Quick shakeup of Eagles was unfortunate NFL reality
Before the 1974 Flyers played Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final, Fred Shero famously wrote on the dressing room blackboard that if they won that day, they would walk together forever. In many ways, they have.
As for the 2018 World Champion Eagles, they were unable to walk together much past the top Art Museum step.
Different sport, different times, different economy, different culture, different agents, different rules. All of that. And whenever the champs of Super Bowl LI reunite, it will be glorious.
But it’s just too bad — isn’t it? — that the NFL is set up in such a way that teams, even the best teams, are constantly splintered. The grease on the Cottman Ave. lampposts still hasn’t dried, and already LeGarrette Blount, Torrey Smith, Vinny Curry, Brent Celek, Donnie Jones and Trey Burton are gone. There have been upper-level hooligans who have been allowed to hang around longer.
Howie Roseman, who may be one more championship team from the Hall of Fame, deserves the assumption that he will handle the necessary personnel flux with flawless expertise. Michael Bennett will help. Haloti Ngata will help. Change, in some ways, will help. Player for player, the Eagles already seem better for their offseason shuffling.
But with the perfection of their parade and the way they bonded with the city, the Eagles were in a position to endure in popularity for decades. It’s just unlikely to work that way anymore, not in his century. And that’s something to regret. Forever.
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You get pork pie hats?
••• Chances are the Phillies already have booked their ceremonial-first-pitch thrower for Opening Day.
But anything short of this will be good only for the silver medal: Jason Kelce, in pinstriped mummers swag, flips the game ball to Nick Foles. Foles then flicks it to Burton before making a 60-foot, sixinch sprint to the plate to grab a catcher’s mitt. Burton tosses the pitch to Foles.
The Phillies Special. That’s what it would be called. And there would not be a louder roar in Citizens Bank Park for the rest of the summer.
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You get David Letterman’s beard?
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Joel Embiid is an MVP candidate. And if Ben Simmons is not Rookie of the Year, blame the Russians.
But what about a third Sixers cap in an awards race? Brett Brown should be the Coach of the Year.
Because rewarding success is never wrong, Dwane Casey is going to win the award for pushing the Raptors to the top of the Eastern Conference standings. But no Sixers coach in modern times has ever made more out of an oddly assembled roster than Brown.
With a 6-10 rookie point guard who won’t shoot and who never played the position, and with a center who rarely practices, Brown will take the Sixers from 14th place in the conference last year into the playoffs this season. Some new veterans, including J.J. Redick, who is the best shooter the Sixers ever have employed, have helped. But that’s only because Brown delicately and accurately defined their workload, getting them to accept roles without clubhouse upheaval.
Brown will be blamed by some for the Sixers’ many turnovers and for losing some big leads, at least early. But for the same reasons that happened, success has happened too. Those reasons: The Sixers play at a faster pace than most teams, pass the ball more often and, thus, subject themselves to more errors and more wild lead changes.
Among the most difficult coaching tricks is to nudge a team into defending with passion. And that’s what has made the Sixers successful this season. Even more than their MVP candidate. Even more than their Rookie of the Year.
••• Roughly three months after season-ending surgery on his left knee, Carson Wentz has released a video that shows him throwing footballs around the NewsControl Compound.
Because too many not only tolerate it but demand it, that’s where pro sports news is heading: Players, or their handlers, dispensing information at their own pace, thank you very much.
The video clip made Wentz appear to be nicely along in his recovery. That’s good news, or so it seemed, for the Eagles and their fans. But it provided no context of how he looked before or after the brief shot. Nor did it allow for any questioning from observers not tied to Wentz.
Given that there is a day or two before the Eagles play their next game, the video was relatively insignificant in any football sense. But athletes distributing their own propaganda is a growing trend. And it deserves to be sacked.
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The owners of the Wells Fargo Center are about to dump a quarter-billion dollars into renovations. Well, that gets Ilya Bryzgalov off the hook as the worst financial decision ever made around there.
Everywhere, grand, new arenas and indoor stadiums are sprouting. And while Philadelphia will be tied to Citizens Bank Park and the Linc for another two decades, the biological clock on that WFC has been clicking too loudly for too long.
Though it has only been open for 22 years, that is growing closer to the length of time that many modern sports arenas last. Though it stood until 2009, the Spectrum was done as a major-league sports venue after 29 years. Veterans Stadium was around for 33 years.
If a new arena were planned this week, either at the old Spectrum site, in downtown Philadelphia, or on the (pick one: Philadelphia or Camden) waterfront, it would take about five years to complete. So get going with it already, and use that $250,000,000 toward something better.
Until then, the Wells Fargo Center Experience can be improved with a sixdollar mop. And better goaltending. •••
If a phone message says, “Your call is very important to us” … it isn’t.
Contact Jack McCaffery @jmccaffery@21stcenturymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @JackMcCaffery