The Eagles' $64,000 Receipt Is Fake And Has A Hidden Message

Last night, guard Evan Mathis tweeted out this receipt, purportedly from a hearty steakhouse dinner with drinks, that after tax and (three percent) tip, came out to a whopping $64,055.76. The caption: "Teaching rookies a lesson..."

The first sign something was up should have been the timing—sophomore tackle Lane Johnson hosted his own "rookie" dinner on Monday, and caught flak for the $17,000 bill—which, it later turned out, had been split a few ways.

The second sign was that Mathis has messed with the media before.

But the biggest clue was the acrostic in Mathis's check, one nobody noticed until Adam Schefter pointed it out this morning. Read the first letter of each line.

I don't know how clever it is to post a thing, say it's real, and then 10 hours later reveal it's not (gotcha, I guess), especially when rookie dinners do actually happen across a league where most new players will wash out within a couple years. At the very least, wait 'til the thinkpieces come out before dropping the gag.