This clip of Big Play Slay on Micah Parsons podcast is EVERYWHERE:

It’s the buddy/buddy shit that’s annoying. Imagine Brian Dawkins going on Dexter Coakley’s podcast after the Eagles defense gave up 33 points in a loss to Jake Plummer’s Arizona Cardinals. You’re out here yukking it up with a guy who plays for your biggest rival, less than 48 hours after tweeting and deleting your lifetime stats after a bad loss. Same Darius Slay who is a team captain, by the way, and one of just two on the defensive side of the ball.

That’s the thing that bothers people about this. Slay didn’t even say anything bad about Chauncey Gardner-Johnson. They did some ball busting and laughed about it, then he talked about CJGJ being a guy who, if he’s gonna talk shit, talk shit, but you have to know that if you don’t play well, or the team doesn’t play well, you’re gonna hear about it. It was a pretty straightforward message and not even remotely incendiary.

What you see these days is a a conflict with the contemporary fan and contemporary athlete. Players are different in 2024. They use social media, they have a podcast, or they go on an opponent’s YouTube show. We grew up in an era where athletes were expected to lay low after a loss, to focus on their craft and improve and come back better the next game. That’s the Seth Joyner philosophy that’s still pervasive among a large portion of Philadelphia fans and media. Keep your head down, take this seriously, and show that you care. But you can also ask yourself if it’s naive to think that athletes should just sulk and mope after a loss in lieu of being themselves.

Are they the assholes, or are we the assholes?


It’s a fair question.

But putting the rear end rhetoric to the side, the thing about Slay is that he never seems to be able to read the room. It’s always wrong place, wrong time. When you get smoked, fans don’t want a reminder of how many career PBUs you have. They want a defensive captain like Malcolm Jenkins or Brian Dawkins to come out and talk about accountability and fixing the mistakes and getting better. And the thing is that there’s a recurring pattern here. Slay did the same thing last year when the Eagles lost 33 to 13 in Dallas. The team didn’t play well as a whole, but he did individually, and wanted to make sure we knew it. Mind you, this was after the fans brought the James Bradberry trash can to NovaCare, so he was responding, in part, to that. But the guy is a team leader and going on his YouTube show to let everyone know that while the team was ass, he was not. Imagine someone like Jeremiah Trotter or Trent Cole doing that. I don’t think it’s in their DNA.

Slay has been a solid Eagle since coming here a few years back, and should probably be wearing a Super Bowl ring. It’s always been less about his on-field performances, some of which are great some of which are not. But when we criticize him during a stretch like this one, we’re talking about a general lack of awareness and a personality that isn’t always the best fit with the Philly sports fan.