Eagles And...Sudden Death

I was going to be a bit snarky with the title of this post. Why? I entered the 610WIP Suicide Pool again this year. The concept of the suicide pool is that you pick one NFL team each week to win a game -- no point spreads, just to win. If they win, you get to keep playing. If they lose, you're out of the contest. Hence the "suicide" you commit by picking the wrong team. Once you pick a team, you can't pick them again the rest of the season. That makes it more difficult because you can't pick the same obvious winner every week.

Last week I went with Arizona to beat St. Louis, and they did, although it wasn't easy. However, over one-third of the 26,100 contestants who entered the contest are already gone. A lot of them went down in flames because they picked San Diego, who lost to Kansas City on Monday night.

So this week, I decided to go with the Eagles and get it out of the way. The snarkiness of a title such as "Will Eagles drive me to suicide?" would be based on the absurdity that once again surrounds this team, even though they've only played one game, and despite all the proclamations about how this was a fresh new era now that Donovan McNabb and his drama are down the road in Washington.

So what happened? A 27-20 loss to Green Bay while wearing their 1960 throwback jerseys. The new starting quarterback, Kevin Kolb, was awful for the half-game he got to play before taking a hit and suffering a concussion. Linebacker Stewart Bradley, a key to the defense's needed resurgence, also got a concussion. Despite the NFL's so-called new emphasis on safety and concern for head injuries, both players briefly went back into the game before being removed for good -- in Bradley's case, he went back in even though when he first got hit, he stumbled to his feet and quickly staggered and went back down, like a punch-drunk boxer. There were more injuries on offense -- center Jamaal Jackson and fullback Leonard Weaver, both key to keeping the pass rush away from the QB. This all led to Green Bay taking leads of 20-3 and 27-10. With Kolb out, Michael Vick ran around and occasionally threw some good passes, and managed to make it a close game, but had no timeouts at the end because Andy Reid called them all starting with over 5 minutes left.

Now there is a loud drumbeat from fans and some in the media. They want Vick to be named the full-time starting QB if he does well tomorrow in Detroit and for however many games it takes Kolb to be cleared to play. First people wanted McNabb gone in favor of Kolb, and after one-half of a poor performance they're already so disgusted with Kolb that they'll even cheer for the dog-killer Vick. (And to be sure, some of it comes from people who kept speaking highly of Vick and didn't feel he should have been punished the way he was for his dogfighting activities.)

So we've got yet another quarterback controversy, controversy over the team's handling of the two concussed players, and more ranting about Reid's time management and play-calling while Kolb was in the game.

The merry-go-round just goes around and around and around...it's enough to drive me to...see, that's why I didn't want to go there in that title. Yet, I've picked the Eagles to beat Detroit in the pool. If they win, I keep playing and I don't have to worry about whether or not I should pick them later in the season. If they can't beat a still-lowly Lions team, I'll be put out of my misery and so, in all probability, will they. This is the easy part of their schedule right now. If they don't build up a good record in the first half of the season, they likely won't make the playoffs.