Must have been a slow news day at the NovaCare center yesterday (which it kind of was; I watched the coordinator pressers and they weren’t terribly interesting or lengthy), because there were about three different versions of “L.J. Smith responds to critics” in the local papers today.  Not that the L.J. Smith angle isn’t interesting, but jeez, there are certainly bigger fish for breadings and frying, no? 

Implicit in the content of the articles is the suggestion that L.J. Smith has somehow drawn the ire of the fanbase, which I sort of get, but not really.  I mean, sure, some folks in the philly.com comments and the Birds’ message boards are down on L.J., but I’ve never really felt the anti-L.J. rage.  Strike that – I’ve been pretty chill with him ever since he stopped holding the ball with one hand like a loaf of bread; that totally used to cheese me off. 

Could it just be that the normal targets of rage are out of focus these days?  I mean, they finally benched Considine, McNabb is playing well, and DeSean Jackson has made us forget that we hate the wideouts.  Hating on the kicker is too obviously fickle.  Is L.J. just the last guy standing? 

Personally, I could use slightly more anti-Lorenzo Booker vitriol from the fanbase.  That guy almost got Dunavin killed against Pittsburgh and looked mostly useless against the Bears. 

Let me know if I’m missing anyone on the list above; specifically, whom should I be hating on more?        

And so with the annual visit to (and attendant reports from) Donovan McNabb’s pre-training-camp bonding throwdown at his place out in Arizona, as reported by Dunavin his own self via his blog.  Good to know that everyone’s spending some QT together and doing lots of crunches. 

Oh wait, not quite everyone.  Certainly not either of the starting wideouts or the Best Player On The Team.  I’ll speculate to say that the guys who are most interested in staying in 5’s good graces were the ones hopping that US Air (nee America West) flight to Phoenix.  As in, L.J. Smith, Avant, Baskett and Booker.  Certainly L.J. is going to need Dunavin on his side if he wants to have the big year required for him to Get Paid.  And the other guys are jockeying for spots on the depth chart. 

We don’t want to call it sucking up, but we would say that it’s certainly in one’s best interest to have the trust of the quarterback, and if earning that trust includes a four-hour flight and some obsequiousness in re: his cooking, so be it. (Read the rest of this story.)

Before any of us get too bent out of shape in re: this afternoon’s result — an ugly win over a craptastic team in horrible conditions — let us remember that the 2007 Eagles are a mediocre team that is .500 at best.

That is, we should be HAPPY that they won, and stop complaining that they didn’t do it in a beautiful or graceful manner. They aren’t going to win very many games in a beautiful or graceful manner: they’re just not that good. But if they get a couple bounces in the next month, and the other teams in the NFC play crappily, they just might make the playoffs.

If they don’t get lucky, they finish somewhere in the neighborhood of 8-8. They are who we thought they were.

My non-ankle-related stories from today (note: contains some ankle-related commentary):
(Read the rest of this story.)

Big days today for two guys who’ve had pretty tough seasons to date, complete with adjectival monikers: (injury prone) L.J. Smith and (overpaid) Darren Howard.  

A stretch of a theory on L.J. Smith: because he’s been banged up and worries about his health might persist, (1) the Eagles will be able to re-sign him at a reasonable wage (as they will be in a better position to judge his actual health than any other club), and (2) this is a good thing because Smith is actually a good fit for the Birds and obviously made a difference for the offense today.

(Read the rest of this story.)