Mark Sanchez, The Eagles, And Magical Thinking Morons

Venn Googly

In my role as Suburban Parent of an early onset teen, I am a frequent cab driver. Which makes me poke around just enough sports talk radio to get agitated, which is to say, any. And here's a particularly noxious bit of defeatist thinking that's permeating my local laundry. Kick your feet up and dive into the dumbness with me, won't you?

The Eagles, winners of 12 of their last 16 regular season games and current #3 seed in the NFC, are on a thankless treadmill from which no real joy can be attained.

No, seriously.

You see, football teams aren't really football teams, and sports aren't really games. They are narratives, drama, storylines where your ability to know The Future makes you smarter than everyone else, and yes, I know, pot kettle black.

But where this matters in re my laundry is the idea that the Eagles can't possibly win the Super Bowl (or, naturally, just be satisfied with running the NFC East with an iron fist, or being one of the last 8 or 4 or 2 teams playing, no no, it's Everything Or Anger)...

with Mark Sanchez, just like they can't possibly have won it with Nick Foles, and since the team is good now, it will never get the next Andrew Luck-level QB, which means it will never win a Super Bowl.

You see, Super Bowls are only won by Real Talents, elite guys, SUPER DUPER OOPER STARS. Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers and multiple Mannings, guys that the Eagles are never lucky or smart enough to employ.

And never mind, never you mind, that the last two NFC reps in the SB both rode relatively low round draft picks at QB into the big game, and used the fact that they didn't spend their top picks on QBs to, you know, have better line play or linebackers or corners or what have you.

I mean, really. Mark Sanchez winning a Super Bowl? That's as crazy as Trent Dilfer. Or Jeff Hostetler. Or Doug Williams. Or Jim Plunkett. Or Kurt Warner... who all, like Sanchez, were so well-regarded and talented that they won their ring on a team that didn't draft them. A la Brees, a man whom Sanchez has absolutely nothing in common with, given how Brees experienced ups and downs in San Diego, before he went on, found a much better coach and sitution, and became Drew Effing Brees.

So? Once more with feeling, shall we?

I don't doubt that having a great QB is a real aid to winning a SB.

But to claim that a team can't win without the best player on the club taking snaps from center, and that if you don't have Super Dooper Ooper Stud at QB1...

Well, I don't love Sanchez's odds of winning it all, either.

But if and when that doesn't happen, it won't be because of narrative.

It will be, because of football, which is only prone to storyline if you slap one on it after the fact. (Here's one that was certain to be true until it wasn't: Seahawks lose to Broncos as Peyton Manning roasts loudmouth Richard Sherman. Seattle can't ovecome Sherman's disractions to SB. And so on.)

I get that you people love your stories... but the rest of us?

Here for game.

And we have no idea what one you are watching, or if you are watching at all...