Over the years since I became a fan (circa 1970), the number of warriors on an active NFL roster have ranged from 40 to the current requirement of 53. Additionally, assorted others were stashed on the "taxi squad," which is now known as the "practice squad." More players are housed different lists: injured reserve, physically unable to perform, a note from their mother, etc.
In a given year, there could be as many as 60 Eagles getting paid.
As a hopelessly devoted fan, do you have to love them all — either as people or players — to still love the team?
Throw in other employees — prominent faces of the organization — and list grows.
It's going to be hard to cheer for Michael Vick this year just because he is now an Eagle. A midnight green jersey doesn't wash away all sins. What he did to countless dogs was beyond reprehensible. In a perfect world, he would have been placed behind bars for 20 years and not 20 months, making him too old to play football upon release. I would have had no gripes with the league banning him for life.
But the world isn't perfect. He is out of jail and not banned by the NFL. He was free to earn a living and, in this altered reality, the Eagles — my beloved Eagles — took the plunge before another team, maybe even the rival Washington Redskins, did.
If and when Donovan McNabb begins a game in one of his patented 2-for-9 modes, where he is throwing bounce passes and wasting timeouts — and smiling about it — will I be clamoring for Vick to come off the bench and ignite them as much as the next Iggles diehard?
I can sit here now, perched upon my high horse, and say no. But I become another person on game day and I can't vouch for him.
I do know this: I have loathed many others drawing paychecks from the Eagles before and have never wavered in my overall support of the team.
Submitted for your approval of this outlook, which is that you can harbor disdain for certain players/employees and still cheer for team, is the following list of a few such individuals:
- Thomas Hamner/Damon Moore: Irony of ironies, both of these guys — Eagles in the Andy Reid era of holiness — were shown the exit door after being mean to dogs. I already disliked Hamner because the Eagles drafted the tailback out of Minnesota instead of Utah's Mike Anderson, the former Marine who had a solid career in Denver (while Hamner never carried the ball once in a regular season game). After his second arrest for beating his dogs, the Eagles cut their losses and severed ties to the underachiever. Moore was a better player. A starting safety, he made the game-saving tackle that procured Reid's first division title here. But his image was already tainted by then, as he had been caught trying to abandon his dog in a park a week or two earlier. Even though he recorded an interception in a playoff game, a win at Chicago, he was gone at year's end. I remember that game well. There was a snowstorm in Philly and I took a train to my dad's house to watch the Birds punch their ticket to their first trip to the NFC title game under Reid's guidance. I already disliked Moore for what he had to his dog, but I was still floating on air after the win. When the season was over following a heartbreaking loss to the St. Louis Rams, Moore was no longer an Eagle. They never said it was because of his transgression, but ...
- Ray Rhodes: This guy was the first coach owner Jeffrey Lurie hired after enduring holdover Rich Kotite (not on this list, as I don't pick on those with special needs) for a year. After making the playoffs the first two years — mostly with Kotite's players — Rhodes' Eagles slowly devolved into the most disorganized teams in green I remember. My anger and resentment deepened because the media, local and national, treated the situation with kid gloves because Rhodes was one of the league's few black coaches at the time. I distinctly remember a game when the Eagles had a plethora of laughable penalties — for things like too many men on the field and illegal formations — and the national announcers felt compelled to preface their critique with remarks like: "As good of a coach as Ray Rhodes is, he needs to cut down on this stuff." Black, white, yellow or green — he was in over his head. To be blunt, his skin color may have even bought him an extra year or two. The only way to rid ourselves of Rhodes was to lose games. But I still wanted them to win. In his final year, 1998, the Eagles were 3-13 and Koy Detmer was the quarteraback for the final few games. I still didn't miss a snap the entire season.
- Greg Lewis/Bobby Hoying: I group these guys together even though they were never teammates (Hoying was Rhodes' miscast "quarterback of the future" and Lewis seemingly had nude pictures of Reid, or maybe even team president Joe Banner, to continue earning a roster spot before being mercifully being traded away this offseason). They share one commonality. They each cost a Jewish player a job. Hoying — with farm-boy looks and Ohio State pedigree — created a sense that he was a more viable option than Jay Fiedler, an undrafted guy with "Dumbo" ears and ... uh ... a prominent nose, who hailed from that football juggernaut known as Dartmouth of the vaunted Ivy League. After Hoying got a bunch of snaps in a preseason scrimmage, Fiedler — knowing he was the better player — angrily asked for his release and his wish was granted. And Fiedler got the final laugh, both on the Eagles and Hoying, having a serviceable career as a starting QB in Miami while Hoying was eventually released by the Eagles — and one or two other teams — and probably now works at a car wash somewhere. Lewis picked the right team when he went undrafted out of Illinois, as the Reid regime has a fetish for undrafted guys making the final cut. After some early promise — that included a diving touchdown catch in the Super Bowl — Lewis hit a ceiling and it became clear that he was never going to get any better than below average. Two seasons ago, sensing his job was in jeopardy, he whispered to the coaches that he could return punts. Jeremy Bloom was cut in deference to Lewis (the nude pics, remember?) and disaster ensued. In the season opener, Lewis fumbled a punt that led to a touchdown and muffed another (Bloom, although doing anything out of the ordinary, had not dropped a punt the whole preseason). By game's end, with the scored tied at 10-10, the Eagles desperately turned to J.R. Reed. Reed, who had no experience catching punts, also fumbled and the Packers won the game. The Eagles finished 8-8, one win from the same playoff dance the Packers were attending. Lewis went from a player I didn't really like much to one I despised. The ineptitude continued when he dropped a pass that might have shifted momentum early in last season's NFC title game. And still, while detesting Lewis, I cheered for the Eagles and was heartbroken after the eventual loss to an inferior Arizona team.
- Ron Howard: This one is personal. Howard was the team's former PR executive, who dealt directly with the media back when being an Eagles' beat writer was my life's dream. Dating back to my old job, a co-worker requested a pass to game to do a story on a local product playing for the Colts. Howard bluntly told him that no passes were given to weekly papers. Once I moved on to
The Times Herald, the tune was slightly different — but the arrogance remained. I was assigned to write a story on a local kid playing for the New England Patriots, who were in town for a preseason game. A chance to just feign being a beat writer for a night was beyond exciting. Howard reluctantly agreed to a game-day pass but said he wouldn't have a seat for me in the press box (meaning I'd have to wander around like a nomad or sit in the cafeteria with a bunch of free loaders from television stations who weren't even on the clock). When I went to the game, all wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, half the seats in the press box were empty. Oh, and among those occupied were for the Philadelphia Sun, a weekly paper. The writer from the Sun came late — with a date, who sat on press row — and he didn't seem to be writing anything. But that's OK. I made the most of the experience, taking the Veterans Stadium elevator down to the field at the end of the game in time to watch Fiedler seal a win. I interviewed some Eagles players for a side bar on the rookies and located the local kid for the Patriots outside the team's bus. I put aside my bitterness for how I was treated and continued being a loyal, dues-paying fan who was willingly extorted into a personal seat license at Lincoln Financial Field. As for Howard, he and the team suffered a PR nightmare 1998 when his wife, Karen, struck and killed someone changing a flat tire on I-76 after a game. It was an unfortunate accident, and anyone who hasn't come precariously close to striking someone on the side of the road has led a charmed life. However, Mrs. Howard stopped briefly and then drove off and tried to get her car's damaged fixed and its exterior washed — while getting her nails and hair done — in the ensuing days. If I were mean-spirited, I could have fantasized about telling Ron Howard he could have a pass to visit his wife in jail, but not a seat. But you all know me better than that, right?
- James Lofton: It should be hard to build up much animosity toward a guy who only played nine games as an Eagle back in 1993, but Lofton — one of the great wide receivers of the 1980s with other teams— raised my ire to a point that we still have a posse out on the streets looking for him. He came to the Eagles at the tail end of his career, and with more than 700 NFL catches to his name. In nine games here, he seemingly had about 700 drops — including a few that cost us games. Hey, James, go deteriorate on someone's dime and time, not ours. I could see a guy's speed going, but the hands? Just shows a lack of concentration, of not caring anymore. And yet, despite despising Lofton and what he represented, I still rooted for the Eagles.
- Dave Spadaro: Let me preface by saying that we're talking about a genuinely nice guy. When I was at my old job, Dave freelanced for The Times Herald and we covered some high school football games together. At the time, I remember him saying he had left his job at the newspaper in West Chester for a start-up venture called Eagles Digest, which was a weekly publication for us fans. In the intervening years, Eagles Digest morphed into PhiladelphiaEagles.com and Spadaro has been elevated to the post of the franchise's minister of propaganda. His complete lack of objectivity and constant spin control — even if he is an employee of the team — has led me to fantasize about starting up an opposing site called EaglesSkeptic.com (or something like that). I don't know how much Dave gets paid, but I hope it was worth the price of his soul. And still, in spite of my disgust whenever I go the site in search of information, I'm still behind the Eagles all the way.
- Reggie White: It's easy to hate guys once they fly from the nest (Keith Jackson, anyone?), but my disdain for this sacred crow was burgeoning well before he followed God's advice — and the highest bidder — and went to Green Bay. White was propagated as the best to ever play defensive end; a superstar who was supposed to dominate when it counted most. Instead, in big games, he consistently pulled disappearing acts that would have made Harry Houdini blush. Against better offensive tackles, and in spite of the myths, he was generally handled without double teams. I heard through good sources that former defensive coordinator Bud Carson couldn't stand White because he took plays off to concerve the energy to get his sacks on obvious passing downs. In his final season here, the Eagles started off 7-2 and White filed a lawsuit against the team to set the stage for his pending free agency. They finished 7-9. You don't forgive, you don't forget. I'm not going to ease up my stance just because he died young. Maybe his Lord works in mysterious ways after all. And yet, during my about-face on White — an amazing player I liked during his first two to three years here — I remained a faithful and loyal fan.
- Andy Reid: This is my team, as it was the team of my father and my grandfather. Same holds true for all loyal fans. Players come and go. So do owners and, most certainly, coaches. Someone please explain this to Coach Reid, who thinks he was named to the run the CIA when he took the job here in 1999. We have a right to know. The job of the media is to be that conduit to the fanbase. Being a devotee and a journalist, it hurts twice as much to watch Reid in all his pomposity. You don't have to dime out your players. There is right way and a wrong way to do things, and no one sane is asking you to create disharmony by ripping players in public. But be upfront and give us the explanations we deserve when our hearts have been ripped out of our chests. While no one can knock Reid's success, it's looking like the final curtain looms. As with the far less competent Rhodes, losing will hasten change. And yet, I will root for wins. Not because of Reid, but because of the team he is coaching. It is who I am. One coach, player or employee is not going to change that.
RSS
