‘New Normal’ looks like the same old crisis point
PHILADELPHIA >> The Eagles went 57 seasons between world championships, some of them disappointing, some of them unfortunate, too many of them abominable. Fiftyseven. Longer than Doug Pederson had been alive. They were the best in the world in 1960, then again after the 2017 season, when they won the Super Bowl on a February day when Tom Brady passed for 500 yards. Easy, it was not. Just the same, Pederson was quick to declare a fresh trend.
“The new normal,” is what he would call it.
His message was clear: It wouldn’t take 57 years the next time. Not even 56.
If he was captured by the moment, blinded by the confetti, distracted by the parade-goers, it was understandable that Pederson would believe that 1-for-57 could soon be 2-for-58. But he’d been around pro football long enough to know it doesn’t work that way. And unless something changes, and quickly, it’s not going to work that way for the Eagles of 2018. They are 3-4. And after a 21-17 loss to the Carolina Panthers Sunday, they already are at a crisis point.
And that’s because too much changed, and too soon.
Professional sports having its own dynamic, it is impossible to keep everything in order from one season to the next. Players age. Bones crack. Agents crack, too, demanding more money for their clients. Drafting occurs. Personnel turnover is natural. But the Eagles went into the offseason as if plowing headfirst into a crowd of tacklers. And if a headache ensued, they wouldn’t mind. After all, Team New Normal had it all figured out. It would just play fantasy football again and make it look easy.
That was the story of the Super Bowl LII champions: They were largely thrown together in a hurry. Even when their owner, Jeffrey Lurie, was warning that a mini-building process could take a while, there was Howie Roseman acquiring veterans, mostly on shortterm deals. Alshon Jeffery. LeGarrette Blount. Torrey Smith. He even brought back Nick Foles on a twoyear hunch. Everywhere, or so it felt, there were new playmakers. And for one year, it all worked. Even that Nick Foles part. Especially that Nick Foles part, as it is all there, in the best-selling book he wrote after being the MVP of the Super Bowl.
But then the Eagles went at it again, not so much massaging their roster as vandalizing it.
“It’s a different team,” Pederson said Monday, at his day-after news conference. “It’s a different year.”
And that’s the word so many have them have used through their disappointing encore. Different. The trouble: It’s too different.
Obviously, there would be no long-term Foles presence. The Eagles made too much of an investment in Carson Wentz not to give him his job back after recovering from knee surgery. He has MVP-level skills. That was going to change. But Roseman allowed Blount, whose championship swagger and tough-yard ability gave the Eagles a certain definition, to bull into free agency. And he traded Smith for Daryl Worley, who was cut shortly after, but only because he was arrested after being caught napping in his car on a street near the NewsControl Compound, then allegedly gave the police such a hard time that he needed to be zapped with a Taser.
They signed Mike Wallace, a receiver with some NFL accomplishment, in another anyone-can-doit fantasy-football-like initiative. He was useless in camp, then got injured. Haloti Ngata had been a productive pro, so the Eagles would give him a run at a defensive line job. But he’s 34, looks 35, and has a chronic calf injury. They signed Paul Worrilow, an interesting linebacker. But he didn’t make it until lunch at OTA No. 1 before suffering a season-ending injury.
Nothing seemed to work, other than Michael Bennett, who arrived in a trade and has been a helpful pass rusher. But that’s the way it usually works, when so many risks are taken in one offseason. The upheaval is too much.
“This is a tough place to play,” Smith said Sunday, after contributing heavily to the Panthers’ victory. “It’s one of the better teams in the league, one of the teams that’s a standard in the league.”
Once before, or so it seemed, Lurie did use the word ‘standard.’ But this time, the Eagles believed they were headed that way. They were convinced that after spinning the dial for 57 years, they finally found the secret combination to winning a Super Bowl. They couldn’t have predicted injuries, of which they’ve had more than their share. But they should have felt the risk of too much personnel turnover. And maybe that’s why Pederson went back to the other thing that pushed the Eagles to succeed last season: A goofy internal belief that the rest of the world never likes their chances.
“Listen, no one gives us a rat’s (chance),” Pederson said Monday. “They’ve kind of written us off, so to speak.”
Underdogs. That bit again.
There is still a trade deadline to maximize. That will be Oct. 30. Roseman did a good job last season, squeezing in a trade for Jay Ajayi just in time to matter. He could be aggressive again in the next week. This time, though, the critics are right. This time, the Eagles look nothing like that 57th team, and too much like the previous 56.
This time, they look too much like the old normal.