Can the Eagles fly on Wild Card Weekend?
The best weekend in the NFL is about to begin. Wildcard Weekend kicks off a single elimination tournament that often doesn’t follow the script of the higher seeds winning and the lower seeds going home. It’s not quite as unpredictable as the NCAA college basketball tournament, yet it holds intrigue centered around the viability of how a team is currently playing.
As we prepare to handicap the Wildcard round, it doesn’t matter how a team played in October; it only matters how well a team is playing now. Peaking at the right time is so important. No team has ever limped into the playoffs, found their “mojo,” and won three in a row.
Of all the 14 teams in the playoffs, no team has played worse over the last five weeks than the Eagles. They look tired and out of sorts, and with each game, they get worse. The city of Philadelphia has seen monumental collapses before. Before many reading this column were born, the greatest collapse occurred in 1964, when the Phillies had a 6.5-game lead with 12 games to play to win the East. Manager Gene Mauch panicked, started using two pitchers on short rest, and lost ten games in a row. Mauch became vilified in the town, and the collapse became known as the “Phold.”
Under the direction of Rick Kotite, the 1994 Eagles were 7-2 and lost the next seven games, and he was eventually fired. And, of course, my beloved 76ers were up 2-0 on the Trailblazers in the 1977 NBA Finals, only to lose 4-2. I won’t go into the 3-1 leads against the Celtics that were lost, as I want to try and stay positive for an early portion of 2024. By the way, has anyone seen last year’s NBA MVP? He is missing, and I am getting worried he cannot find his way back to the court or the weight room. Okay, back to football and the fading Eagles.