I was planning to dump some serious Haterade on the Vince Young story from this week with a post that said, roughly, “I can’t believe this dude’s mom is crying to the media because her underperforming son got booed once in a wimpy media town like Nashville.” 

I would have then continued by saying, “Yeah, imagine that Donovan McNabb (and Eli Manning, and Rex Grossman) have to deal with about 100x that level of criticism in every edition of the morning paper and on talk radio, and somehow they manage to not have a breakdown about it.”

Essentially, I was going to make the point that Dunavin has it orders of magnitude worse than Vince Young, and has (sometimes remarkably) pushed through all that bullsh*t, but Big Sexy (Jason Whitlock) already nailed the McNabb angle, and then some:

Everyone told Vince Young and Michael Vick the NFL would be easy. They’d revolutionize the QB position with their legs, and they could pop bottles, roll with a posse and pretend to be Jay-Z in their spare time.

It just doesn’t work. Not for Young or Vick. Not for Matt Leinart. Not for anyone who wants to star at the position and avoid the boo-birds.

No one revolutionizes the starting quarterback position. The position revolutionizes the person playing it. Just ask Donovan McNabb. He figured it out and changed his game. Over the objection of idiots, McNabb developed his skills as a pocket passer. He concentrated on becoming a student of the game. If he can stay healthy over the next three or four years, McNabb will surpass Warren Moon as the best black quarterback ever to play the game.

Unfortunately, there are still people, especially black people, who don’t appreciate McNabb. They think he let “us” down by de-emphasizing his athleticism, and they criticize him for being cozy with his organization the way Peyton Manning is with the Colts and Brady is with the Patriots.

McNabb doesn’t get to enjoy the luxury of being a company man the way other franchise QBs in their prime do.

But McNabb has never threatened to quit or asked out of a game because the Philly fans were too rough. McNabb understands that in some instances the scrutiny of a black quarterback might be a tad more intense than that of a white one. He also understands that the best way to combat it isn’t whining. It’s performance. It’s work ethic. It’s professionalism.

Dude.  Dead on. 

Also, in case you still wanted to challenge the point that race has nothing to do with the attitude toward McNabb in the Illadelph, I might recommend this charmer (shaking head, staring at floor in shame). 

Philly is now a baseball town, and our interest in the Birds has flagged because Jeff Lurie is from Boston? 

So sayeth nationally known and heavily compensated blathermonkey Rick Reilly:

PHILADELPHIA Used to be Eagles, now it’s Phillies. This is partly because of the Phils’ young stars and partly because the Iggles owner has handed it to them. Jeffrey Lurie is a Boston guy who’s made $800 million so far on his Eagles purchase but not many friends. You always get the feeling that his jet bound for his beloved Beantown is double-parked.

Errr, not exactly.  Perhaps you haven’t noticed that mini-camp is covered like the G8 meeting and that the radio station(s) is/ are talking about the Eagles twelve months a year.  The Phils are in the hunt for the playoffs and have barely been above the fold on www.philly.com/sports this week. 

Try again.

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

So I guess “being b*tchy to each other” is one of the new ideas (along with 17 brand-new “blogs”) that got green lit at Philly.com HQ at the August editorial meeting.  This is the second day that they’ve run the faux e-mail exchange thing, and it sure looks like they’re not afraid to get a little Mean Girls in it:

From: Sheridan, Phil
To: Ford, Bob; Gonzalez, John
Subject: DeSean and DeShameless

Full disclosure on hugging. I have not hugged an athlete or coach, but I have been hugged. It was 1988 and the Eagles had just clinched the NFC East title in Dallas. When the door to the locker room opened to the media, I stepped in and was immediately in the clutches of Al Roberts, who was Buddy Ryan’s special-teams coach. I don’t believe we’d been building up to anything. I think I was just the next person in Al’s path.

I see Eskin as a kind of human barometer. If he’s targeted DeSean Jackson as his new, bestest locker-room buddy, that means he thinks Jackson is going to be a star here. And that probably comes directly on the Andy Reid batphone. So we all learn a little something while battling our gag reflex.

A few things here:

1. Someone needs to have an intervention with Bob Ford.  The fake e-mails plus yet another I-hate-my-job-my-readers-and-everything-about-my-life column today are really a cry for help.  Seriously.

2. I can see them not digging on Eskin.  I mean, he does make like 8x their salaries and has the ear of the coach.  Fairnuff. 

3. Isn’t the fake e-mail thing a little done?  Also, leave the snarkiness to the pros, boys.  And by “pros” I mean anonymous jackii on the Interwebs.     

That last caller stole my thunder, but WOW — Les Bowen crushed it with his post on the Sheldon Brown/ Lito Sheppard argy-bargy this afternoon.  Talk about capturing the drama; you could bring this script to a casting call. 

I especially liked Les’s transcription of this otherwise baffling self-descriptive paragraph from Sheldon Brown:

“I wouldn’t say it bothered me, because I’m bigger than that, I’m a professional … Drew hasn’t been with Sheldon Brown for 7 years; I think he’s been with Lito for 2 months. He hasn’t followed by [sic] career. He hasn’t broke down any film; he probably couldn’t tell you what number (Brown wears). It’s really irrelevant … (from watching the video) you would think the guy has been scouting tape and know(ing) the statistics and following us our whole career.”

I just applaud the use of third-person self-reference throughout from Brown and appreciate the challenges of following the pronouns in that interview scenario. 

Treat yourself — click on through if you haven’t yet.   

I’ve been following Matt Mosley’s NFC East blog at ESPN with some trepidation.  Whilst I certainly have appreciated a handy roundup of NFC-East-focused news stories, I of course have been routinely offended by the lack of relative attention/ respect paid to the Eagles in said blog.  And it isn’t just because Mosley is a Dallas guy; he ran a mailbag column the other day that contained one sentence on the Birds and didn’t even mention Philly as a contender for Anquan Boldin (he focused his Boldin talk on the Cowboys).  Ew.

Still, his decision to rank the Illadelph faithful fourth (4th) amongst NFL fans (and tops in the NFC East) shows that he is at least capable of comporting himself like a gentleman if need be. He notes that the season-ticket waiting list is 70,000 people strong (on which I’m apparently number 898, if an e-mail from the Birds is to be believed!) and that we do an excellent job with loyalty and tailgating.  The excerpt:

No other team dictates a city’s mood like the Eagles. It’s a loyal group of fans, but don’t confuse it with blind loyalty. When the Eagles play poorly, they face the wrath of the fans. That rattles some guys, but players such as Jeremiah Trotter and Brian Dawkins have thrived on that tough love. Fans of opposing teams should tread lightly in the Linc.

Mosley also includes some generic quotes about Philly fans, which has only solidified my belief that I’m completely bored/ tired of reading hypotheses regarding why we like the Eagles so durn much; to be honest, I’m a bit bored with the “Philly fans are CRAZY” trope amongst the national blatherati:

“You could drop a Martian into Philly the day after a game, and within three minutes, he’d know if the Eagles had won or lost,” said Glen Macnow, a sports radio talk show host for the wildly popular WIP and co-author of “The Great Philadelphia Fan Book.” “When they win, you’ll meet the friendliest cab drivers, CPAs and newspaper sellers. Whey they lose, it’s like a five-day hangover.”

Unlike places such as Dallas and Miami, Philadelphia isn’t home to a lot of transplants. People aren’t trying to leave, and potential newcomers aren’t arriving any time soon. It sort of creates this bunker mentality that seems to fuel passion for local teams — but mainly the Eagles.

No transplants?  Bunker mentality?  Sure.  Your bullshit is just as valid as my bullshit on this topic.  But we appreciate the theorizing!  Maybe next week we can make the mailbag.

Uh oh. 

First it was Lorenzo Booker who was going to be complimentary to Brian Westbrook (and really, who among us shouldn’t be complimentary to Brian Westbrook — he was the best back in the NFL last year!).  Now it appears that both Greg Lewis and Hank Baskett have picked up some manners from Booker and will be sharing kind words of praise with the rest of the receiving corps:

Brown’s uncertainty leaves the Eagles short in experience at wide receiver. With Kevin Curtis already out indefinitely after sports-hernia surgery, the Birds are down their top two from last season. Greg Lewis and Hank Baskett are decent complimentary options, but neither has ever been a No. 1. Head coach Andy Reid said he has some maneuverability.

It’s one thing when an error shows up in marketing copy on PE.com, it’s quite another when it shows up in the dailies.  Errors happen, sure, and we all know the fishwrapper biz is in the midst of implosion (that pesky Craigslist!), but this is almost correction-worthy. 

I say almost because, well, it’s in the sports section, and, um, no one really cares but nerds like me. 

Note to blathermonkeys: your readership doesn’t care if Andy Reid’s press conferences are boring.  Those who do care watch them on the Birds’ site (yours truly staring awkwardly at ground).  Everyone else has better things to do, and expects you to report on what Andy Reid says. 

And while usually we have to endure asides within other pieces complaining about Andy Reid’s often dry media sessions, today we got an entire feature (in the otherwise excellent philly.com Eagles preview section) detailing their specific dullness. 

Why, as fans, do we care if Andy Reid is tight-lipped in his league-mandated media encounters?  Oh right!  We don’t.  (In fact, it can be argued that being tight-lipped is a strategy that leads to more wins — why hand extra information to next week’s opponent?)  So why does the local media keep writing about it?

Because, like the rest of us, they like to complain about their job.  That is, Andy Reid’s dull press conferences make it a lot harder for them to come up with stories for the following day’s edition.  If Andy Reid were up there dropping some Buddy Ryan personality on everyone, the stories would be easy: relay the coach’s bon mots in extensive block quotes, add approving descriptions of his charming anecdotes, tell us who’s hurt, done and done. 

Instead, with vanilla commentary from Big Red, they have to add the bon mots their own selves, and that’s, like, totally a hassle.  So they passive-aggressively whinge about it and write about how dull Andy Reid is.

Which is fine.  I b*tch about my job too.  I just don’t pretend that the b*tching should count as work.           

I’m still trying to figure out what possessed Bob Ford of the Inquirer to unburden himself in re: the state of the Birds’ road supporters on Friday, besides an penchant for masochism and a desire to speak ill of his customers.  In case you missed it, I’ll give you the 27-word version: Eagles fans like to travel to road games, but they’re ugly and loutish and act like jerks because they’re such sore losers and follow a crappy team.  Some highlights:

It would be nice to report that the Eagles legions who pack the airplanes, haunt the hotel bars, and roam the streets are goodwill ambassadors from our fair city, the kind of representatives who leave behind a warm regard for Philadelphia once they have departed. Unfortunately, that would not be entirely accurate.

The great majority of traveling fans are grown men. If one were to generalize about them, it would seem they like to wear uniform jerseys that celebrate other men - not that there’s anything wrong with that - like to consume alcohol to excess, and are not slaves to their fitness regimens. The contingent often travels like a portable frat party from something less than the brightest house on campus.

It would also seem that Eagles fans revel in their reputations. As followers of a franchise that has not had a championship since Eisenhower’s final month in office, that’s understandable. What else might separate them from the devotees of any other NFL team? It certainly isn’t the trophies lined up in Jeff Lurie’s office, where there is plenty of shelf space.

Right, so Bob, last time I checked, the drunken louts you identify above also happen to be the same sort of people who, I dunno, read the freakin sports page.  Was this all a bit of irony that eluded me?  Who exactly do you think is reading your column, IN THE SPORTS SECTION AKA BRAD-AND-ANGELINA-FOR-THE-MALE-18-TO-64 SET? 

You don’t cover affairs of state here, you write about a TV show/ live entertainment event.  Reasonable adults skip the sports page and pay attention to the actual news.  If you want to insult the center of you customer base, that’s cool, but who exactly do you expect to read your column to pick up the slack?

As someone who will gleefully wear my Eagles jersey (as if wearing the jersey is somehow worse than wearing other logoed gear — if you’re dressing up for Halloween, you can put on a a set of novelty fangs or you can get five of your friends to dress up like the guys from Beerfest and wander from party to party with a giant glass boot, just depends on how you like to roll I s’pose) to a couple opposing stadiums this fall (and stay tuned for info about a larger Seattle field trip), I don’t get it.  Does he not want me to read his column?  Should he expect that I enjoy this sort of thing?  I’m a bit insulted/ confused here. 

Or at least I was, until I remembered that Bob was the guy who thought they should have been playing Kolb when the Birds were 2-4 last year.  Yes.  He’s a professional sportswriter. 

Wow.  Jody Mac’s in for heart surgery?  Dude.  Been listening to Jody Mac since high school; hope everything works out.

Best wishes, thoughts are with you, good luck.

This will shock exactly none of you, but I’m actually a lot more interested in Donovan McNabb’s thoughts on Bernie Mac than in him being dragged into yet another imaginary kerfuffle by the locals (as in the Jimmy Rollins PR mess).  Good for Eagletarian for breaking ranks amongst the blathertariat and admitting that it was kind of a silly question for McNabb (certainly the non-stop coverage of the comments on WIP yesterday was a bit of overkill; you know a story is crap when Eskin is saying it’s silly). 

Unfortunately, we have yet to get an update on the left-handed signature controversy.  I posed the question to McNabb directly, I’ll let you know if he gets back to me.