I’m just kidding. Generally speaking, I hate open letters. It’s a simplistic format, often devoid of fact or substance, that plays on the tear down the man aspect of sports fandom. It rallies the troops with timeless complaints without actually offering any solutions to the problem so haphazardly explained in the message.

Lo, let me take a moment to fact-check that open letter to Jeffrey Lurie which has been making the rounds and popping up in my timeline and inbox. This will be unpopular.

You can read the letter in full on Ducis Rodgers’ Facebook page. What follows are excerpts:

“I am a 28-year-old single father of two. I work many hours a week for very little money in order to support my two beautiful sons. Do you know what helps get me through my week? The thought that on a Sunday afternoon, for 3 hours, I get to watch my football team take the field of battle, playing the game that I love. I save money all year-long so that I can afford to get to at least one game a year in your beautiful palace. This year, however, due to the health circumstances of my younger son, I wasn’t able to get to a game. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. 3-5 at home? I’m glad I didn’t make it.”

From jump, we’re rooting for the author– local fan Nick Salkowski (he’s a real person– I checked). We like Nick. I like Nick. A father who works hard to support his family and wants to treat himself once or twice per year. But, the gripes that follow are mostly unfounded.

“For the second year in a row, I now have to watch postseason football that doesn’t include my team. My brother is a Giants fan, my best friend a Cowboys fan, and while their teams aren’t in the tournament either, they can still look back fondly on teams of the past. I don’t have that luxury. I have many “Better Luck Next Year” memories, but I can’t go back in my memory bank to a time my team finally reached the apex of the football world. What a maddening feeling! To think back on decades of futility breaks my heart, as it does for the better part of the Delaware valley.”

I’m sure this all comes as a shock to Jeffrey Lurie, the billionaire owner whose team was embarrassed on national TV a handful of times over the past three months. This must be the first time he’s heard the “we never win” sentiment from fans of the team he’s owned for 21 years.


“You’ve built a stadium that makes it very hard for people like me to go to! In order to go through the gates to watch a game, it costs upward of $100 per ticket, and this is after $40 for parking! Have you ever thought that maybe that is why the home field advantage is gone? You have built a palace that only business execs and upper class can afford to go to without a struggle! You’ve taken the true fan and told him that he’s not important anymore, that all you care about is making as much money as possible.”

That’s a fun thing to yell – THIS IS TOO EXPENSIVE! YOU MADE THE STADIUM TOO NICE! – but it rings hollow. According to Statista.com, the Eagles – a major market team with a rabid fan base – have only the ninth most expensive average ticket price in the league (~$98), behind, in order, the Giants, Patriots, 49ers, Cowboys, Bears, Jets, Redskins and Ravens. Obviously, price isn’t based on postseason success. Rather, it’s based largely on market. LA doesn’t have a team, but 7 of the other 9 top media markets in the country (Philadelphia is fourth) are all represented before the Eagles, which means Eagles tickets, relative to market size, are, at worst, fairly priced, or, at best, a good value. We all long for the atmosphere at the Spectrum or Vet, but places like that are no longer economically feasible in sports. That’s not Jeffrey Lurie’s fault.

As for the secondary market? Tickets are obviously more expensive, but still nowhere near the top. Eagles tickets are a pedestrian 11th, coming in at around $230, according to a TiqIQ study prior to the season. They’re behind, in order, the Seahawks, Broncos, Bears, Patriots, Packers, Cowboys, Giants, Texans, Steelers and 49ers.

“You have installed a coach who doesn’t care about people like me. He is arrogant, moody, uncompromising, controlling and pig headed. He believes his way is the only way, and he refuses to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t know all there is to know about being a coach in the NFL. Does he not realize that the media that he finds so reproachable is the gateway to the fan? The reporters are asking questions and writing stories to keep us as informed as they can! Him disrespecting guys like Jeff McLane and Les Bowen and Howard Eskin is really him disrespecting me! How does the man who believes he is the smartest man in the city not realize this?”

That last part about Chip’s stubbornness may be true, but the “arrogant, moody, uncompromising, controlling and pig headed (?)” part could describe just about every NFL coach in some way. As a human, Chip seems more grounded than just about all other coaches, riding his bike to work, living in a relatively reasonable house, and having a seemingly genuine appreciation for the military. The media, as much as it likes to think it is a gateway to the fan, generally pokes and prods about inane issues that only it cares about. In fact, some, including Bowen, routinely dismiss fans as uninformed idiots and proceed to focus on their insular soup du jour. The media would much better serve fans by doing actual original reporting (the kind McLane and Tim McManus do) as opposed to relying on coach soundbites to fill their print spaces. And Chip is still nowhere near:

“Even Andy Reid, for as boring as he was, wasn’t so arrogant and disrespectful, and the resume’ he put together is WORLDS greater then ANYTHING Chip Kelly will ever accomplish as the coach of the Eagles.”

Andy Reid wasn’t arrogant or disrespectful to the media and, by our author’s logic, the fans? Oh, how quickly we forget his one-word answers.

“Speaking of Andy, he’s clinched a playoff berth. He only managed that because he signed Jeremy Maclin in the offseason. You remember Maclin. He’s the wide receiver that your coach neglected to call back because he was too busy. Maclin should have been Sam Bradford’s number one target this season, not Alex Smith’s.”

No doubt that losing Maclin hurt, but he wasn’t dismissed by Chip the way LeSean McCoy and DeSean Jaccson were. There’s some truth to the neglect thing (basically, Reid put on the full-court press and Kelly didn’t), but there’s also truth to Maclin’s $11 million per season contract. The Eagles wanted him, but, perhaps rightfully, not at that price. And despite his success in KC this year, he’s still on pace for fewer yards and touchdowns than he had with the Eagles last year.

“Evan Mathis should have been protecting Bradford instead of Allen Barbre. LeSean McCoy should have been taking handoffs from Bradford instead of DeMarco Murray. But because your coach/GM believes that he is the smartest man in football, all the talent we once rooted for and loved now lives in other cities. What a disgrace. How were you fooled into believing these were the right moves to make? Kelly must be a hell of a salesman.”

I can’t with a straight face defend the moves Chip made in the offseason. In the short-term, they proved to be an absolute disaster. But Evan Mathis would not have saved the Eagles this season. And he’s 34. His career is winding down. McCoy played in only 12 games this season and suffered through hamstring injuries at the start and now a torn MCL. DeMarco Murray certainly wasn’t the answer, but I’m not sure McCoy would’ve done much more.

“Culture may beat scheme, but in the NFL nothing trumps talent. Even a peon like me knows that. How can your coach possibly be unaware of this? How could you have let him tear down a team that was good and make them worse than mediocre? You are the last line of defense for the fan against this egomaniacal fraud that you put in charge! After 20 years as an owner you must know enough to not allow him to do this! And yet, he was allowed to have free reign and he destroyed my team. He ruined my fall. He ruined my year! He ruined the year for hundreds of thousands of fans like me who work many hours a week for very little money who LIVE for Sundays!”

Oh stop. Chip destroyed the team this year, yes, and there’s no indication that he’s set them up for success going forward. But judging any GM after his first year in charge is completely ridiculous. And if your year was ruined by the Eagles not making the playoffs… well, I don’t know what to tell you. That seems like it’s more your problem than Jeffrey Lurie’s.

“I’m defeated. I’ve given up. Your franchise has become the laughing stock of the NFL. I am embarrassed to be a part of it. I hope that in the future, you see the error of Chip’s ways and correct the mistake you made by putting him in charge. But, like an addict, I will continue to scrape and save to be able to attend one game in 2016. That should be of some comfort to you, because filling your palace is all you seem to care about. And saps like me will continue to oblige. Have a happy New Year!”

Jeffrey Lurie is hardly perfect, and you can question both his decision to keep Andy Reid around for three years too long and to give Chip Kelly all the power last offseason, but I highly doubt that filling his palace is all he cares about. I’ve never bought the Lurie doesn’t want to win meme perpetuated by sports talk radio. He might not know how to win, but he’s not some shadowy owner cashing checks. This is an accusation you could now levy against Comcast Spectacor (which operates independently of Ed Snider) and maybe the Sixers’ ownership group. But I’ve seen nothing from Lurie in recent years to indicate that he doesn’t care about winning. Bitch about the Chip decision, fine, but shredding the owner over ticket prices and misplaced priorities is unfair.