Flyers

I’ll Fight Anybody Who Ranks Jason Peters Higher than Claude Giroux on a Pointless Summer List

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jul 17th, 2024 · 11:13 AM EDT

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It’s that time of the year where nothing is going on, so we comment on other people’s lists. Andrew Salciunas at the Fanatic compiled a top-10 ranking of Philadelphia athletes since the 21st Century that looks like this:

These are the top 10 Philadelphia athletes since 2000, says @asalciunas975.

10. Roy Halladay
9. LeSean McCoy
8. Ryan Howard
7. Jimmy Rollins
6. Jason Peters
5. Jason Kelce
4. Brian Dawkins
3. Joel Embiid
2. Allen Iverson
1. Bryce Harper

📸Al Bello/Getty Images https://t.co/8udnGafUic pic.twitter.com/78dpUzrDHW

— 97.5 The Fanatic (@975TheFanatic) July 17, 2024

Not a single Flyer on the list. At least John Kincade had Claude Giroux 10th. Shows how ass they’ve been recently. If you go back to 2000, when the exercise begins, you get the second half of the Mark Recchi and John LeClair/etc era, when they were a good team that was constantly making the playoffs. But that’s not enough to include any of those guys, who were in their prime closer to the mid and late-1990s.

Anyway, my beef here is Jason Peters at 6th. Everybody looks at that stretch of seasons when he went to the Pro Bowl nine times in a row and talks about him being a first-ballot Hall of Famer. A couple of notes about JP:

1. That streak started in Buffalo. He went to seven Pro Bowls here between 2009 and 2016.
2. Peters wasn’t on the 2008 team that went to the NFC Championship Game.
3. Peters didn’t play in the 2017 playoffs. Big V was at left tackle against Atlanta, Minnesota, and New England.
4. Peters was only on the field for one postseason win as an Eagle, which was the Chicago double doink.
5. Peters has as many playoff wins with the Cowboys as he does the Eagles.
6. Peters asked for more money when the Birds wanted him to slide back out to left tackle in 2020. That should automatically disqualify him from the list. Not a team player!

Claude Giroux, meantime:

1. Put up 900 points in 15 seasons. He’s second all-time behind Bobby Clarke.
2. Went to seven All Star Games as a Flyer, same as Peters.
3. One of just six Flyers to have a 100 point season.
4. At age 22, scored 21 points during the postseason run to the Stanley Cup Final while playing 19 minutes a night.
5. Wasn’t great in the postseason between 2013 and 2018, kind of spotty playoff track record overall (also similar to JP).
6. His best teammate in Philadelphia was probably Jaromir Jagr. He played briefly with guys like Chris Pronger and Danny Briere but beyond that most of his Philly career was alongside dudes like Jake Voracek and Sean Couturier.

The Flyers and Eagles were similar for a decent stretch of time. There were some solid regular seasons that amounted to very little in the playoffs. Peters was on the field when the Birds lost to Dallas, Green Bay, and New Orleans. He was injured during the Super Bowl season and it made very little difference. Big V held up fine with a little more attention paid to his side. Peters came back the next year, the Birds won the Chicago playoff game, then lost when Alshon dropped it in New Orleans. In the course of his NFL career, Jason Peters has two playoff wins.

Is it a team game? Yeah, of course. The left tackle “cannot fucking throw the ball and catch it,” as Gisele Bundchen once famously said. The left tackle doesn’t touch the football at all. But you can’t make that note and also act like Giroux had all the help in the world. He didn’t have a lot of talent around him. When we created a list of best teammates he’s ever had, three of the 10 were Florida Panthers. That’s how lean those Flyers rosters were over the years. At least Peters got to block for Shady McCoy and protect Michael Vick, Nick Foles, and Carson Wentz. Giroux never had that bona fide star alongside him. He had good players with him, but Peters had the better teammates and played on the better teams. Yet, when they were finally good enough to make a deep playoff run and win it all, they didn’t need him.

So no, I’m not gonna rank the Flyers’ second all-time points leader behind an offensive lineman. Jason Peters was a great Eagle, top 10 in franchise history, but this is a team that also had Lane Johnson, Jason Kelce, Jon Runyan, Tra Thomas, Brandon Brooks, and other studs in the same time period. They’ve had plenty of excellent offensive linemen over the years, but there are fewer Claude Girouxs out there. And sure, G was never that tier 1 superstar that we hoped for, ala Sidney Crosby or Alex Ovechkin, but he was definitely tier 1B, hovering right outside the top 10 for a good while. That’s worthy of a spot on this list.