The good folks over at NRG Energy, longtime friends of the site, Eagles sponsors and partners of Connor Barwin, hosted a media flag football game at The Linc yesterday. I’ll spare you the 2,500-word recap, but I’d like to call your attention to this photo (as well as some others), featuring, from left-to-right, Phillies beat writer Ryan Lawrence, me, KYW anchor Dan Wing, and Julie Hancher of Green Philly. It would appear that three humans are battling with one ape to obtain an object of some intrinsic value before it unceremoniously crashes into the (shockingly hard and slightly unkempt) turf. What’s actually happening is stud defender breaks up pass intended for Wing (whom I believe won MVP last year) while he’s illegally blocked by Lawrence as Hancher attempts to save face for three pathetic males by actually catching the goddamn thing. Or, if you prefer, a pasty blogger commits pass interference in a flag football game:

All photos are courtesy of Mark Stehle

My team, consisting of me, 6 ABC’s Jeff Skversky, the AP’s Rob Maaddi, Philly Business Journal’s Alison Burdo, WXTU’s Andie Summer’s, and Philly.com’s Rob Tornoe, coached by Bill Bergey, was not good. We finished just off the podium in fourth… out of four teams. We lost our first game to the silver team here, led by Technical.ly’s Zack Seward, who was the only guy to wear the headband they gave us, which immediately signaled one of two things– 1) he’s a goofball who’s comically bad at football, or 2) he’s shockingly good and is going to make a meme out of me. It was the latter:

Not that far-fetched, since I came very close to getting one on this play:

Catching a touchdown here. Note the eyes looking to the goal line and complete spatial awareness with oncoming defenders. Ignore the fact that I look like a goddamn simpleton exerting any sort of effort:

Next is my run for paydirt, but absent is my leaping a defender in a single bound not unlike LeSean McCoy in the Snow Bowl… which totally happened without me sheepishly giving myself up and running out of bounds 10 yards short of the goal line in the direction of Dave Spadaro, who MC’ed the event and once called me Ricky Watters for short-arming a pass over the middle. For who, for what… is that stupid-ass look on my face:

Maestro and Toon Man:

Juke move brings all the boys (and girls) to the yard– a blogger showdown with Philly Mag’s Brandon Lee Gowton and a trailing Natalie Egenolf:

Was it worth the price of admission, Natalie?

We are just going to pretend that BLG held onto this ball and commando rolled into the end zone for six:

WHY DO I MAKE THESE FACES?

Natalie Hands strikes again as team grey scores one of its many few touchdowns:

#squadgoals:

Good job by NRG putting on the event– $1,000 got donated to each participant’s charity of choice (mine was Special Olympics Pennsylvania), with $5,000 going to the MVP’s– which was Generocity’s Tony Abraham, who donated to CHOP.

Here are the video highlights: