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Ah, Terrell Eldorado Owens. The great hope of the longsuffering Eagles fans who arrived by trade in time for the 2004 season. He was finally going to solve years of mediocre to terrible WR play (seriously, check out this list of stiffs that Birds fans endured in the early years of the Andy Reid era). Owens had proven himself to be a premier playmaker in San Francisco and after increasing dissatisfaction there, forced his way to Philadelphia to team with Donovan McNabb. Firewo

Usually I come out with this article sometime shortly after the draft but one of the reasons I waited was to see how the AJ Brown situation got resolved. Well, that's been done for some time now, so let's get to it. With camp about three weeks away, let's jump right in with some grades and commentary for the offseason's biggest storylines (starting with the bad news): Lost Jeff Stoutland due to philosophical differences over offensive system: F - - -. It's really difficult to

CLICK HERE if you're interested in reading the "What went wrong?" version of this column. Losing an embarrassing playoff game in the wake of a frustrating season is no way to defend your Super Bowl championship, but no matter how bitter the taste of last season might be, there were plenty of positives, some of which set Philly up pretty well for the future: Philly won 11 games despite a brutal schedule. A quick review of the Eagles' schedule reveals "only" six games against e

Well, it wasn't what we had hoped: the Eagles' attempt to be just the fourth team in the salary cap era to repeat as champions went up in smoke. Back in January, I didn't want to waste time talking about that 49ers game (you all saw what I saw), but no one who watched that team could have been too shocked by what happened: the offense again went ice cold for too long, aided by untimely dropped passes and foolish penalties. It's the same script from September, October, Novemb

Three years ago, in anticipation of a Philly Super Bowl run, I wrote a piece that attempted to use statistical history to determine the mold that champions typically come from. I ended up finding seven statistical traits that seemed to predict success with some frequency. Last year I came back to that project and updated it a bit with a couple new and different insights (that article came to the conclusion that Philly was a serious threat to win the big game, and well, tha

Another year, another insane Eagles-Bills game ! This one was defensive in nature, helped by the miserable Buffalo weather, and like that matchup from two years ago went down to the final play. Much has been made about Philly's offense going completely stagnant for the second half (which it did, frustratingly), but to that I'll offer a nominal defense: the weather was terrible, the Bills offense had been totally strangled by the Eagles' D (until late in the third quarter the

What were you doing on November 28, 2004? I was wrapping up my first semester in college, which feels like a lifetime ago. That date happened to be when the Eagles clinched their fourth consecutive NFC East title. The Birds had ruled the division for much of the decade and were in the midst of a Super Bowl run. It was hard to imagine that reign ever ending, and yet that would remarkably be the start of the longest run of nonconsecutive division champs in NFL history. That's a

In the off chance that you would like to read my comments on last Monday's Chargers loss (didn't get publicly published yet), CLICK HERE . It's felt like forever since we got to talk about a win, but all it took for the Birds to start washing that horrible taste of defeat out of their mouths was a matchup with maybe the NFL's worst team. It was nice to live like the rest of the NFL for a week (it's been about two months since the Eagles played a team that wasn't in the thick

It's definitely getting old to keep writing effectively the same article on repeat ("offense not consistent", "offense one dimensional", "turnovers tell the tale", etc), but here we are. This article comes in a few days late again as the game ended so late and I wanted to think about it a bit. Here are a few thoughts in no particular order: Jalen has an awful game. I'm not going to be too awfully hard on QB1 as several of his career high five turnovers weren't fully his fault

No need to go into details; this postgame commentary is blindingly clear. After the Dallas game I called the Bears "the worst 8-3 team in recent memory" and to be frank, I didn't see much to the contrary. Had the Eagles bothered to get off the bus today I think they win that game in a walk. They didn't; the Bears just wanted this game more (as evidenced by their nearly 300 yards on the ground), and that's all there is to it. In the NFL, where the gap between good and bad team

NOTE: coming in late in part due to company coming in for the holiday week, and partly due to the fact that I wanted to digest such a weird loss. This one stank, no doubt about it, but to be frank I'm not sure we should feel too incredibly bad about the game in a vacuum: this was more of the same kind of thing that we've seen all year. Solid defense, hit and miss offense, largely inert passing game, result hinged on turnovers. My hope is that the team takes the next couple of

This win reminded me a bit of the Ravens game from last season; in that game Philly was facing maybe the league's most physical and talented team and pretty much beat the tar out of them. Detroit fits that description, or close enough, and Philly boxed them into a corner in yet another gritty prime time win. Detroit moved the ball with more consistency and outgained the Birds (once again) but Philly pulled off a huge win. Here's how, in order of significance: (1) THE REFS! Ju

Going into the 2010 NFL draft, ESPN unofficially kicked off their "Year of the QB" series of articles and other content, focusing on the importance of the position to football success. The general consensus of this content was that a football team (especially an NFL team) needed an elite, superstar QB to have a shot at contention and if you didn't have one, you were screwed. It was likely my perception and not complete reality, but it certainly seemed to me that this was the

Who said that game was boring? I saw plenty of fans (for both teams) complaining about how terrible their teams looked, presumably because this was one of the lowest scoring games in recent memory. Who cares? Both defenses played well and the sudden cold (as low as 20 degrees on the field) unquestionably hampered both offenses. Let's hit a few talking points on a big Monday Night Football victory: Starting with a negative comment , just to get it over with. Nick should have h

A semi-random scattering of thoughts worth chewing on as we sit at the midpoint of the season: A few thoughts on these trades. Quick recap: the Birds added two DBs (Michael Carter II and Jaire Alexander) and edge rusher Jaelen Phillips. This was done for the reasonable total cost of the Birds' own 2026 3rd round pick (likely to be pick 90 or later), 6th round picks in 2026 and 2027, and WR John Metchie. Philly also got 2027 7th round picks back in both of the Alexander and Ca

Well, that was fun while it lasted. For a game and change over the last couple of weeks it looked like the Giants might work their way back to relevance after a decade in the NFL wilderness. Thanks for playing, Midgets! Not too much to say about this one, really: you all saw the same things I did. Let's hit a few of the talking points: Let's get the officiating stuff out of the way first. My guess is that Giants fans, who probably thought against all reason that their team ha

Philly had the odds stacked against them today, in a lot of ways. Banged up on the OL, banged up in the secondary, banged up at EDGE, nine days worth of angst and speculation, talented and motivated opponent coming off their bye... Did it matter? Nope! Philly found their passing game at last and used their red zone defense to hang on in a tough road game. Jalen racked up a perfect passer rating for the first time in his career (previous high was 140.6 three years ago against

This is coming in several days than it would have normally as my brother and I went to the game and got home really late. We took my ten year old nephew to his first game (would have been nice if the Birds had bothered to show up for that, but more on them in a moment). Having watched the meltdown unfold in person, here are a few thoughts: Philly deserved to lose that game; New York came out more mentally ready and played harder. I think this game is a testament to the downsi

It was bound to happen eventually. After living on the ragged edge all year long, a shorthanded Eagles team collapsed in the fourth...

Let's hit the obvious first: this season so far has given us all flashbacks to 2023 (in that season, inordinate number of close victories...