The Eagles Have Crash Landed

Yes, I've stayed away from commenting on the Eagles debacle of a season, which continued Monday night with what could charitably be called the Monday Night Massacre. The Philly papers are awash with recriminations. The QB position needs an overhaul, the head coach is screwing up as both coach and GM, the team quit on us...

And I'm calm.

Maybe that's a bad call on my part. Maybe this is the beginning of the decline back to our traditional mediocrity. Maybe this team needs the full facelift. Maybe the best team from the last 50 years of Eagles history, one that visited the playoffs five consecutive years, the NFC Title Game 4 straight times and made the franchise's second visit to the Super Bowl... maybe they're done.

I tend to doubt it, but I can give them a thank you even if it is, because it's been one hell of a ride.

Maybe the reason was partly because I watched the stuff surrounding the ceremony for the late, great Reggie White. Seeing the Eagles from that era -- a group of Eagles who won a grand total of one playoff game -- made me feel nostalgic for that team, because it was the one that I recall from my childhood. And yes, they broke my heart (repeatedly), but they also gave me so many great memories that I cherish. Rich Hofmann expressed this thought in Monday's Daily News...

Buddy Ryan was there, the coach who turned them into a team. About 20 of White's teammates were there, too, united by Reggie's memory. He has been dead for nearly a year now, and it still doesn't seem possible in a lot of ways, just as it doesn't seem possible that this group has buried both Jerome Brown and Reggie White. But here they were, together again - Seth Joyner and Clyde Simmons and Byron Evans and Eric Allen and the rest.

"You know how I'm close to Pepper Johnson," Keith Byars was saying, referring to the former Giants linebacker who was his teammate at Ohio State. And Byars told the story about how, in the offseasons, Johnson would hang around with Byars and some of his Eagles teammates.

"And he would say, 'I won a couple of Super Bowls [in New York], but I just worked with those guys. You guys truly love each other.'

"City of Brotherly Love - must be something," Byars said. "We had a bond that can't be broken... Football brought us together. Football will never tear us apart."

When they unveiled the number at a pregame ceremony, music blared from loudspeakers and spotlights shone on the "92" on the wall. The players watched and applauded, and the emotion flowed among them - for all of the obvious reasons, for a man who died too young, but also for the time in which they came together.

People who didn't live it don't understand. You look at the numbers and the affection doesn't entirely compute. The team made three playoff appearances under Buddy Ryan but didn't win a postseason game - and then Ryan was fired, and then free agency came, and then they all scattered to the league's various precincts.

It was a time of unfulfilled greatness, a time that ended too soon - like Reggie's life, tragically. From this distance, you would think that the frustration of it all would color the memory, but it doesn't. They were the days.

I remember those Eagles teams fondly -- Randall doing flips into the end zone, Byers and Jackson catching pass after pass over the middle, Reggie and Clyde terrorizing QBs, Jerome Brown stuffing Emmitt Smith, Andre Waters and Wes Hopkins delivering decapitating hits, "Arkansas" Fred Barnett making deep circus catches, Seth Joyner's ferocity. I remember some great games -- the Pork Chop Bowl, the Bounty Bowl, the House of Pain Game ("They brought the house, and we brought the pain"), the amazing comeback from 20-0 down at RFK, Miracle at the Meadowlands II (Simmons grabs a field goal try blocked by the Giants and runs it in for a TD to win a game in OT), the Fog Bowl, the BodyBag Game. I remember specific moments and plays, like Randall's 93 yard punt, the 95 yard bomb to Barnett in Buffalo, Vai Sikahema turning the goalposts at the Meadowlands into a punching bag, Reggie stripping Doug Williams of the football and rumbling 75 yards, the defense sacking Troy Aikman 11 times, Buddy rubbing it in to Dallas with the fake kneeldown, Buddy saying he was offended by Jimmy Johnson calling him fat because "I've been on a diet".

Being a true fan of a sports team will create a lot of disappointment -- and in Philly, that feeling of disappointment has been about all we've had for the last twenty years. But we should cherish what we did receive. Hey, look, this doesn't change the fact that we haven't won the Big One. I still want that feeling, I still want that parade. But even if this team isn't the one to give us that feeling, the last half-decade hasn't been a waste. The memories listed up there are great ones -- and there will be great memories from this team that we will look back on fondly as well.

Yeah, my heart's been broken by this team, repeatedly. But bad seasons happen. Brian Westbrook's season-ending injury was almost expected by now. This is a bad year. I tend to think we have a future for this team, because they will rebuild the components with a lot of promising youth, in key spots like the O-line and in the defensive secondary. But hey, that's next year.

For now, we'll take the crap and deal with it, in anticipation that someday, it will all be worth it. Bill Conlin put it this way...

Each generation of Eagles fan will have a moment of humiliation so shattering, they will pass it down to their children as reminder that the life of a Philly pro sports fan is a bleep sandwich and every season you take another bite.

As for me, I think back to what I posted the day after the Super Bowl, and the quote from my favorite modern-day philosophers, the inimitable creators of South Park, Mssrs. Parker and Stone, as part of the wonderful South Park movie...

The Mole: I can't help you. I'm grounded in my room for the next three days.

Kyle: So are we. Our parents think we're home right now.

Stan: Why are you grounded?

The Mole: Why? Because God hates me, that's why. He has made my life miserable. So I call him a c***-s****** a******, and I get grounded.

Someday, the misery will lift. Until then, I'll watch some Nova basketball and give another team a chance to break my heart.