Eagles fans

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HIDE EAGLES HIDE?

Posted by The BEAST on 2021/03/04
Posted in: Conversations, Fans, Front Office (F.O.), Offense, Players, Rants, The 12, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

EAGLES QB Carson Wentz was traded to the Indianapolis Colts on February 18th, 2021. At that point, all talk of the drama could cease. The was nothing left to do for the Eagles organization and fans, but look towards the future.

With that in mind, I stepped back and observed. I watched. I listened. I waited to see what the new coach envisioned for the team. I waited to see what the fans would chatter excitedly over.

Two excruciating weeks have dripped by, and there’s been practically nothing about the team. Most peculiarly, from the organization itself. It’s 3:04a.m., March 4th as I write this, and these are stories on the Eagles website:

Now don’t get me wrong. I understand not tipping your hand, but to say nothing? Are they telling us that no one, has an encouraging word for presumed starting QB Jalen Hurts? Are they telling us that “Where Are They Now?” articles are more important than “This Year’s Break-out Player Will Be” articles?

Aside from my THE 12 series, there doesn’t seem to be much passion for football in this city, anymore. Sad. Maybe we traded it away on February 18th.

TRADING FOR YANNICK NGAKOUE

Posted by The BEAST on 2020/04/09
Posted in: Conversations, Defense, Fans, Front Office (F.O.), NFC East, Players, Roster, trade. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

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DEFENSIVE End Yannick Ngakoue is trying to convince the Jacksonville Jaguars to trade him. Along with his many requests to be elsewhere, are a number of dropped hints as to where he’d like to go. If his hint list did not include the Eagles, I would totally ignore this story. But it does. So I can’t.

Lots of Eagles fans want the Front Office to trade for Ngakoue. He represents something that the Eagles have lacked for a long time now. He’s a pass rusher that opponents will feel they have to game plan for. Not to devalue DE Brandon Graham, but tell me about the year where Graham recorded 10 sacks or more. Don’t waste time looking. For Graham there is no such year.

In fact, the last time an Eagles DE recorded 10 sacks or more in a season was 2011. DE Jason Babin had 18, and DE Trent Cole had 11. No Eagles defensive lineman would notch 10 sacks again, until DT Fletcher Cox posted 10 in 2018.

So yeah. Many Eagles fans are excited by the elements that Ngakoue can add to our Defense. They have visions of double digit sack years dancing in their heads. To which I can only respond:

Excuse me.

Kirk God starship

Excuse me. I just want to ask a question:

Can Ngakoue thrive as a DE in the NFC East?

Three quarters of the NFC East plays in cities that get inclement weather. None of those teams plays in a dome. Three quarters of the NFC East plays in stadiums near large bodies of water. That means humidity in the air and on the ball, early in the season. It means frost on the turf, and a dry, slick ball, late in the season.

Because the weather can impact the passing game significantly, our division is married to the run in ways that other divisions don’t have to be. Defending the run requires bulk to keep players from wearing down later in the year. It’s why there are no 246 pound starting DE’s in this division. Now guess how much Ngakoue weighs.

Understand, Ngakoue is from Washington D.C., and he played college ball at Maryland. He knows what weather in the region looks like. He grew up with it, and he can undoubtedly add some weight. If he does though, will we be getting the player that we saw with the Jags, or will we be getting Jevon Kearse 2.0?

Funny story, true story. At 11:37 this morning I went looking for a picture of Ngakoue to place in this article. While doing so, I noticed that while there are dozens of pictures of him sacking QB’s, aside from this picture,

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it’s really hard to find any pictures of him tackling a RB. (Not that this is a tackle either.) You just can’t live that way in the NFC East. In this division, DE’s also have to play the run.

Also, watching him try to force his way out of Jacksonville makes me very uncomfortable. I’m fine with him wanting to leave. He’s entitled to wanting a different work environment. What I’m not fine with, is the way he’s making a show of it.

He says he wants to go to a team with a winning culture. One of the reasons Jacksonville doesn’t have a winning culture, is because they have players who make individual choices like the path he’s chosen. True strength of character would be to create a winning culture. Instead, he wants to immigrate to a place where the work has already been done. That’s suspect behavior.

You probably expected me to rant about why he’s not worth what Jacksonville is asking in return for him. Fact is, to me it never even needs to get that far. To heck with trading for him. I wouldn’t sign him, if he were an Unrestricted Free Agent. Keep reading.

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Other fans see his sacks, and look past all the red flags. He’s talented yes, but he’s a showboat who doesn’t bring more to the table than stats. That’s the antithesis of the Eagles locker room culture. He’s all wrong for the mental make-up of my team. For that reason, he’s better suited to the Browns, Steelers or Cowboys. Or of course, the Jaguars.

WHAT DREW PEARSON HERE?

Posted by The BEAST on 2017/05/05
Posted in: Conversations, Draft, Rants, Rivals, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , . 3 Comments

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AS a member of few NFC East based Trash Talk groups (on Facebook), I’ve ended up in dozens of debates over the years with Cowboys fans. The funny thing is, regardless of what subject they bring up (five rings, the Triplets, America’s Team), the one thing I never hear from them, is the name Drew Pearson. He simply never comes up. It’s almost as if they’d forgotten he’d existed.

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When people love and want to remember athletes, they retire their numbers. A great example of that is Brian Dawkins. Dawk is loved by Eagles fans, so his number is NOT up for recycling on players who slap their mothers.  

Which is why Pearson went all-out to antagonize Eagles fans during the Draft. It was just a case of a forgotten relic, doing what he could to be relevant again for a week or so. It’s why a week later he continues to troll not the Eagles organization that he played against, but the Eagles fans themselves. He just wants to remind Cowboys fans that Dez Bryant, and Michael Irvin weren’t the only 88’s in team history.

My guess is that he still does appearances in Dallas, at bank openings and car dealerships. Mostly for those fans who haven’t quite reached senility yet, and so will still vaguely recall him, if they’re told who he is. Still, it apparently isn’t enough attention for the Wide Re-geezer. So to get his name out there, he hauled his shriveled keister onto an Econo/Coach flight (likely on his own dime, right Jerry?), and came to Philadelphia to be made emotionally whole, by the only fans on Earth who could do it.

You could see on his face that it felt good to him that anybody still felt anything at all for him. Even if all it was, was a distant and faded form of hatred. A watered down version of true hostility, delivered by an audience mostly too young to have ever seen him play. The hostility wasn’t really even for him, but for the Cowboys having been mentioned. How could it be for him, when no one knew who he was? In all truth, most Eagles fans would probably hold the door for him at Wawa, because we wouldn’t recognize him if our lives depended on it.

Still, it was nice of us to make an old man feel like he mattered, during what may be his last night under the bright lights. If only for a moment Eagles fans did what no Cowboys fans ever could. We made him feel like a Star again.

You’re welcomed Drew. Drive safe. 

COULD THIS BE THE YEAR?

Posted by The BEAST on 2016/07/13
Posted in: Conversations, Rants, Reviews. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

eddie scissors

NO.

No it isn’t.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. “Any given Sunday.” “That’s why they play the games.” “Stranger things have happened.”

Blah, blah, blah.

The wait for Training Camp is KILLING ME. So I went staggering through a few Eagles fan groups last night, to see what other fans thought of how we look. That, and to maybe have a detailed discussion that could teach me something I didn’t know, or point out something that I didn’t notice.

The good news is, I’m pretty sure that a couple of the commenters on a particular rival site (I won’t mention that site’s name :P) have been to this website. There were a couple guys who made some REALLY good points. (If you’re reading this, you should comment here more often.) The bad news is, that I think a few of them may have misinterpreted my optimism.

For the record, I think we can do 9-7 and win the NFC East. I stand firmly behind that. No wavering here. I think we may even be able to steal a playoff win. I do not see us as being ready to make a deep playoff run. I do not see us as being able to win this year’s Super Bowl. While I did write in 2014 that every playoff capable team has a shot, I also pointed out that that shot is purely theoretical.

Unlike many Eagles fans I’m unwilling to set myself up to be angry in February, over something that was never promised, by people I never met, purely because I wanted it to be so. I expect a decent team in 2016, that sets the stage for 2017 and all the young guys. And just so you know, with all the young guys we’ll be folding in next year, I wouldn’t place bets on 2017 being the year either.

I’m a fan, but I am NOT delusional.

FUCK THESE HERE PLAYOFFS

Posted by The BEAST on 2016/01/16
Posted in: Crazy Talk. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

Fuck this

FOR a second straight week my level of playoff game give-a-damn is totally in the shitter. At this point if NASA beats my grandmother in the Super Bowl, I wouldn’t even shrug over it. I have almost no clue about what’s going on in the playoffs this year. It was sort of this way last year, but not quite as bad. And I don’t like the trend or what this seems to be stemming from.

If your team barely misses the playoffs, you can be mad at your team for that game or two that they dropped. If they get put out of the playoffs early, you get to root against whoever beat you. If they get far in the playoffs you have a new villain to hate forever for “robbing” you. You’re emotionally invested in the outcome of that year’s playoffs.

When your team doesn’t play or win a playoff game in a couple years, you feel that absence. You feel that sense of unfinished business. “We’ll get ’em next year” is something you believe. However, when the drought reaches a decade or so of playoff irrelevance, the games lack the emotional kick they’re meant to have.

I think I’ve gone numb to this point of the year. It used to be in January I would be hoarse  from blowing my voice out with 1.5 million of my closest friends, after we cheered on our team and our city to the ultimate finish line. Now I sound great and I can’t fucking stand it.

This needs to get fixed, because genetically I’m supposed to give a damn about the playoffs. If this keeps happening something is going to get backed up and I’ll end up with a condition of some sort. I’ll be that guy who when the season ends, walks around muttering and flipping everyone off. It’ll spread to you and soon Jerry Lewis will do telethons to raise money for our condition.

We can’t go out like that fellow Eagles fan. We need to get this fixed, but in the meantime fuck these here playoffs.