At Least The Vikings Have This Announcer

The Vikings may have been vanquished by the Eagles yesterday, but Vikings fans shouldn’t be too upset. I mean, at least they still have KFAN’s Paul Allen doing play-by-play. An example (click the arrow to play):

Adrian Peterson touchdown run call

It really gets good/hilarious after Peterson scores. It’s the kind of thing that makes you love Eagles PBP man Merrill Reese more and more.

Reid This!

Did you notice a few thousand drunk people shouting things like, “Hey! How ’bout them Birds?” last night, seemingly at random? Yes, perhaps you figured it out then: The Eagles played a little sloppy but beat the Vikings, 26-14, moving on to the Divisional round of the playoffs. They’ll play the Giants (ooh!) next week at the Meadowlands.

The game was broadcast by Fox, so we were treated to the usual nonsensical on-screen graphics. There was no Keys to the Game-style madness, but we did get that great stat above about Andy Reid’s historic 7 Divisional playoffs in 9 seasons record. Congratulations, Andy!

Eagles Are Playoff Bound!

Can you believe it?! Watch Jeffrey Lurie hit his wife in the face above (via Philly SportsCast) and check out Tony Romo lying on the ground after turning the ball over (via The 700 Level) and then get up and celebrate, because the Eagles are going to the playoffs! Unbelievable.

Reggie And The Angry Inch

Here’s Reggie Brown failing to score at the end of yesterday’s game (with bonus audio from Merrill Reese) via The 700 Level. Reese after the call is upheld by booth review: “And I think the Eagles season is over.” Not true! A win over Dallas next week coupled with losses by Tampa Bay and Chicago (who can also lose tonight) will put the Eagles into the playoffs at 9-6-1. Who knew, right?

Liveblogging Eagles-Redskins

Donovan McNabb was benched. The Eagles were 5-5-1. The best team in the NFL, the Giants, loomed after the Thanksgiving game against the Cardinals.

But then McNabb’s wife had twins, and the Eagles are undefeated ever since. Combined, the twins have 21 receptions for 336 yards and 5 touchdowns, and one of the toddlers even scored a touchdown out of the Wildcat formation.

Everything has fallen in place for the Eagles; with Tampa Bay’s loss to San Diego today, if the Eagles win today and next week against Dallas, they make the playoffs. Today, the Eagles play at Washington. Let’s liveblog this. More »

Half Correct Eagles Sweatshirt

This is amusing enough that I’ll post it despite the oh-so-horrible “FAIL” meme being attached to this photo. I’m in your base, killin’ your dudes!

Pruf E-A-G-L-E-S Phans Onley No Hau Tu Spel 1 Wurd Rite [Hugging Harold Reynolds]

Why The Eagles Will Win The Super Bowl

Every sports fan has a conspiracy theory about his favorite sport. Juiced baseballs. Collegiate referees betting on games and making a killing. Forced steroid injections.

A lot of these theories are bunk, but this one is true: The NFL is rigged. It’s the only major sport that uses radios. Referees have a lot of leeway about what calls to make. People gamble a lot of money on it. Come on, last year’s Super Bowl? No way Eli Manning leads a game-winning drive to beat the 18-0 Patriots. No way.

Now that I’ve given you this mountain of circumstantial evidence (and not even, really), I hope you’ve come to agree. But don’t fret! It’s like pro wrestling: The actors have a lot of leeway, and it’s still pretty fun to watch. And there’s an added bonus: Since the NFL is rigged, this football season has only one logical conclusion.

The Philadelphia Eagles are going to win the Super Bowl.

Think about it: There isn’t a much better story than Andy Reid and the once-benched Donovan McNabb rallying the Eagles to finally win the big one. Even if it’s not the NFL has to be worried about this city embracing the Phillies after winning the World Series. (The NFL saw only two football moments on that 100 years of Phillymag piece and was totally concerned.)

I hope the NFL doesn’t mind my suggestion here for a way to end the regular season. If things fall as they might, the Eagles and Cowboys’ final regular season game could be a “play-in” game for the playoffs. The Eagles would be 9-5-1; Dallas 9-6. The game goes to overtime. Nobody can move the ball… and the game can end with Donovan McNabb kneeling out for the tie that puts the Birds at 9-5-2 and puts them into the playoffs.

The rest is easy: Beating up on a bad division champ in the wild card round, beating the Giants at the Meadowlands again in the divisional round, et cetera. Now that I’ve mentioned it, doesn’t it all just seem to fall into place?

McNabb To Start Thursday

Hey, all this? Right, of course: Forget about it, kind of, at least. Because Andy Reid has obviously decided to start McNabb at quarterback on Thursday night against the Cardinals.

Donovan McNabb will be the starting quarterback on Thursday night against Arizona, coach Andy Reid announced.

“Donovan is the quarterback for this football team,” Reid said toward the end of his Monday news conference. “I don’t want to leave here until you understand that.”

Then Reid got up and abruptly left the NovaCare auditorium.

So, ah, the media understood, I assume? That Daily News blog post also helpfully notes that the Fox pregame show “was before McNabb was pulled.”

McNabb to start at QB [Eagletarian]

Donovan’s End?

The list of players who didn’t win a championship in Philadelphia used to be an important one. Now that the Phillies have won a title, who cares!

Nobody, in a way. But it’s still a list worth updating. And yesterday’s 36-7 loss to the Ravens may not only have ended the Eagles season (figuratively), it also might’ve ended the Philadelphia career of Donovan McNabb (literally). It’s a shame.

A lot of people don’t like McNabb, never liked McNabb, but he’s been a hell of a quarterback for the Eagles. He won a bunch of division titles, won a ton of playoff games and got the Eagles to a Super Bowl.

And yet. He threw four three picks in that Super Bowl, he had some bad games in the playoffs, he says dumb things at press conferences. (I don’t care about that last one.) And he joins Allen Iverson, Eric Lindros, and so on, as another Philadelphia superstar who didn’t add “champion” to his resume.

Eagles coach Andy Reid benched McNabb at halftime, with the Eagles trailing 10-7. (If we learned anything yesterday about the Eagles, it’s that they’re just as bad with another quarterback under center. They might be worse.) With the Eagles at 5-5-1, they might back it in and start Kolb the rest of the year.

Kevin Kolb did drive the Eagles down to the Ravens inch-yard line in the fourth quarter, but ended up throwing an interception to Ed Reed, who returned it 108 yards for a score. That play epitomized the Eagles season. Not because the Eagles didn’t try to run it in from the one-foot line. (What were they going to do, run?) No, that play was special because no less than five Eagles (Kolb, Westbrook, Herremans, Celek, L.J. Smith) had a chance to tackle Reed and none did. It seemed like Eagles were coming off the sidelines to miss the tackle.

The Eagles are fun to watch when they’re bad. Bad football can be kind of funny, and the Eagles are so snakebitten hilarious bad things happen to them almost every game. An NFL-record interception return? Sure! Only one missed field goal by opponents all year? Of course.

They are not, though, fun to read about, as people (and, increasingly, a media hungry for pageviews) in this city can’t write anything coherent about the Birds when they’re not above .500. So let’s lay back, put our feet up and enjoy the rest of the season. Let’s hope Donovan McNabb can do the same.

T.O. Shows His Eagle Pride

Last night as the Pittsburgh Steelers managed to defeat the mighty Bengals, the NFL Network showed an interview of Terrell Owens by noted journalist Deion Sanders. And T.O. was wearing a shirt with an Eagle on it! Anybody else I’d chalk it up to coincidence, but there is no way it was not a direct, intentional move by Terrell Owens. We’ve been through this before, no?