With Donovan McNabb doubtful, it looks like A.J. Feeley is the man for Sunday. Hopefully Adam Joshua has another big game in him, as the Eagles have a tough Nerdbirds team in town.

Also, let us all take a moment to reflect on the fact that quarterbacks do take shots, the Seattle defense can get to the quarterback, and we might be one big lick away from the start of the Kevin Kolb era. For the record, Seattle is not above the occasional KillShot ™. Alex Smith hasn’t been right since.

High drama indeed.

Link:
McNabb, Mikell Doubtful for Sunday [PhiladelphiaEagles.com]

Landed from the UK about two hours ago. The mobile phone doesn’t work overseas, and I hadn’t checked messages.

I had 17 text messages waiting for me. Every single one of them was from Sunday night.

I think that says a lot in a lot of different dimensions. For now I’ll try not to focus on the part where people only get in touch with me when the Eagles are playing well and say that the game must have been one entertaining TV show.

At a certain point, one just starts to feel pity* for Donovan McNabb.

League rules require that he sit for a weekly press conference with the local (and occasionally national) blathermonkeys. Most of these affairs are pretty boring (I watch all of them; so what of it?), save for the occasional Stasi interrogation moments where they try to bamboozle him into saying something headline-worthy (where headline-worthy equals (a) throwing his receivers under the bus, (b) absorbing anything less than complete responsibility for the disappointment of all Eagles fans, or (c) anything about a certain former wide receiver).

Having watched so many of these things, I have to say that I’m impressed with his patience up there every week. It’s a testament to the guy’s professionalism that he manages to get through these things without rolling his eyes at every other question and/ or chucking a stapler at the blathermonkeys.

All of which makes his performance up there yesterday all the more disheartening.
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Blathermonkeys of America (and specifically Philadelphia) rejoice: we finally have a legitimate quarterback controversy in the 2-1-5!

I’d been appropriately dismissive of the Kevin Kolb chatter throughout the season. Said chatter wasn’t actually about Kolb, it was more about “The Bright Shiny Object That Isn’t Named Donovan McNabb.” Add in that Dunavin is to the Philly papers what Britney Spears is to US Weekly — if you want to sell papers, put her on the cover, even if she didn’t do anything this week — and you had a lot of hot air about the Birds’ starting quarterback, and not very much substance.

That mos def changed Sunday.
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Look out! Jeffrey Lurie stole Steve Jobs’ turtleneck!  And he’s threatening to do an iPhone demo!

Knowing in advance that the answer is “Because they’re rich and they can,” can we at least ask the question about why these guys dress like such dweebs? I can’t tell which is more tacky, the turtleneck-and-herringbone ensemble from Prince Jeffrey or the Patrick Bateman look from Bob Kraft. In Kraft’s defense, he’s at least made the white-collar thing his signature look.

Also, there should be more jokes about Prince Jeffrey’s hair. I just don’t understand the physics of it.

Okay, I’ll stop now.

For the avoidance of doubt, the Eagles did not win a game on Sunday night.

Yes, they most certainly covered the largest spread in 25 years against the best team in football, but they didn’t win. It’s an L. Same as the losses against the Giants, the Redskins, the Cowboys, the Bears, and the Packers.

Of course, I’d be lying if I said I was anything but giddy about last night’s game/ loss. It didn’t count as a win, but as a piece of entertainment — and as proof of the vitality of the Philadelphia Eagles franchise — it was the best thing we’d seen all year. Hands down. The Birds lost, and this was still the best Eagles game of the season. If we can say nothing else about Sunday night’s affair (don’t worry, we can say plenty), it is this: the loss against the Pats makes me want to watch them again — makes me want to believe (!). Makes me want to believe like the Carolina game last year. Or like the Week 15 win against the Giants. It made me think that this is team worth rooting for (something I hadn’t really felt all that often this season).

And really, that’s all I’m asking from the Eagles TV show/ live event.

Now for some actual game analysis:
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I should be sleeping right now ahead of my meetings this afternoon, but instead I’m going to fire up the PC and watch this game (or at least some of it).

31-28? It’s still a loss, but without watching even a moment of it we all know that (a) maybe there’s still some life in the Birds and (b) I really wouldn’t want to be Donovan McNabb right now.  Anything less than a 42-0 drubbing of the Nerdbirds will earn him boos at home next week. 

But WHATEVER.  It looks like we now have a third game that was fun to watch this year. 

Bring on the Yahoo Internet Pass! 

No Birds game for me tonight. Like many folks this Sunday, I’ll be 35,000 feet in the sky in an aluminum tube for the entirety of the football game. But insead of heading home to C@L (I’ve been in Philly for the past week), I’m actually headed in the other direction, and will land tomorrow morning in London very confused/ bleary-eyed and eager to check an Eagles score.

I assume that I will find said score tremendously disappointing.

Still, crazier things have happened, and as Sheldon Brown reminded us earlier this week, football is a violent game, and things can happen. We shall see. Essentially, I’m looking for a compelling reason to hand Yahoo $25 to watch the replay of the game on my puter (this is how I watched the Redskins game earlier this year; service only available outside North America!). My current plan: if they cover, I watch; if they don’t, I might wait to check it out on the DVR upon my return to the Left Coast on Friday.

Now I head to my gate and a likely airplane nap, in which visions of a surprise Eagles upset will dance in my head.

Go Birds.

…it looks like we have just the guy.

Though he hasn’t been active for a game since September, wouldn’t tonight be the perfect time to work noted KillShot(tm)-er Kimo van Oelhoffen into the rotation at defensive line? Not only doesn’t he bring some veteran experience and pride to the proceedings, but he has a certain, um, morally casual attitude towards the occasional clumsy challenge.

I’m not saying we need to be out there taking cheap shots, but it wouldn’t hurt to have a few boys handy who weren’t afraid to play to the whistle.

I’m just sayin’ is all.

Also, the blog is called “BountyBowl.”

Link:
Steelers go for the KillShot [ThatKidInTheCorner — my old blog]

So things are looking pretty grim for the Birds tonight. Twenty-four-point dogs, the latest tackling dummies for the greatest NFL team anyone has ever seen, one more chance for Belicheat and Shady Brady to pad their stats and overrated loudmouths like Tedy Bruschi and Rodney Harrison to pound their chests. Mostly I’m worried that the Eagles will march humbly to Foxboro and take their whuppin professionally and politely.

Somewhere in rural Kentucky, there’s a man who would not take his whuppin professionally or politely.

This is not to say that said fellow would have a plan for actually winning the game (that might be a bit of a stretch), but at least the team would come out hungry, and would not lose gracefully. No mock humility, no “that’s a great team over there.” This is a man who didn’t make a big deal of pantomiming an “icy handshake” for the benefit of the cameras; if his team lost, he’d just skip the handshake with the opposing coach altogether. He’d run up the score and tell the press it was revenge for previous injustices. (Note, these things most definitely happened in the late 80s.)

And this is the man the Eagles need today: James David Ryan.
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