass the Colts’ offensive linemen. Maybe that will serve the team well in January.

Had the Colts finished the regular season at 16-0 and then lost in the playoffs, it would have been one of the most hollow achievements in the history of the NFL. Now Dungy can rest his starters, get everyone fresh and ready at the risk of a 14-2 or 13-3 record, and try to win that Steely, er, Lombardi Trophy.

The Eagles, so accustomed to cruising during the regular season, were in the unfamiliar position of needing Sunday’s win to soothe their bruised psyches. That’s because they’ve overdosed just a bit on the losing-as-medicine concept. Losing becomes corrosive if you do it too much, so the Eagles must respond to this debacle quickly and decisively.

This year will only serve the Eagles well in the future if they face what happened head on, if they’re ruthlessly honest, and if they take the appropriate action.

They’ve got a name for the people who know how to take a negative like a lost game or lost season and turn it into a positive. They call them winners.