So we’re less than 24 hours from kickoff of Week One. Whew. Long offseason. Many words written, many friends bored by my long-winded monologues in re: the Birds. Yet as we approach the end of the offseason and the start of the actual season, the guy who was the most important part of the Eagles’ offseason — at least in terms of team resource allocation, which is a pretty honest metric — is barely a storyline.

Asante Samuel, take a bow. You sir, are a PR and marketing genius!

How else to explain the complete absence of Samuel storylines and associated Pressures heading into Week One? You’d think that $57 million would get your name in the papers a bit more, but what with the wideout drama, Donovan McNabb’s tenth anniversary in Philly, and even the drama that Samuel himself indirectly caused (Litogate), Asante Samuel is pretty low-profile.

Shouldn’t we be demanding a certain number of interceptions, if not touchdowns, from this high-priced addition?  And wasn’t Samuel supposed to be doing weekly pressers with the other expensive veterans?  How has he managed to distract us so?

Well I’m not distracted.  This dude’s getting paid a ton of cash, his presence has gotten Drew Rosenhaus some extra attention, and the Birds’ defense needs to cause some turnovers this year.  Consider me the peanut gallery of one on Samuel.  Let’s see it, Asante.  You may be under the radar with the media, but nothing escapes the all-seeing eyes of the Philly fans.  And remember, the boos are NEVER that far away.

It wouldn’t be football season if I didn’t treat myself to a fresh batch of Eagles-themed Officially Licensed Products.  Since I dialed it down a bit last season (t-shirt, hat), I thought a new jersey might be in the mix for the ‘08 season.  I hadn’t added a new jersey to the collection since November 2006, and that one was a gift.

(A most excellent gift, I might add, and ultimately virtually impossible to top in terms of groomsmen gifts.  Throwback jerseys?  I mean.  Genius.)

The last shirt I bought for myself was a Michael Lewis jersey in 2005.  YIKES.  Kind of got that one wrong.  And to be honest, I didn’t even expect that I’d buy one this year (sort of — I like to tell myself that I wasn’t going to buy one); thought I’d look for some sort of hoodie (this one was tempting, don’t get me wrong).

But then I was sitting in this all-day meeting last week (there’ve been a lot of all-day meetings of late), and my mind started to wander a bit.  So fired up the eBay.  Was just going to buy some shoes, to be honest, but then I thought I’d plug “eagles jersey” into the search bar.  Just to check.  And…what’s that?  A reasonably undervalued Trent Cole shirt in my size?  Sure, it’s the third-jersey color, but I didn’t have a black one yet.  And Trent Cole is surely deserving of increased jersey sales!  He’s the best defensive player on the team, relatively young, on a second contract; this certainly counts as a prudent investment.

(I was thinking about a DeSean Jackson shirt as well, but it’s too early.  Mostly the number 10 is a cool-ass number; there should be plenty of time for that conversation later if things go well for the kid.)

A few bids later (including some delivered via text-message over a thoroughly useful eBay SMS interface), the shirt was mine.  Fingers crossed that it arrives in today’s mail; want to make sure I’m properly geared up for tomorrow.

I really had no idea that 4th and 26 was still being merchandised — good for the marketing department.  That was over four years ago (the 2003 team).  Solid.

(Inspired by this photo, I tried to find some 4th and 26 merch, but the best I could come up with was this.  Ew.)

Other random photos of minor note from the Eagles Carnival via PE.com:

I like Bunkley accessorizing with the green Phils cap.  Nice touch.  Also, I can’t imagine those glasses were entirely necessary indoors.

So the caption for this one read “QB Donovan McNabb’s left hand got a workout at the Eagles Carnival” and the pen was in his left hand. So does he write with his non-throwing hand? Or just sign autographs that way?

I had wedding photos with fewer people than this.

Just flipped through Dave Spadaro’s game preview on PE.com.  Whilst I’ll tip my cap to Spuds on the comprehensiveness of his piece (and in general, I’m a big fan of Spadaro’s, hate when the blathermonkeys give him a hard time, etc etc), he did go a little SuperFans on us in there:

Big game for Kevin Kolb, who was up and down in Pittsburgh. Here is my vision: Eagles score three times with McNabb at quarterback and then Kolb comes in with most of the starters still on the field midway through the second quarter and gets some time there and then goes into the second half already in a groove when he is playing with the backups and deep reserves.

Really, Dave?  No need to be all Nancy Negative about it.  Come on, big fella, you work for the team!  The glass very well might be half full!  Here’s MY vision:

Eagles score 3 controversial 23-point touchdowns in game’s first 90 seconds, crippling 17 of the Panthers’ 22 starters in the process.  Donovan McNabb personally hobbles Julius Peppers on a on wishbone option keeper before giving way to Kolb.  Kolb throws consecutive 80-yard touchdown passes to Kevin Curtis and DeSean Jackson before switching to free safety and breaking Jake Delhomme’s facemask on a blitz. 

(We kid because we love.  Psyched for tonight.) 

We got our first Asante Samuel press conference of the Eagles season today. It appears that a $57 million contract gets you a regular appointment with the blathermonkeys, along with grizzled press conference veterans like Dunavin, Dawk and Westbrook.

Given that I’m planning to watch most of these things (”It’s just a TV show”), I was pretty psyched to check out the new character. Quick hits:

So I definitely enjoyed it. Looks like a nice counterpoint to some of the other guys who do the pressers: a little younger, a little cockier, a little less cynical than the others. Didn’t sound like a dummy, but also didn’t sound like someone who was reading the local papers yet. So he’s still a little naive about the dynamic in there, but I would assume his recent liquidity event has lent him a certain confidence.

While he didn’t sound like a total Eagles robot yet, he does have some media training. He did a nice job of not saying “talking shit” in reference to the predilections of the Philadelphia supporters. That is, he politely substituted “talking mess” and then “talking crap” in response to a question of fan behavior. Asante, we appreciate your manners.

Went for the easy joke and it worked. He made a crack about Belichick not having a personality and it drew a round of guffaws from the assembled press. I would have laughed if I was there as well. Who doesn’t like laughing at the guy who got caught cheating, ran up the score in meaningless mid-season games, and then choked in the Super Bowl? That guy is a total jerkface!

He parried the first volley from the locals well. Someone cheekily asked Samuel about his absence from training camp last year (meaning his “WELL-DOCUMENTED HOLDOUT”), “Was that a hamstring last year? You said you missed all of training camp, was that also a hamstring?” “No,” replied Samuel, “it was a contract situation.” Followed by a big smirk. Solid.

Did okay with the second volley. They tried to goad him a bit by asking him about the recent article in SI that intimated that other guys on the Pats had blamed Samuel for the Tyree catch. While his answer convinced me that he definitely “could give a mess what those guys think,” he got momentarily riled, insisting that the game wasn’t about a single play. But he chilled out quickly and moved on and said all sorts of nice things about the catch.

Other items of note. Samuel has apparently played every defense you can play from high school to college to the pros, so we shouldn’t worry about him picking up the defense. Sweet! That should be fine then.

Looking forward to seeing more of Samuel up there. Go Birds.

Right, so I’m probably the only dweeb out there that really cares about this sort of thing, but it appears that Donovan McNabb and Reebok are no more (and, no, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with potential brand overlaps with his recent foray into infomercialia). 

I noticed that Dunavin had a Nike cap on in his presser the other day, and a quick scan of photos from camp confirmed that he was, in fact, sporting Nike kicks on the field. 

Some quick Interweb searching (via MY PERSONAL FAVORITE OPTION FOR WEB SEARCH Microsoft Windows Live Search Engine For Internet, Enterprise Edition 2007) revealed that his Reebok contract — which at the time was the richest “sneaker/ apparel” endorsement in the NFL — was a four-year deal that began in 2003.  Let me see, carry the one, divide by the square root of pi, yup, that means it should have been up about now. 

So now Dunavin’s back with Nike, which he’d apparently worn when he first entered the league until the Reebok deal.  Probably not a tough choice for a Chicago kid who went to Syracuse, though I imagine that the deal value was a bit less gaudy this time around (but still better than that Ab Roller crap).
        

Thanks to the good folks at Google (Do No Evil!  We swear we’re not tracking Google Toolbar users all over the web and then using that data sell more Ad Sense!  Honest!), we now have another way to stack rank the teams in the NFC East: web-site traffic!  See above for a trailing 12-month summary of site traffic at philadelphiaeagles.com, giants.com, redskins.com, and dallascowboys.com, ranked by daily unique visitors.  Probably best to click the image (will open in another window) to get a better view.

A few things worth noting here, beyond my mad skillz at getting the colors to map to each of the teams (Respek!): (Read the rest of this story.)

Mired as we are in loose-rumor-and-puff-piece season, I probably enjoyed the Trevor Laws article on PE.com more than I reasonably should have. Things I learned:

1. He went to a high school with a really good debate team.
2. He’s into music and lists Modest Mouse as one of his favorite bands. Hey! I like Modest Mouse too! We should, like, hang out!
3. He’s had the misfortune of having his head photoshopped onto a Eagles body on his profile page on the team site. This would have normally bypassed my attention were it not for the presence of those little info interstitials that hover on the Eagles site (even after you mouse away). Poor guy; the photo makes him look like he has Charlie Brown’s head.

For some perspective, check the photo of Mike Patterson (below).  You figure these guys are about the same size — seems liks a good point of comparison.  Note the detail where he actually looks like a human being:

(Read the rest of this story.)

We will tip our cap(s) to the staff at PhiladelphiaEagles.com for managing to generate a consistent stream of print and video content, even in these darkest/ slowest days of the NFL offseason.  (Yes yes, we’re just full of compliments when we’re not busy copy editing the site.)  Certainly this is no small challenge, especially when, well, nothing is really happening. 

Inasmuch as they typically do a great job explaining and sumamrizing the day’s activities during practices and camps, sometimes even the intrepid Dave Spadaro is at a loss to decipher the specifics of the Eagles’ elaborate rehearsals.      

See: a clip from their May 27 report, in which Spadaro attempts to narrate a wide receiver drill.  In Dave’s defense, he’s got no audio to work with and he’s filming from 40 yards away.  Still, it’s pretty amusing to hear him admit, in re: a DeSean Jackson route, ”I can’t honestly tell you if that was good or not good.”

Note to PE.com: please disregard above snarkiness and keep said content coming.  We don’t understand it either, but that doesn’t mean we won’t watch. 

I guess it’s photo week here at BountyBowl.  Today’s we’re rocking the “people who look like people” angle. 

Here’s what I’ve got: Eagles second-year tight end Brent Celek (above) sort of looks like that dude Andy Samberg from SNL (after the jump).  And when I say “sort of,” I mean “if Andy Samberg gained 60 pounds of muscle and could run curl patterns.”

(Read the rest of this story.)