It’s hard to lose. It’s even harder to lose when winning is rare, like it is in Philadelphia. It’s hardest to lose when winning is sitting there, right in front of you.
That’s why, more than a week later, Philly is still so angry. Again. The town sounds like those whiners in San Francisco. Those cheaters in New England. Those (gasp) excuse-makers in Dallas.
Philly can be better. This time can be different.
This time, Philly can let it go.
This happens nearly every time any Philadelphia team almost wins. The city fixates on one or two shortcomings or sleights, real or perceived, then wallows in its misery. Jim Fregosi and Mitch Williams. Donovan McNabb and Andy Reid. Black Friday and Bruce Froemming.
Now, more than a week after Super Bowl LVII, it’s former defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon, and a clear and obvious holding penalty by James Bradberry. Here’s the crazy part: Nobody is particularly upset with Bradberry, who admitted the infraction. They’re mad that it was called. That’s nuts.
More than a week later, Philly still marinates in its rage.
This is unseemly. This is unhealthy. It sets a horrible example for kids. Lose well, with dignity and with grace, like Jack Nicklaus and, as we’ve seen so often, Reid.
This fixation on outrage isn’t logical, but no town hates its fates like the City of Brotherly Love.
This time, Eagles Nation is outraged that its team, favored to win and holding a 10-point halftime lead, blew it. The Eagles lost, so there has to be a villain. There is none. Most people incorrectly believed the Eagles were better than the Chiefs, myself included. Wrong. The Eagles lost to a better team, and they lost fair and square.
There were many reasons they lost, including Jalen Hurts’ early fumble and the punt-coverage unit’s late debacle. But most of the fury is focused on these issues: The defense collapsed and the refs didn’t hedge on a call.
The general feeling: Gannon choked against Reid, who was cast as a big-game idiot in Philadelphia, so he should be as big an idiot in Kansas City as he was in Philly; and Gannon didn’t take advantage of Patrick Mahomes, who’s great, but not that great when he’s playing on one leg. Except Reid isn’t as big an idiot as he was a decade ago, and Mahomes is the Michael Jordan of football, and he’s better than everybody else by a mile, even on a three-week-old sprained ankle.
Feel better. Please.
There should be solace taken, having played the best team in the NFL to a standstill. There should be consolation that your outstanding head coach and your MVP-candidate quarterback and your perennial contender of a franchise lost to the best coach, and the best quarterback, and the best football organization on the planet. There should be joy, having gotten 16 wins and a Super Bowl appearance from a team that, this time last year, had gone 9-8 with overmatched rookie coach Nick Sirianni and mediocre quarterback Jalen Hurts, who’d been chosen by general manager Howie Roseman, who was, again, back in disfavor.
That’s too bad. Mainly because this sort of outrage never dissipates. It’s handed down from generation to generation. It makes the Philly atmosphere more toxic than it needs to be.
It’s a horrible feeling, and we’re back in that rut.
Previous episodes
It doesn’t always happen. Sometimes, Philly fans get over it. Sometimes, they accept defeat with grace.
The Flyers got swept in the 1997 Stanley Cup Final by a powerhouse Red Wings squad. The Sixers were never going to beat the Shaq-and-Kobe Lakers in the 2001 NBA Finals. The 2010 Flyers eked into the playoffs as the No. 7 seed in a season finale that required a shootout, then used a cushy draw before a stronger Blackhawks club dispatched them. The 2008 Phillies had a similar path when they won the World Series, and everybody knew it, so when a superior Yankees club rolled them in six games in 2009, fans were still basking in the afterglow of the previous season’s good play and good fortune.
There have been more natural anguishes that produce mourning, but not real rage; not targeted rage, anyway. The 1964 Phillies just collapsed. Ronde Barber and Joe Jurevicius closed Veterans Stadium in the 2002 season’s NFC championship game fair and square, and a year later the Panthers and Jake Delhomme ruined the first season at Lincoln Financial Field the same way.
But Lord help you if you try to defend Fregosi’s decision to pitch Williams in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series, in which Williams, the closer, gave up a walk-off, series-winning homer to Joe Carter ... in Game 6, mind you. Not Game 7. Game 6. Williams received death threats. His house was vandalized. Maybe it’s best that Gannon has moved on to Arizona.
Don’t you dare point out that, in the 1977 NLCS, had first-base umpire Froemming called Davey Lopes out in Game 3, the Phillies still would have been one win away from the World Series, won that year by a 100-win, powerhouse Yankees dynasty. And mention that the Phillies made two errors in that same inning, which saw the Dodgers turn a 5-3 deficit into a 6-5 lead; or mention that the Phillies went meekly in their half of the ninth? Well, you’d better duck.
And it is the heresy to end all heresies if you suggest that there was no way the Eagles were going to score again in Super Bowl XXXIX even if McNabb hadn’t (maybe) vomited on the field and Reid’s brain hadn’t frozen in slow-play mode. Not with the Spygate Patriots having stolen their signals.
McNabb lives in the Phoenix area. He and Gannon can commiserate.
Serenity now
So, today, it might not be the wisest strategy to advise Eagles fans to accept that, in the second half of Super Bowl LVII last week, Reid outfoxed Gannon, but that doesn’t mean Gannon stinks. He had the No. 2 defense, the No. 1 pass defense, and the No. 1 pass rush in the league, and he got beaten by the most completely talented quarterback we’ve ever seen. Gannon just got hired by the Cardinals as their head coach after, according to one NFL source, turning down near-record money to remain as the Eagles’ coordinator. Gannon even told one outlet he’d have made more money if he’d stayed. So, if you think Gannon stinks, then you think Roseman, Sirianni, and owner Jeffrey Lurie are morons. You can’t have it both ways.
And it might not be prudent at this juncture to counsel the riotous mob quiet itself. Bradberry did, in fact, grab Juju Smith-Schuster’s jersey, and did so in the middle of the field, and did so without elegance, and did so out of utter desperation, and admitted it, and only hoped to get away with it, because he was burned.
To suggest that the official should not have made that call because of magnitude of “the moment,” or whatever, is absurd. To suggest he made the call to ensure State Farm Insurance shill Patrick Mahomes would win the game at State Farm Stadium and remain the golden voice and face of a troubled league is beyond paranoid and an insult.
Reid and Mahomes simply beat Gannon and his guys, the same way the Eagles had stomped the 49ers and DeMeco Ryans, who coordinated the NFL’s No. 1 defense, in the NFC championship game two weeks earlier.
And, in a crucial moment, Bradberry cheated, plain and simple. On purpose. And he got caught.
Please, move on. You’ll feel better.
