I wish this was a straw man, but it’s not. On various sports shows this week I’ve heard some form of Eagles discussion centering on the idea of 17-0 and whether or not it’s beneficial to lose a game. The argument is that there’s a lot of pressure to go unbeaten and if they get knocked down a peg they remove the monkey from their back and refocus on the playoffs. Something like that.

Of course the argument is 100% unfiltered bullshit. The grain alcohol of bad sports takes. People are out here arguing that losing might be a good thing, which is right up there with the most anti-Philadelphia opinions of all time.

Yeah, there are exceptions, but this isn’t like the tank at the end of the 2020 season, when jockeying for draft position was key. We’re talking about making history by running the table and matching the 1972 Dolphins for the first time ever. No NFL team has done it in 50 years.

There’s a sidebar topic here regarding that Dolphins-inspired pursuit. Does it matter if the team goes 17-0 if they lose in the first round of playoffs? Of course it does. It’s exponentially harder to win 17 straight games vs. three or four straight games in the playoffs. The 9-7 Giants won the Super Bowl not long ago, and the #6 seed Phillies went to the World Series, so we all know about getting hot in the crapshoot known as the postseason. If the Eagles went 9-8 and won the Super Bowl vs. going 17-0 and then losing in the NFC Championship Game, the latter would be more impressive but ultimately less heralded because of American attitudes towards the regular season vs. the playoffs. It’s just how we’re built.

But anyway, to prove I’m not making this shit up, a couple of tweets:


I believe that most of this discussion is taking place on sports talk radio, but I’ve heard it elsewhere, so this can’t just be a “they have nothing else to talk about” column shitting on WIP and the Fanatic. That said, the truth of the matter is that radio is probably better when the Eagles stink, because at least the topics are relevant and the discussion is fervent. You talk about finding a quarterback of the future, or draft strategy, or the general manager, or whatever. The Eagles are 8-0 this year and largely waxing the floor with inferior opponents, so we conjure up some half-hearted complaints about run defense or special teams, but there really isn’t a ton of juice for those discussions.

That’s not to say that Eagles talk should be pure fluff, spending all day every day talking about how good they are. Blatant Posidelphia is just as vapid as the Negadelphia, but I largely can’t comprehend what I’m listening to here. People are seriously arguing that losing a game will be beneficial. Fuck outta here with that. The Birds should absolutely be trying to go undefeated here. They should be trying to steamroll every opponent in front of them, to crush their enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women (as Conan the Barbarian once said). This talk of dropping a game radiates massive amounts of loser energy. They should be trying to chase the 1972 Dolphins.