Bird Droppings: Flushing the Season
Photo credit: Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
Lots of typos today. There are going to be lots of tpyos today.
This is bad. Very bad. Probably one of the top three worst sports days of the year– up there with the day after the playoff loss to the Saints and the day after the Flyers lost Game 7 to the Rangers. In the span of eight days we have gone from discussing bye probabilities to the Eagles needing some help just to get into the playoffs. Double-u, t, ef?
A team will also be left out in the NFC with ten wins. With 9 wins, the Eagles dropped down to the seventh spot after losing to Dallas on Sunday night. Even if Philadelphia wins out, it will take a loss by Detroit or Dallas to get in. If one of those two do drop another game this year, and the Eagles win 11, an 11-5 team will miss the postseason for only the third time since the league went to a 16-game schedule.
Everyone’s in a fog today. I think they meant to write “if one of those two don’t drop…” but the takeaway remains the same– the Eagles could be royally screwed thanks to being in the unenviable position of losing every tiebreaker imaginable. Bleeding Green Nation writes that the Eagles’ playoff chances went from 73% to 35%, and excuse me I’m going to go vomit.
Mark Sanchez
Hey, anyone need a hideous t-shirt? I’ll pay you to take one. I need to get rid of these. Do we want a third-world country somewhere to believe that Mark Sanchez is an immortal football warrior? I’m not so sure I do, because I’d rather inhabit the village where lore about the 2008 World Champion Tampa Bay Rays is passed from generation to generation than one in which a small child views Sanchez as any sort of hero. He fucking sucks (Sanchez, not the small child).
I had Jets fans a few weeks ago laugh at my (our? please be our, because I can’t go this alone) enthusiasm over Sanchez. “Just wait.” “Give it a few weeks.” “You’re going to hate him.” Those were the sorts of things they said. “He’s changed!” “He can’t be worse than Foles has been this year.” “But… but he has The Shield!” Those were my responses. Oh to be young and naive again.
Mark’s passes have the trajectoral fortitude of a hot dog launched from the Phanatic’s canon. Like, the balls go places, ostensibly to where they were intended, but the accuracy rate is about 30% and the flight is unpredictable, due to a seeming failure on the part of the launcher to have any control over velocity and loft. And then there are times when the whole thing just gets jammed and requires a team of hourly workers to inspect it curiously. “The F wrong with this thing?!”
I sat behind one of the end zone’s last night, so I had an especially great view of Sanchez’s passes sailing high, drifting away, having the hang time of a balloon in space, or just being thrown directly into a crowd of defenders or, you know, the stands.
Bradley Fletcher
Those last two are different plays! Let me shout that just to make my point: THOSE LAST TWO ARE DIFFERENT PLAYS!!!!!!!! How is that even possible?! How can a piece of toast get burnt so quickly on plays that start around the 30? Not even the hare could get by the tortoise in that short of a distance. And on all three of these we see Fletcher’s right hand flapping in the air. One would think that he’s trying to deflect the balls, but the more I look at it, the more I think he was just waving them through.
I don’t care what the Eagles need to do, but Fletcher needs to not happen anymore. Cary Williams is awful and has perfected the art of the ill-timed Nnamdi Asomugha penalty, but at least he plays with a little heart. Why is he not on the best receivers? At the very least a few balls might hit him in the back of the head because of his height (or because he was holding the receiver). Or how about just sliding Brandon Boykin to the outside? Or requesting permission from the NFL to put a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tubeman in Fletcher’s spot?
If someone is going to just stand there and wave, I’d rather it be Tuebman. He’s tall and appears to have at least a modicum of pride.
Or just no one at all
The high throw actually provided better coverage than Fletcher.
Kickoff
I was sitting at the other end and I’m still not even sure what happened. Everyone around me thought it was a trick play of some sort, that there was no way the Cowboys actually kicked off and then just recovered the damn thing. This is the sort of shit I try all the time in Madden – kicking the ball into the blocking and trying to recover – but even the game is like nah, that could never happen. Au contraire, game! Anything can happen when Josh Huff is on the scene.
A lot more coming.
