For Eagle Fans, Actually, It's A Fine Time To Panic

Play On, Dipspit

On my drive-time radio this afternoon, and on the Internets this evening, news that rookie CB JaCorey Shepherd has a torn ACL and is out for the season. Shepherd had first crack at nickel CB's Brandon Boykin's job, and was said to be the prime reason why Boykin had to be shipped out for pennies on the dollar to Pittsburgh last week... um, before training camp got started, before anyone could get hurt, and before Pittsburgh, or any other team, could take a good look at their not very good secondary, and make an offer for a guy that has always graded out as one of the best in the game at shutting down WR3s. And should have been given the chance to defend CB2. But hey, bygones.

Anyway, Shepherd's done before he even played a snap for the team, and hey, that's starting to seem like a theme. Last week, it was outside LB Travis Long with the ACL snap, his second in two years, and hey presto, maybe the fact that the team has four possible interior LBs (Kiko Alonso and Mychal Kendricks being the actually good players, DeMecco Ryans being the too-old guy, and rookie Jordan Hicks as the too-young guy), and not so much beyond the two starting OLBs...

Well, hey, maybe the GM of this team is an absolute colossal idiot, disaster and trainwreck?

Nah, that can't be the case. The Eagles were going to run off Boykin no matter what, having drafted so many DBs, and doing so much with last year's guys who weren't good enough to get on the field when the team was going down the tubes. Shepherd was merely the first guy up, you see. There's plenty of other guys who can be CB3! That's not an important position in today's pass-happy NFL!

Which makes a man wonder, honestly, just how much bullsquat Nero's media coterie can dispense, and why, on God's green earth, anyone else should want to eat that meal. After blowing the budget on multiple free agent signings, after drafting and re-drafting to fill the need at the expense of the aging and thin offensive line, the team is likely only marginally better than last year's trainwreck, with a coaching staff that didn't develop anything more than excuses over the past two years.

It's a fine time to panic, Eagle Fan. You are staring down the barrel of a double-digit loss season with an utter asshat of a GM, and your sole realistic hope is that it's so bad, so fast, that even the notoriously slow trigger that is Jerry Lurie will show the con man the door at the end of the season.

You want to know how bad it is? A trainwreck of a year isn't my worst-case scenario with this team. Rather, it's some 8-8 to 10-6 pretender experience, one where QB Sam Bradford stays healthy just long enough to convince Nero to further wreck the salary cap, and he gets another year to do some dipspit move like moving Fletcher Cox for a tight end. That way, once this virus is finally flushed from the system, the team can be somehow behind even the DC Slurs. My worst-case for Nero isn't failure; it's mediocrity, followed by even more failure. That's how bad he is as a GM. That's how little of a chance this has of working. I have no hope from the jump, and am rooting for wipeout.

So yeah, feel fine with the panic, folks. Root for more ACL injuries, not less. Take the names of the enablers who want to tell you how so and so can play this and that, and how Shepherd, Boykin or anyone else with a name doesn't matters once you've got an Allmighty Culture Of Non-Uppitiness installed.

Because that's the thing with con men. You can't have the con sting just a little, and get out with most of your belongings. You've got to be well and truly destroyed before the whole thing ends, and you can recover.

Which leaves me with one question.

How does DC, Oakland, Jacksonville, the Jets and other fans of no hope franchises put themselves through this every year?