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In Today’s NFL, Suddenly Style Points Matter?
By Nick Piccone
Published:
Most of the people reading this grew up watching football when wins were the only thing that mattered.
As an Eagles fan, it’s been that way for as long as I can remember. I started watching the Eagles intently around 1999, catching the final two games of the season, which were wins against the Patriots and the eventual Super Bowl XXXIV champion St. Louis Rams. I knew the Rams were good and remembered the Patriots were in the Super Bowl a couple years prior, so I thought those wins were pretty impressive. I wasn’t privy to resting starters and even thought the Eagles having a bye the week before the final game of the season felt a little awkward. But I was a rookie NFL watcher, and only cared about wins.
That timeline put me in position to watch Peyton Manning and Tom Brady develop into their respective primes and win multiple Super Bowls each. A lot of the opinion-based sports talk in this era echoed a sentiment that while Manning was an all-around “better” quarterback, Brady’s wins ultimately put him above Manning in those make-believe rankings that stir up some of the worst conversations you’ve ever heard.
But in that era, it did feel like people viewed Brady in a different light because his teams kept winning. Nobody in good faith ever said he was carried to Super Bowls. Despite some horrific performances in some of the biggest games, Brady ultimately would lead his team down the field and help set up a game-winning score. He was a DAWG. And that’s what people cared about.
Fast forward to now, and it feels like a lot of the talk surrounding the NFL has shifted to, “How can we make this go viral?” A lot of the conversations we hear on television and radio and podcasts are trying to create a narrative that can get the most eyeballs instead of actual sports analysis. All of a sudden, the industry that hammered into your head the thought that style points don’t matter when a team wins has veered course and discovered that style points gain traction, and that’s more important than a team’s chemistry built towards a winning culture. We have former players buying in, or really, selling out, in helping formulate a narrative that, as a player, they never would have believed for a second. Calling it a disingenuous argument is probably the nicest way to put it. Those same former players would have lambasted the very media they are now a part of if they were current players. There’s a schism between former players in the media that formed somewhere between retirement and their first job interview, and current players.
That’s why it’s hard to take a lot of these opinions seriously, if you can even call them opinions. It’s pretty obvious when someone is giving their “opinion” that they clearly don’t believe but are saying it to satisfy another angle of a debate because that’s what a ton of sports talk is now. It doesn’t matter the medium, we encounter 10 different angles of a debate now because that is what goes viral. That’s why “a win is a win” doesn’t seem to work for those talking heads when it comes to the Philadelphia Eagles. These Eagles won the Super Bowl last season and went to one two years prior. But somehow they don’t get the benefit of the doubt from these same people who lauded the Kansas City Chiefs for winning a bunch of ugly games last season because “they’re the Kansas City Chiefs.” The same people who lauded the New England Patriots because “they’re the New England Patriots.”
I understand the Eagles are still in a different tier and not a dynasty at this point, but for them, why do style points suddenly matter when they didn’t for previous championship teams? Why is the movement to discredit wins gaining steam as the driving force of anti-Eagles propaganda?
Is it because they know Eagles fans are going to help them go viral? Where is that line of going viral vs. having actual smart, sustained sports analysis? Is there even a line anymore? We’re seeing guys like Justin Herbert, who has choked on the biggest stages, being compared to and ranked over Jalen Hurts because his offensive coordinator wants to throw the ball more. That’s really all it is. Hurts could throw for 500 yards if he wanted to with AJ Brown and DeVonta Smith running down the field. The Eagles don’t need that. It’s clearly a balanced attack because they don’t want their defense on the field longer than their offense. In some ways, it’s smart. In others, when that offense clearly isn’t firing on all cylinders, it could feel like one of the worst offenses in the league. We have people saying he’s a product of the tush push. He can’t throw. He can’t read a defense. And yet, for all those [obviously false] flaws, he keeps winning. He gets the job done. That used to be the only thing that mattered in this league. And it still should be.
Nick Piccone has covered Philly sports and events for over 14 years with various outlets, including PhillyVoice and Philly Influencer. In 2015, he co-launched the Straight Shooters Wrestling Podcast. He's also a producer for Fox Sports Radio Philadelphia and the Villanova Sports Radio Network. He grew up in South Philadelphia and South Jersey, and is a graduate of Neumann University. Contact: picconenick@gmail.com