And we are back for Day 2 of the Draft in about 90 seconds. The Birds still have (gulp) ten (10) picks remaining, which mostly means that we’ll see plenty of petty fourth-round trades (”We’ll give you a fourth and a fifth to move up nine picks in the fourth round”).

Other things to look for:

• The Lito Sheppard trade.  Um, they’re going to trade him, right?  And not just get pennies on the dollar for him?  It’d be cool if an actual pret-a-porter player was involved in the deal and not an additional slate of future considerations.
• Two offensive linemen you’ve never heard of.  Come on, you know we’re not getting out of this thing without multiple behemouths added to the roster.
• The obligatory I-AA/ DII/ DIII standout that the Birds will smugly tell us is a great player we’ve never heard of (and whom we’ll all secretly hope is the next B-West).
• Fifth-round linebacker(s)!
• Another running back?

Onwards.

I wish I was a little more psyched about the DeSean Jackson pick. While the vocal elements of the fanbase should be satisfied with Jackson (It’s a wideout! It’s a wideout), I’m not totally sold quite yet. My anxiety is almost certainly based on ghosts of Eagles WR/ KR failures past.; I see the upside and downside of Jackson as follows:

Upside: Steve Smith (also 5′9″, also a West Coast guy, though a wee bit more stout).

Downside: some horrific combination of Freddie Mitchell (cocky West Coast guy) and Jeremy Bloom (college return prodigy who was too small to break tackles at the pro level). 

It’d be nice if they found a way for him to get him on the field this season (assuming he can actually play, etc etc).

I spent the better part of the first round of the draft in the car driving down to the Illadelph from New York.  As fate would have it, pick #19 coincided with a dark zone on the AM radio spectrum.  That is, I was just about to lose The Fan and ESPN 1050 out of New York and I wasn’t quite picking up WIP and ESPN 950 out of Philly.  We’ll estimate my position at that point to be circa Exit 8A.

Anyhoo, I got word of the Birds’ trade at #19 from the New York media (Mike and the Mad Dog, to be precise). They thought it was an amazing deal for the Birds — total steal with the three picks (including the number one next year) for the 19. I tended to agree (though I had hoped some larger scheme was in the works all along, hopefully involving blue chip WRs coming to Philadelphia).

A few minutes later we switched over to the Philly stations and, predictably, the natives were aghast: (Read the rest of this story.)

Um, Florio, I believe that this was my cockamamie draft/ trade rumor?

Send over one of those Sprint phones and we’ll call it even.

It is truly a measure of the efficacy of my years of conditioning as a loser Philadelphia sports fan that the mention of a Lito Sheppard trade to the Bucs immediately initiated the following sequence in my brain:

“The Bucs?  I hate the Bucs.  They sure seem to have the Birds’ number.”

“(Though I do have a soft spot for the America’s Game about the ‘02 Bucs; lots of good stuff about the Vet and Gru-Dawg in there.)”

“Wait, and why do I think that the Bucs have the Birds’ number?  Because that Ronde Barber guy is always intercepting passes and scoring touchdowns.”

“(I hate that Ronde Barber.  Makes me want to puke.)”

“Wait, isn’t Lito Sheppard pretty good at intercepting passes and scoring touchdowns?  Especially in big games?”

“(Sort of.  Mostly against Dallas, and that’s good enough for me.)”

“OH NO!  Lito Sheppard is going to get traded to Tampa and then he’s going to, like, intercept some important passes and score touchdowns that knock the Eagles out of the playoffs.”

You WISH I was kidding here.  Essentially, the thought of a Lito trade to the Bucs is almost enough to sour my favorite Youtube clip ever. 

Almost.

Remember when we were all moist hoping the Eagles would draft a prototypical goal-line running back?  And then they did?  But we didn’t really care because we all got distracted by the Kevin Kolb pick? 

Yeah.  That was a year ago. 

Let’s fast-forward a year and imagine how we’ll reminisce this week in 2009:

Remember when we were all moist hoping the Eagles would draft a big wide receiver who could return kicks and be a threat in the red zone?  And then they did?  But we didn’t really care because we call got distracted by the [Jason Taylor trade/ Brian Westbrook holdout/ Tra Thomas surprise retirement].

Mostly we have no idea what’s going to actually happen on Saturday (especially since the Birds will likely trade some of those 11 picks) – but sometimes dreams do come true!  Even if it turns out that those dreams were kind of wrong because the Birds already had the best back in football on the roster!  

I’m not going to pretend that my little feelings don’t go a-twitter every time there’s mention of another unlikely trade involving the Eagles and an ever-growing list of veteran WRs (Chad Johnson! Roy Williams! Anquan Boldin!). We have some data (2004) that suggests that adding a dude like that equals extreme dominance and a trip to the Thuper Bowl.

Then the non-WIP-mouth-breather part of my brain kicks in and reminds me that (a) trades involving game-breaking wideouts are pretty rare (especially when the general managers of the other teams that would need to be involved make a habit out of “flatly denying” that said trade could take place), and (b) maybe I should focus a little more on 2002 and 2003 instead of 2004. That is, why aren’t I more excited about bringing in more game-breaking running backs? Having a lot of talent in the backfield has certainly worked for Andy Reid in the past; why couldn’t it work this year? (Read the rest of this story.)

I mean, being the kicker is cool and all, but um, well, I don’t know that hanging out with said kicker is exactly the most exciting promotion I can imagine.

I would definitely be more interested in hanging out with any of the veteran players (in that the rookies probably don’t have too much to say), the broadcast team (imagine ordering drinks with Merrill Reese; I would just keep insisting that he say, “Tautalatasi the lone setback” over and over), even Spuds (if only to tell him that I don’t think it’s fair that the blathermonkeys give him such a hard time). I just don’t know what I would talk to Akers about.

I’mjussayinizall.

Traditionally, I react to Mike Florio’s anti-Eagles rumormongering with a knowing-but-disappointed sigh and a mild clucking of the tongue: I’m sure posting about the Birds earns him extra page views at this point, and who am I to deny a man his livelihood! Sure, some of the rumors are especially silly (especially the more outlandish ones involving Dunavin), but at least we know enough at this point not to overreact.

That said, I think last week was the first time that I actually got excited about an allegedly anti-Eagles rumor on PFT. In a discussion of the “new” draft-day trade chart (note: if you’re reading this, I assume you’re aware of both the “old” and the proposed “new” draft-day trade charts…umm, right?), Florio quoted a “league source” as saying that this so-called “new” chart was just a scheme by the Eagles to screw over the other teams:

A league source tells us that, in his opinion and based on discussions with most of the other NFL teams, the proposal is the direct result of the Philadelphia Eagles to make it easier to trade up from the No. 19 overall spot in the 2008 draft.

“The whole thing sounds like an elaborate ruse,” the source said.

A ruse, do you say? A cunning attempt to deceive the other teams? Really? From Joe Banner? (Read the rest of this story.)

So I’m thinking that the Reggie Brown too-cool-for-school act is getting a little old. For those of us who pay attention to these things (where “these things” = “making character assessments of people we’ve never met”), the Reggie Brown smirk — manifest in his look-away-from-the-camera-and-laugh-everything-off style in interviews — has always worried me a bit. I had always hoped it was just quiet, cool confidence, and that this guy was cocky because he was such a ridiculous baller. But now that it’s clear that he’s a competent, but not ridiculous, baller, it might just be that he’s kind of a jerk.

Or, even worse, it might be that he’s actually scared and insecure.

This quote from last week doesn’t sit well with me:

Still, when asked about the excitement that comes with the opener being at home, Eagles wide receiver Reggie Brown admitted he wouldn’t mind working out some of the kinks on the road before giving the fans their first taste of the team.

“I don’t know,” Brown said jokingly. “Maybe it’s good to play away for the first game, but it will be exciting. At least we don’t have to travel. The crowd gets to come and watch the game, so it will be fun.”

Right, so the non-haters will try to tell me that he was only kidding (hence the “jokingly” from the author), but, um, we don’t kid unless there’s a kernel of truth there, right? (Read the rest of this story.)