So for the second time in two years, a young Eagles defensive lineman has eschewed the number 78 in favor of more fashionable digits in the nineties. Last year it was Broderick Bunkley upgrading from 78 to 97, this year it’s Victor Abiamiri ditching 78 and pouncing on Jerome McDougle’s recently vacated 95 (while its corpse was still warm!).

Why no love for 78? Are the numbers in the seventies seen as a little too offensive line? Do young defensive linemen want to awaken the ghosts of the ‘91 Eagles (save for Mike Pitts, of course) and go for the numbers in the nineties?

Or is it just that nobody wore number 78 quite like Hollis Thomas, and it’s just pointless to attempt to outdo him in the 78 shirt?  And by “outdo him,” I mean, “Dwarf the actual digits on the jersey via a voluminous midsection that can only lead one to believe that an Eagles head coaching job might loom in your future.”

(Note that we’ll always remember Hollis fondly as an Eagle — especially the stop inside the five-yard line in the NFC Championship on Michael Vick.  Pretty cool that the big fella didn’t let Vick scoot past him into the end zone; that was a big play.)

I guess we know what the “personal reasons” were that got Eagles’ DT Broderick Bunkley excused from practice earlier this week: his house got burgled.

As capers go, it makes sense.  If you know where a pro athlete without a companion/ family lives and you know he’s got an away game, well, you have a pretty good shot at finding an unoccupied house full of fancy stuff.  It’s kind of like Die Hard, only significantly more petty and low-level. 

Among other details, the Daily News did a nice job detailing the arsenal of guns removed from Bunkley’s joint:

Also gone was his collection of firearms: two Desert Eagle .50-caliber handguns, an Armalite rifle, a custom-made .223-caliber rifle, a .45-caliber Glock handgun and ammunition for all of the weapons, the records show.

I count a Reid-household-esque five (5) weapons on that list.  Certainly it’s a collection that any sportsman would appreciate; he probably just bought them so that he could go hunting with Trent Cole.

Not to say I told you so (I never say it, and I don’t like people who do), but this is the sort of thing that doesn’t happen if Broderick would have just focused a bit more on building his entourage.  Bunk, no one will rob you if four of your boys from high school had been sitting on the couch sipping Miller Lites and playing XBox.  Think, man.  Think.