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.)

Looks like this is the end of the road for Derek and I, for the first time for the last time.  To be entirely honest, I’m pretty impressed I got this far at all. 

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

—–

Derek,

At the risk of lurching back into slurpfest territory, right back atcha.  It’s been an absolute pleasure to play this game over the past week, and not just because it’s helped speed the time until training camp opens.  Of course, we can’t go on forever — you’ll need to go back to writing about the actual team and delivering consistently good insight, and I’ll need to go back to call the local writers names and copy-editing the Birds’ web site. 

Nobody said it was easy being “the bountybowl guy.”   

(Les, my man, it’s BountyBowl.  Two capital Bs.  That’s how we roll over here.  CamelCase.  Though I appreciate the obviously begrudging shout-out.)

That said, I’m glad you bit on the coach question.  We tend not to think about a world without Andy Reid (well, sort of), and we all assume that the coach will outlast the QB (which is probably correct), but is it so inconceivable that Dunavin gets a John Elway second-coach-new-system-and-couple-Super-Bowls? 

(No.  No it isn’t.  It’s just that that second coach will be in a city not called Philadelphia.) 

My comments on your coaches: (Read the rest of this story.)

Derek has just issued his long, fond farewell to this Blogstravaganza of ours.  We’ll miss you, dude.  Stay classy.

The other eight (8) parts: 

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8

Looks like we’re going for two with entry number eight. 

The first touchdown (+PAT) of entries: 

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7

—–

Derek,

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa.  How did “Philly is a tough town to be the quarterback” get turned into “Philly doesn’t have good fans”?  These are not logical equivalents, and trust me, I’m just as bored as you are with the standard national media tropes about the Philly faithful.  I mean, sure, some of it is true (yes, they like to boo a lot; yes, it can be a little PG-13 in the stands at the Linc), but it’s all in the context of a town that (a) really can’t get enough of their sports (the freakin Soul and Phantoms can fill their arena) and (b) rather desperately wants to win at something.

I’ll spare you my well-considered treatise on why the people in Philly act this way — we’re limiting our armchair psychobabbling to the plight of Mr. McNabb this week.  Still, I don’t really think calling the Eagles QB job (especially as the face of the franchise/ guy in the commercials/ dude who has a $100 million contract) one of the toughest in U.S. sports is a matter of opinion; this feels more like pretty obvious fact.  The media scrutiny and the intensity of the fans plus the sheer scale of the sports media business in the Delaware Valley all makes this a tough situation for anyone (I hope young Master Kolb is up for it), much less an otherwise reasonable guy like Dunavin.

(Past the New York baseball examples floated in the earlier post, I’ll also toss “National Soccer Team Coach” onto the list.  This isn’t a tough job in the U.S., but is a horrific job everywhere else.  I mean, it’s only the entire nation’s pride and integrity that’s been placed in your control.  Also, the competitions might contain the “patriotism of your average war.”  Tough job.)

Yeah, so I agree they weren’t booing McNabb at the draft (I think I said as much in an earlier post — that it was about how badly Philly wanted a stud back) and that it’s boring to hear the freakin Santa Claus story.  I’ll add that we don’t always hate hearing some of these stories; I invite you to admit that it makes you feel a little bit more hardcore than the rest of the fans out there (gutless cowards that they are).  I sure will. (Read the rest of this story.)

After a charming weekend, it’s game-on again with Derek over at IgglesBlog.  His latest is here.  I’m doing a bit of a cleanse right now (must rinse away the shame of the 36 ounces of steak I ate) but should have something up and running later tonight. 

The story of the film so far:

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6

And the dialectic continues.  I think today’s the day I start calling Derek names.  It’s what Buddy would do.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

—–

Derek,

So the missus told you that we’ve been a little too needs-and-feelings so far?  (Note that Jason also dinged us for sucking up to each other over at BGN.)  She give you a little a pat on the butt and tell you that as long as you try harder everything will be better next time?

WELL I DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE WRITING LIVE FROM THE SPORTS GUY MANSION.  Maybe now you’re going to tell me about your dog and your latest trip to Peet’s coffee and how TOTALLY CRAZY things can get in Vegas and how you tended bar in the late 90s and kept it real with some hardcore/ straight-from-the-streets sports knowledge.  Maybe you can have the missus do a guest column with HER Eagles analysis!  That’d be adorable!

(Everyone feel better now?)

In re: your thoughts on the wide receiver position, let me summarize my response by saying: it’s nice to see that you actually have a soul.  That is, it’s comforting to realize that behind your very rational web site and tons of cogent analysis, you believe in magic too.

And by “magic,” I mean “swagger.”  That is, there’s something out there that we can’t measure, but it really matters in re: who’s winning and who’s losing, and we know it when we see it.  It’s the confidence that the team will exert its will over the opponent, and will be the ones who make the plays in the last few minutes to win the game.  With T.O., the Eagles definitely had swagger.  No doubt.

Which makes the current iteration of the Birds so frustrating — because it’s so obvious the swagger is gone.  Are the Giants really that much better than the Eagles?  Hell no.  But they’re convinced that they are.  For example, put a BOUNTY on Antonio Pierce and his big effing mouth for blabbing about how the Giants owned the Eagles last year (even though the Birds had knocked them out of the playoffs the year before).  I fully believe that the Giants have a huge swagger edge over the Birds coming into this season, and that it’s going to take a serious bump in confidence for the Eagles to reclaim that. (Read the rest of this story.)

Dere’s next post is fully operational.

Is it weird that I’m jealous that Derek got to do Post #5?  Hmmm.  I mean, it isn’t not weird.

The story of the film so far:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

It’s a tricky day for me, but I’ve got all sorts of nonsense percolating.

In case you haven’t been following, we’ve got some semi-witty repartee rolling with Derek over at Iggles Blog. 

Episodes you may have missed: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. 

——

Derek,

Let me start by disagreeing a bit with your offhand comment regarding spreadsheets and traffic on sports blogs.  Sure, spreadsheets don’t drive traffic to Deadspin or TBL (shirtless pictures of Vince Young do!), but I think you’re underestimating the value of the data and analytics you (and other bloggers of your ilk) present.  You give us data to try to answer the barstool questions that, in the absence of data, never get past “Why don’t they run the ball more, that Andy Reid is a jerk, and McNabb is a choker.”  There’s demand out there for the next level of detail, and you’re meeting that demand.

It’s also the same thing that leads us to pre-order Pro Football Prospectus (and the new one is awesome by the way, and not just because they (a) predict the Eagles will win the most games in the NFC and (b) painstakingly analyze just how f*cking lucky the Giants’ Super Bowl win was) and take the Football Outsiders rankings as seriously as the standings.   And the byproducts of that demand aren’t just sites like yours, but the communities they create.  As in, not only do I learn a ton from reading you, but I also learn a ton from your freakin commenters (”Andrew,” take a bow!); the only people who comment on my site are mouth-breathing/ deranged f*ckwit Giant fans.  Seriously.  

</SuckUp.>

I like where you’re going with the hypothesis that it’s the increased resources in the Eagles’ scouting department that enables them to unearth those small-school treasures.  Within the strictly controlled competitive and financial conditions of the NFL (salary cap, revenue sharing, etc), coaching and scouting are one of the areas where the wealthier clubs can actually overspend.  (And the Eagles are definitely a wealthy club — sweet!)  Thus are we ahead of the curve on the BWests and the Gocongs (inasmuch as there’s a curve to be ahead of on Gocong). (Read the rest of this story.)

Derek posted his response this morning.  Check it out here.

I’ll note he has yet to retract his unkind words for Buddy Ryan. 

Part 1 is here, part 2 is here.

Response from BountyHQ later this afternoon….

Yeah, so I read a lot of Eagles-related Internet content.  Thanks to the miracle of RSS feeds, you can pretty much corner the market on the Birds within a single screen on your aggregator of choice.  

Still, among all the Eagles nonsense I read (and I can’t stress this enough — it’s a lot), my number-one draft pick when I open my browser is Iggles Blog.  The most honest compliment I can pay Iggles Blog is to reveal that its feed sits in the top left corner of my Netvibes Sports tab (no shiznit — screenshots available upon request).  Derek’s blog consistently (since he actually does post pretty much every day, and sometimes twice a day) tells me things about the Birds that I didn’t already know, as well as things that I’m very happy I knew as soon as Derek explained why I should know them.  

(Most importantly, unlike me, he actually knows what he’s talking about.)

So you can imagine my surprise/ excitement when Derek asked me to roll with one of those Slate-style back-and-forth-on-the-web-a-logues, or as they say on the Internets, a BLOGSTRAVAGANZA.  I’m understandably intimidated by this, though I think I can totally hang with him if I can just steer the conversation toward insulting the local media and and the merits of posting photographs of sandwiches.

You can check Derek’s first post here.

And away we go….

——–

Derek,

Well thank you for the kind intro!  I feel like the Brett Favre to your John Madden, which makes a lot of sense, cause that’s how I like to blog: I’m just out here having fun, blogging like I blogged when I was a kid.  I’m a gunslinger, not afraid to take chances, and if I manage to get something completely incorrect, well shucks, that’s just my love of the blog shining through. (Read the rest of this story.)