40 Years A Victim: Eagles-Dophins Diary Void

Can Lose, And Play, For Everyone

Today, instead of watching the Eagles game, I took my eldest to her gymnastics meet. There was no Wifi in the gym, and my phone is bad in such situations anyway, so I was unaware of the game until halfway through the fourth, when I caught the rest on the radio on the ride home.

It is, honestly, the first time I've missed an Eagles game since the 1970s. I'm also not going to find the footage and watch it later. Every game, meaningful or no, viewed. Even when I moved to California, and had to track the game down in sports bars early in the morning. Even when I was in New Zealand on vacation.

Today was different. I thought about dropping the kid off and going to a local Buffalo Wild Wings. The kid will have plenty more meets, and there was nothing all that special about this one. But there's also nothing special about this Eagles team, no reason to think that they are going to become anything more than what they are. Sub-.500, inconsistent, maddening, unwatchable. 

So I can't tell you how, exactly, how a team with 2X the number of first downs, over 150 more yards of offense, while only being -1 in turnovers, with a defensive safety, can blow a home game against a 6-point dog. Other than, well, this is Nero Kelly's Culture Beats Talent Fun Bunch, and they can lose to any team with a physical defense, because that's been true for 2.5+ years now. I didn't see what caused QB Sam Bradford to leave with a concussion, or what caused QB Mark Sanchez to make the crippling INT in figgie position while down two points with four minutes left. Or how an offense that puts up 16 points in the first quarter, the first time this year that they've actually been good early, would somehow not score more than a measly figgie for the rest of the day. Isn't this an offense that with tempo is supposed to wear down teams? Or is that, like so much else that comes out of Nero Kelly's mouth, a complete piece of bull exhaust?

In the always comical NFC lEast, defeats don't matter the way they do in real divisions, and we won't be able to fully ignore this team for another four to six weeks. But ignore them we will, and lemme tell you... my afternoon was so much better than anyone who roots for this laundry. (The eldest won the all-around in her division. Neat, huh?)