Go Birds!
On cold Sunday afternoons in the 1960s, my father would tell me to run down to the newspaper store and get him 2 El Producto Bouquets, and together, on our little black and white TV, we would watch the Eagles game through a thick cloud of cigar smoke. I don’t remember my brother watching with us … although always the better athlete than me, and later captain of the high school football team, he never had an interest in televised sports. Not me. I learned to read using the backs of baseball cards, devoured the sports pages of the Philly papers, and sometimes The Sporting News if I was lucky enough to get a copy. To this day, I confess to listening to sports radio, the mind-numbing banter between hosts, old players and incapable fans like me … a guilty pleasure.
The Eagles of my youth were, for the most part, awful. They finally won their first Super Bowl in 2017, beating the fabled New England Patriots. However, a loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2022 Super Bowl, an epic collapse in the 2023 season, and a slow start in 2024, seemed to confirm the persistent Philadelphia sports fan’s negative view of life. Sports radio bristled with calls for heads to roll. We had just spent a fortune on a running back …. A running back!!! Everyone knows you need to pass to win. Young players on defense were not living up to their hype. Besides, our coach was an idiot. Particular vehemence was reserved for our quarterback, Jalen Hurts. All the experts knew, with the complete certainty that makes them experts, that Jalen Hurts was just not good enough to take us to the promised land.
The Eagles began the 2024 season with a 2 and 2 record going into the bye week. Coming out of that short mid season break, something changed. The Eagles began to run the ball, going against expert opinion. When most teams threw the ball as much as 40 times a game, the Eagles went completely old school, passing only 20 times a game. They capitalized on their enormous offensive line and their new running back, pounding other teams into the ground. And Hurts, always a smart, composed player, managed the games carefully, rarely making mistakes. The defense, led by an old coach, new to the Eagles and reputedly hated by modern players, pushed all the right buttons to mold a group of wealthy 24-year-olds into an old school fighting machine. They won 12 of the next 13 games, won the division and made the playoffs. Sports radio experts were baffled …
And the winning continued, edging the Packers and the LA Rams in the first two rounds of the playoffs, and clobbering a Washington team with a much heralded rookie quarterback in round 3. On to the Super Bowl, facing those same Kansas City Chiefs they had lost to 2 years before. The Chiefs were shooting for their 3rd Super Bowl win in a row, a three-pete, a first in Super Bowl history. Pregame analysis gave the defensive advantage to the Eagles, but the Kansas City offense was led by their quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, the best player in the game and one of the greatest of all time. Experts opined that Mahomes clearly outclassed Hurts. The Eagles only chance was to run the football, keep Mahomes off the field, and minimize Hurts’ impact on the game.
When the confetti flew, we were left with a blowout … Eagles winning 40 to 22, but it wasn’t that close. The Eagles defense completely shut down Mahomes, who played the worst game of his career. And the Eagles offense was led the game MVP … Jalen Hurts. The Chiefs played to shut down the Eagles run game, and they did. But Hurts efficiently picked them apart through the air. It was a drubbing.
One of the most irritating things about watching sporting events is being forced to listen to hackneyed expressions repeated week to week … ” he always gives 110%”, or “the offense is going to need to do a better job of moving the ball” … etc. So I enter this land of overused generalizations with trepidation, but here goes. In all aspects of life, talking heads are experts without consequence. They pontificate with complete certainty and never recognize their mistakes. True in all walks of life … ignore them. Second, the old defensive coach played a simple, aggressive defense, old school, and demolished a reputed offensive mastermind on the other side. Traditional methods are traditional because they work. Finally, a quiet winner is often underappreciated. Jalen Hurts rarely speaks, never smiles, does not look for the plaudits of the experts mentioned above. But he has won everywhere he has played. After one touchdown throw, his enormous left tackle, Jordan Mialata was caught on mic telling Hurts … “I love when they underestimate you!”
