I dunno ...

This entire D-Mac/media/race thing strikes me as a little bit of old news, and a little bit of a non-story. I'm a little surprised, Pepe, that you see this as being as vast a problem as the protagonist apparently does, because I think it's a little thin.

Yes, a point is made of McNabb's color, because he's black and he plays quarterback and that's just the way it is. I, like you, get aggravated by "rocket-fueled legs" and idiocy of saying that McNabb's career is over if he can't run anymore. But I also don't quite see the malice here, or at least don't see the vitriol directed toward him as being any different in basic composition as other quarterbacks who struggle in massive (and caustic) media settings. I agree with the point that the Philly media's stance toward Donovan is horseshit, but there are two caveats: 1) I'm not sure big-R "Racism" is the motivating factor; and 2) I would blanch to think what Philly would have done to Rex Grossman/Kyle Boller/Akili Smith/Tim Couch/Drew Brees (he sucked early) ... in general, I can't imagine any focal-point athlete in that city being able to have a shitty game without someone writing that it's time for the backup.

Ultimately, we have to understand that columnists have to write about something, and that in the process of writing those things are probably going to fall back on stereotypes. And, sure, I'll buy that the Philly media has cast a more wary eye on Donovan than they would have Peyton Manning, though I'm pretty sure Manning would be known as "Truck-rally Redneck boy" if he had been drafted by the Eagles, because that's Manning's most obvious trait. Furthermore -- this is important to remember -- Manning was the most mocked quarterback in the league until winning the Superbowl. You might think Simmons' one stupid comment about McNabb is worthy of a punch to the face, but the Sports Guy has made a fucking career out of deriding the league's best signal-caller for the last five years. I have yet to hear the term "McNabb Face" in popular sports lexicon.

I'll be the first to say that the media's strange obsession with Favre is inappropriate, and by contrast the treatment of other quarterbacks then appears discriminatory. But I think it's less about Favre's whiteness than it is his ability to attract fanboys with his style of play, and the fact that he always looks unshaven. He's football's Darin Erstad, only with talent. He's also the exception to the rule; most QBs who perform like he does -- be they white, mobile or calculating -- would get taken to the woodshed.

I watched last night as the fortunes of a team that can't run the ball, has average-at-best wide receivers and a very mediocre offensive line, got nonetheless hung on the shoulders of a quarterback who has started roughly one season's worth of games. This isn't to say that Rex Grossman isn't deserving of criticism, but he's certainly not deserving of all the criticism. Chicago is a team with lots of problems, but the one behind center is going to get the most attention. That's just the way it is. And, whether or not anyone else is willing to accept it, McNabb's failures -- real or imagined -- have been on some of the league's biggest stages, like Manning's were. That's just the way it is: When you play in games that are being covered by 100 different columnists, you can expect dozens of ill-informed takes that ultimately rely heavily on stereotyping and cliches.

I'll also say that the injuries issue with McNabb is a big one. Yes, Simmons is an idiot, but there's a lot of justified worry (including some on your part, no?) that McNabb might just never be healthy for an entire season again. Now, you can call that bad luck, which is probably the case. But, again, writing, "He gets hurt a lot and no one knows why," makes for stupefyingly boring copy, which isn't exactly going to fly in Philly. So, columnists will stretch to explain the otherwise unexplainable, which leads to a lot of what I think both you and D-Mac perceive as unfair treatment. Again, while hypotheticals like this are usually dumb because there's no good way to verify it, I think any wicked-talented quarterback with that track record in that city goes through pretty much the exact same thing, only with different adjectives.

You know, I read over this, and then I think of "rocket-fueled legs," and I understand why you're so adamant about this. But, shit, it's an argument blog, so I'll leave it be.

Football's back!

and it's gonna be trouble. I didn't make it to Kezar Pub, where the Birds fans congregate, because a couple of friends went early and it was wall-to-wall by 9:30, partly because of the rugby world cup. Wound up watching the game at an English pub in the Haight full of fucking cheeseheads. Missed the first half (I know that makes me a bad fan, but I had a good excuse), got there when it was tied, talked a bunch of painkiller smack on Favre, made a Mark Chmura crack or two, the usual.

Thoughts on the game: I've seen worse. The one thing that really bothers me is that it's an NFC game, so it might come back to haunt them in tiebreakers and such later (a la the horseshit 62-yard field goal loss to Tampa last year). We'd beaten the Pack five straight times, including probably the greatest single Eagles play I've ever witnessed -- one of those few plays for which I'll always remember where I was when it happened (although that's sort of easy, since the answer's usually Old Chicago), so they owed us. Plus it was in Lambeau, and they've got a good defense.

And the Eagles played well enough to win. The Eagles offense is what it is: baffling, maddening, inconsistent, but occasionally explosive and good enough when it needs to be. (Even in a weak effort, the offense played well enough to win today.) The playcalling sucked, overall, and yet the fact that the play breakdown was something like 28/33 run/pass is very heartening to me. D-Mac didn't look sharp, and his stats weren't great, but there were four or five dropped passes in the third quarter alone that really hurt. He often starts seasons poorly; he'll be fine. Reggie Brown disappeared for a game, as he is wont to do, but Jason Avant had a nice game in his place.

The defense was what really worried me going in, considering they had three new starting linebackers and a few new d-linemen, and they were really bad last year, especially against the run. Granted, it's the Packers, but the D was stellar: no offensive TDs allowed, right around 50 rushing yards, a couple of turnovers.

Special teams lost this game. Specifically, Greg Lewis and J.R. Reed's respective foibles -- Lewis botching one kick that wound up a Packers TD, and Reed screwing the pooch completely on a hapless fair-catch attempt that directly cost the Eagles the game. But I have a hard time blaming either of them, considering neither has returned punts before. We had a reliable and sure-handed, if decidedly non-dangerous, returner for the last few years in Reno Mahe, whom I like perhaps too much because he's Vai Sikahema's cousin. He also worked at Chickie and Pete's part-time in the offseason and is reportedly related to the Barbarian. Then we cut him because Reid and Co. were so high on Jeremy Bloom, a skier who has since been cut himself. Luckily, I think this whole punt-return situation is a pretty easy fix: sign Reno, who's still a free agent, mostly because he's not very good at anything but catching punts. Rumor has it (on Igglephans) the team plans to bring him in for a tryout. At least you know what you get with him: he's never returned a punt for a TD, but he had one of the NFL's best YPRs last year, and he rarely fumbles. Besides, if the Birds are in a situation where they really need a big return, they've still got this guy. (The first play of that clip is one of my all-time Eagles top 5. God, I love beating the Giants.)

Then just cut Reed to make room for him. He's expendable, as much as everybody likes him after that ghastly injury and his gutsy comeback. He was never that good to begin with.

In other words, despite what the predictable Philly reaction has been thus far, the sky's not falling. But we absolutely must beat Washington next Monday.

Thoughts on other games I watched, at least in part:

LT is the single most amazing football player I've ever seen play. If he were an Eagle I would probably become his stalker. I've always put away my homerishness when it comes to him, and agreed that he's the best back in football, so I often think that I realize how good he is. Then I watch him play, and realize that I didn't realize. I'm no historian, but I can't imagine there's ever been a RB who was clearly better.

That said, the Chargers as a whole did not impress me, and Philip Rivers in particular does not -- and never has -- strike me as anything more than an above-average NFL QB. And not that far above average.

On the flip side of that game, the Bears are pretenders, just like I've been saying. Their best scoring option is a punt returner.

Regarding other predictions I made a while ago ...

I wish I had considered the Rams' defense before anointing them.

I stick with my Lions pick.

I might be wrong about the Panthers/Saints, but I'm not conceding that just yet. Let's see the Panthers do something against a team that has a secondary. (Why the hell don't opposing DCs just game-plan to triple Steve Smith? He's the only good player on that entire offense!)

The Giants are in real trouble.

Next season, the Redskins might be as good as everybody seems to think they are right now.

I hate the Patriots more than I have any right to hate a team from another conference.

I didn't get to see the Seahawks game, but it sounds like they had a solid performance against a mediocre team, which -- in all seriousness -- is harder than it sounds. And the stats seem to indicate that both Hasselbeck and Alexander played well. Still, the fact that the Bucs were trailing by 4 in the third quarter in Seattle should keep Seth's claims of NFC dominance in check for another week or two. Or dare I dream? I'm curious to see what they do against a good team.

Thus far, their defensive travails notwithstanding (Plaxico Burress is the most underrated WR in the NFL by a wide margin), I would have to say the best team in the NFC is not the Bears nor Saints nor Eagles nor Hawks, but the Cowboys. Now let me go wash the taste of vomit out of my mouth ...

A terrible trio of topics: the Eagles' draft, the NBA, the Phillies 'pen.

The NFL draft: First off, I apologize to our more sensitive readers for the obscene content of my former post, although I renege none of its hatred or vitriol and persist in hating the Kolb pick and everybody in the Eagles' FO. I've watched whatever highlight films of his I can find (this one seems to be the best, if not the best choice of resolution or backing music), and he strikes me as a weak-armed run-first system guy who never worked under center (and the Eagles almost never run a shotgun, preferring instead, as I've often lamented, to run one-back play-action horseshit even on third-and-long). Suffice to say I don't think Kevin Kolb will ever be the Eagles' starting quarterback, and if he is, he'll be Bobby Hoying redux.

But fine -- franchise quarterbacks dont' come often, especially in the second round. The bigger issue is that they didn't pick a single real safety: Gaddis out of Clemson and the Barksdale guy (can we start a petition to make him change his first name to Avon?) from Albany are both hybrid CB/S guys not ideally suited for either position. I bet cash money that will come back to haunt them in a very material sense, probably this season -- but I like a few of their later picks a hell of a lot and think they addressed glaring needs. Namely:

Abiamiri out of ND is exactly what they needed on the D-line, a big earthmover end who can stop the run, the kind of guy they usually forsake in favor of undersized "high-motor" busts like McDougle, Patterson, Bunkley -- hell, all the way back to Mike Mamula.

Bradley from Nebraska -- a 6'4", 254-lb LB -- is another welcome departure from their tendency to draft fast undersized linebackers who invariably wind up sucking (Reid has yet to draft a starting-quality linebacker -- see McCoy, Reese, Caver, Gardner, Gocong, etc. -- with the possible exception of Gaither last year, and it's too early to say with him). This guy's not a freak athlete, but he's almost Trotter's size and can't possibly be any worse in coverage than Dhani Jones.

Tony Hunt could finally be the big back Eagles fans have been waiting for since Reid took over. I love Westbrook -- I think he's still underrated, despite his recent hype, because he's not as fragile as people think, runs well between the tackles, comes up big in big spots, is a very good blocker, an excellent receiver, and all-around, probably the best running back in the NFC and the single most dangerous player I've seen since Marshall Faulk. But we could use a change-of-pace guy to play the Brandon Jacobs/T.J. Duckett role in goalline situations and third-and-short. Maybe now Andy will even decide to fucking run the ball sometimes in those situations. Probably not, but I can dream.

However, Doyle makes an excellent point that draft-day speculation -- and indeed the media blitz that is the NFL draft -- is invariably wrong and, further, pointless. NFL scouts fail in evaluating talent most of the time and we probably can't do any better.

The NBA: Unfortunately, I just finished working four days in a row and don't have cable, so I haven't been able to watch any of the first-round games save for snippets caught between serving Smithwicks. So I'll leave most of it to Connor, except to take minor issue with a couple of his statements from the previous post:

I agree that its players' streetball ethic has helped the NBA's popularity. However, I also think it's partly to blame for its decline in popularity since the MJ/Magic/Bird days, largely for the reason you touch upon -- white America can no longer identify with many of the players, or no longer wants to try, which in turn has led to the NBA's quest to Tigerfy its players, as you mentioned.

The only other thing I have to offer is that the LeBron/A-Rod comparison is dead-on. That's the first time I've seen it made, and I hadn't considered it, but the parallels are all there.

The Phillies: Another strong outing from a starting pitcher today. Seven innings, one earned run from Leiber. Myers pitched another scoreless eighth. And the back end of the 'pen blew it again. This time El Pulpo Flashed a fastball to Andruw and he hit it halfway to Punxsutawney.

Clock's ticking, Chaz. Make Myers the closer soon or you're out of a job and the Phils will be out of the Wild Card race.

Stay tuned tomorrow for a post discussing Josh Hancock's death and the sports media's response. I expect it will piss a lot of people off for no good reason.