Some people are fans of the Philadelphia Eagles. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Philadelphia Eagles. This 2018 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Philadelphia Eagles
Your 2017 record: 13-3. Super Bowl champions. You know, if you had told me prior to last season that my team’s home stadium would play host to one of the greatest Super Bowls ever, and that the New England Patriots would find themselves beaten and humiliated in that game by an unheralded backup quarterback, and that a long-suffering fanbase would finally experience True Football Ecstasy … I think I would have been overjoyed at the prospect. I would have been positively GIDDY at the news. All my football wishes coming true!
And yet. And yet……
Here now is proof is anything good in this world can turn sour. Somewhere, there is a demon genie hovering above a scuffed antique lamp, his massive arms folded and his head cocked all the way back, LAUGHING. It is a great, deep, booming laugh … a laugh that is loud and cruel enough to shake the very earth upon which you stand. Your house will soon fall. Your loved ones will soon perish. The lands will soon be set ablaze. The oceans will soon curdle and die. All nearby poles will soon be coated in a thick, ropey mucus to prevent scaling. From here into eternity, all your fondest wishes will turn to foulest poison, and then some asshole from Port Richmond will lob a full can of Bud Light at your head. We are ALL in the Fucktomb now. The Fucktomb is us. Rooting for the Eagles in the Super Bowl was basically like rooting for Stalin just because he was slightly preferable to Hitler. I have regrets.
Your coach: Doug Pederson, who I refuse to believe is the brains of this dump. He just lost his QB coach and his OC and replaced them with Al Groh’s kid, so we’ll see if Picnic Dad is such a ballsy genius this time around.
There are so many horrible social consequences to the Eagles winning a title, but perhaps the worst development has been Eagles fans, who are green sewage, co-opting Pederson’s playcalling bravado as their own. Just as every insufferable Pats fan thinks he’s a football savant just because Belichick is the coach, these Montco rockheads believe THEY called Philly Special. DURRRRRRRR MY PHILOSOPHY IS TO BE AGGRESSIVE WHICH IS WHY I LIKE TO HIT MY GIRLFRIEND IN THE MOUTH WITH A SINK PIPE DURRRRRRRR.
I can’t deal with this. The degree to which these drooling imbeciles have been enabled, and in every possible way, is downright sickening. And Dougie Pederson’s Bravest Coach In The World routine isn’t helping matters. You know who else was celebrated for his offensive derring-do back in the day? Mike Martz. Remember that when Pederson randomly decides to go for it on 4th and 12 sometime.
Your quarterback: Did you hear that Nick Foles has a huge cock? Did you know that when Nick Foles heads to the urinal, he needs to use a stepladder? Did you know that children use his penis to play double dutch? Did you know his elephantine dong is so girthy that you can import 100 million barrels of crude oil a day from the Athabasca tar sands with it? That’s all true. What’s also true is that we are not talking about YOUR penis, Mr. Eagles Fan. Nick Foles can rope calves with his penis. Your penis is another matter. Your penis is a small, pale, withered thing. Hardly used, it sits in eternal darkness … deep, deep down within the folds of your ample gunt, crying out for oxygen as it suffocates in a mix of sweat and Crisco and rendered beef fat. But there is no escape for your little Buddy Ryan, my friend. It is trapped, inverted within your sedentary corpuscle until the day you die, which will be VERY soon given your sugar intake.
The Eagles gave Foles a nice raise for winning Super Bowl MVP and then returning to the bench without a fuss to make room for NRA love child Carson Wentz, who was in the running for league MVP last season before the Rams turned his knee into whipped butter. Pederson is being surly about his Week 1 starter, but no matter who plays quarterback, I can pretty much guarantee that every slobbering nutbag calling into WIP will demand that the other guy start anyway. WHY AREN’T WE STARTIN’ FOLES? HE’S GOT THE DICK WE NEED! And no matter who plays quarterback, it’ll still be a pasty Jesus freak who almost certainly resents the fact that the Eagles skipped their White House visit.
By the way, I watched this team lose 5-0 to Cleveland in the preseason. Foles turned the ball over three times in that game. He was a fluke, people. The whole thing was a fluke. You think Nelson Agholor is gonna keep catching the ball? I think not. You only won a Super Bowl because all the other QBs got hurt, and because the refs didn’t feel like reffing that day, and because Bill Belichick is a stubborn jackass. Roger Goodell will legalize knives on the field before he lets the Eagles win another title.
What’s new that sucks: I’m sure Sal from Manayunk has already bragged to you about this, but GM Howie Roseman—who looks like every highly compensated DNC party operative who believes Medicare For All won’t play well in Chester County—has locked down all of the Eagles’ most important players through the end of this decade. That sounds extremely promising until you remember that the team they beat in the Super Bowl has won five titles because they prize roster flexibility and do NOT make long-term commitments. You think Alshon Jeffery is gonna play up to that contract? He’s hurt already. You got ONE season, Philly. God already knows that was one too many.
To gild the lily, Roseman brought in an assortment of has-beens and castoffs. Here is Michael Bennett, who will be on the receiving end of at least six D-cells during any given pregame ceremony. Here are wideouts Markus Wheaton and Mike Wallace, who can stretch the field for roughly half a quarter before the other team realizes they’re NO threat to ever catch the ball. Here is whatever fat and gristle remains of Haloti Ngata. Here is tight end Dallas Goedert, whom the Eagles almost certainly drafted to make Wentz horny. He comes from a Dakota AND he’s named Dallas? These two men will star in 9,000 grouse hunting Instagram photos over the next three years. They will never be able to quit each other. Donald Trump Jr. will appear in at least half the photos. They also drafted a rugby guy because they think they’re clever enough to do such things now. They even kicked the tires on Christian Hackenberg. This team is already drunk with power.
What has always sucked: I rooted for this team in the Super Bowl, but even then I knew I was making a colossal error in judgment. Anyone could see that the cure would be worse than the disease, and so it has come to pass. Look at these low-rent wannabe hooligans, living in barrels and swimming in dumpster pools and drinking straight antifreeze and turning awnings into failed trampolines and climbing poles to nowhere:
“Philly we better than this.” LOL NO YOU AREN’T. Philly, you’re actually somehow much worse than this. That town is an open sewer. It is all the worst parts of any generic East Coast city mixed with freakish redneck South Jersey trolls, filled with the most repulsive people you’ll ever meet. I thought Boston fans were obnoxious but they are NOTHING compared to what has been unleashed in the wake of this Super Bowl: this torrent of hilariously unearned pride and arrogance from a bunch of aspiring felons who belong in a fucking pig sty.
We’ll rue this title, as a nation, for the rest of our lives. All it did was open the floodgates and allow Philly fans to cosplay as themselves for a million years. These people will spend every remaining waking hour trying to stay on-brand by kicking your mom and fisting your toddler and throwing beers at hospital patients. Forget booing Santa. These mutants would cut his fucking head off. They’ll only grow more violent and stupid as we go along:
These people. These most insufferable underdogs in history. These clammy gas station dwellers. These motherless roach people. These buckets of goat puke. These lobotomized bruise collectors. These scrotal tumors. These racist cop-humpers. If there’s a God (unlikely), he will plunge this franchise back into mediocrity and the lot of you will have to go back to living at the bottom of a port-o-toilet. Philadelphia is a forum poster who posts “FIRST!” on every thread he finds.
LeBron told the Sixers to piss off. Comcast is Satan.
And by the way, it wasn’t just Mike Lombardi who thought Doug Pederson was a fraud. If this team starts 0-2, you can bet these fans will go back to being the same dissatisfied humps they’ve always been.
What might not suck: Last summer, I emailed A.J. Daulerio, emeritus of this site and an Eagles fan, asking him if he had anything to contribute to that year’s Eagles hatefest. Here now is our exchange:
A.J.: Ya know, I think I love my team too much! Got nothing bad to say anymore.
Me: Are you telling me you trust the process now?
A.J.: I love the process! Sign me up for WHY YOUR TEAM IS VERY GOOD NO MATTER WHAT.
So there you have it. If you see A.J. on the street, you owe him a fresh donut for believing in that team before you ever did.
Let’s remember a guy who sucked: BUT WHERE WAS MAMULA?!!
HEAR IT FROM EAGLES FANS!
Scott:
I’m talking to a girl on one of those dating apps and things are going well and she asks what team I’m a fan of (it is prominently displayed in my profile). I happily tell her I am an Eagles fan. I live in Atlanta by the way. She tells me she can’t date another Eagles fan. It brings back too many bad memories for her. She can’t go through it again. It’s something she can’t get over.
Shaun:
We as a fan base learned nothing from Boston and now we are a shittier version of them with far less to brag about.
Joe:
This town doesn’t deserve to win ever again.
Nicholas:
I don’t like what I’ve become.
Jack:
We’re no longer a pack of sad, violent assholes; we’re arrogant, violent assholes now.
Ryan:
I still can’t believe that dude ate horseshit.
John:
I never realized my friends and family hated me so much.
Joe:
The Eagles haven’t won a Super Bowl in five months, three weeks, and five days.
Thomas:
I’ll say it: Jason Kelce’s parade speech wasn’t THAT great.
Jack:
Either fans play up a victim complex so toxic that they destroy any sympathy we might get during bad years (we deserve none), or they act like smug Bitcoin cultists.
Justin:
South Philly has been a never ending Trump Rally since February. Just force feed me horse shit until I die.
David:
Some assholes used the “Philly Special” play for a gender reveal. I officially hate that play now.
Kyle:
When a co-worker suggested that Eagles fans were boorish for throwing beer cans at delightful Minnesotans this past January, I just channeled my inner Moe Szyslak and responded, “Ah, they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
Ryan:
Not even a Super Bowl win stops me from saying the same thing this time of year: Fuck Todd Pinkston with a rusted lawn dart.
Charles:
I’m firmly convinced they won last year because of my lucky Eagles coffee cup. I dropped it while on the toilet because I drink coffee while taking my morning shit. I’m disgusting, I know.
It broke. And I spilled hot coffee all over my dick. My dick is okay but now we’re not gonna win again. And when we don’t, that’ll be why. I’m sorry.
Brian:
Fuck Buddy Ryan.
Charles:
We won the fucking Super Bowl. I have never been that overjoyed in my life. This team sucks because I will never be able to feel that again, but will spend the rest of my days trying to.
Ryan:
A couple of days after the Eagles won the Super Bowl, my wife says to me: “You know, I think you were happier watching the Eagles win the Super Bowl then you were when our son was born.” Which, she’s not exactly wrong...but in my defense, following a successful c-section, it would have been frowned upon had I run out of the operating room crying and screaming “FUCKING FINALLY” at the top of my lungs.
Kevin:
Since mid-February, two out of every five weddings in the Philadelphia area feature a groom dressed like Kelce at the Parade.
Vas:
I want to say that Philly fans will change after the Super Bowl win - but deep down I know they won’t - and what’s worse (better?) is I really don’t want them to.
Doug:
I can’t shake the nagging feeling that it’s going to take another 60 years to win a goddamned thing in this town. As always, Fuck McNabb with a Chunky Soup Can.
Sam:
This joy and euphoria will wear off and I will bitch about the team again. I know, I saw me do it with the Phillies!
David:
You thought Trump tarnished America’s relationship with the Brits? Wait until 20,000 Eagles fans arrive on the same day and demand cheesesteak hoagies wit.
Andrew:
Somehow winning the Super Bowl gave us an even bigger “little brother” complex. In any topic of NFL conversation now, our fans are the spiritual equivalent of a 16-year-old deadbeat teen bragging to his 25-year-old, well-adjusted older brother about touching his first vagina.
Chris:
Did I travel from NYC back to Philly to drink enough alcohol to kill a heard of rhinos along Broad Street, and in the process climb a light post and slip to the point where I smashed my groin on a ONE WAY sign and use my hand to break my fall while the Wawa and other gas stations burned around me, while our fans ate horse shit off the street? You betcha.
But let’s talk about the slabs of shit from Chester and Delaware Country and the oxycontin addicts from Port Richmond who will be all pro-standing for the anthem. Let’s talk about the South Philly guidos named Carmine and Dominic who haven’t had a green vegetable in their diet nor been able to wipe their own ass since ALF was on the air. Let’s talk about people who get butthurt crying that the football man is “protesting” their flag. Let’s talk about how their kids are opioid pill fiends in the suburbs with staph infections driving around in a tricked out 98 Toyota Tercel crashing high school parties in their 30s and think that the most recent Limp Bizkit album is “soo siiick” and aspire to be like Post Malone as they complain about poor people leeching off the system but have no problem using public assistance to pay for their daily methadone treatments.
Let’s talk about how they get offended at the players kneeling when in fact their cellulite covered, MAGA hat wearing asses in their soon-to-be foreclosed homes (which they blame immigrants for) sitting into the same Rent-A-Center loveseats they’ve been releasing egg farts into since Frank Rizzo was mayor which they need a prying bar to get their ass cheeks out of when their 270 cholesterol level keeps them SITTING when watching the anthem on TV, getting ready to crush that fifth hoagie with enough mayo to cover a Buick Skylark. Let talk about how all of them chant “Build a wall” when the only wall that should be built is around their fridge and around the Skoal dip display at their local gas station. I cannot WAIT until they become triggered at Malcolm Jenkins public displays of protests. I will just LOVE it the Bucks County manatees are still having pain in their hips and knees because they were dumb enough to believe they would get good healthcare when they voted for Trump. It’s gonna be great to taunt these troglodytes at the home games.
Mike:
If you ever mention the Super Bowl to Philadelphia Eagles fans, the first thing they will mention is The Philly Special. The next thing they will do is start complaining about Cris Collinsworth. The next thing they will do is complain Tom Brady not shaking hands with Nick Foles after the game.
Craig:
My family sat 10 rows from the Raiders bench for an Arctic evening on Christmas at the Linc. Santa hats. Hot cocoa. The works.
“Hey 67, yea you, you fat fucking piece of shit! I hope you die you pig!” Says the booze soaked guy one row behind me. Right before the national anthem. On Christmas.
In front of me, a woman in a metallic pink north face jacket is telling us that her friend’s son is Nate Sudfeld and that he is way better than Nick Foles. She left at halftime.
So basically I’m somewhere between a clueless dance recital rich mom and a loaded hot head who cheers for death on holidays.
Kevin:
I didn’t like sports during my childhood because the Eagles made my dad so angry. He hates watching the Eagles, and yet it is his favorite thing to do. Screaming, profanity, personal insults against the players, everything. Watching the Super Bowl with him was excruciating—there they were keeping up with Tom Brady after an improbably fantastic season, but he was still relentlessly raging about how terrible they were. Fuck the Eagles. Fuck football.
Steve:
There is still almost no chance we repeat. Our lovable, goofy, ginger QB has had one amazing season and then shredded his knee. Remember the last time that happened? I do, it was RG3. Our HoF Left tackle is 100 years old and also coming off a destroyed knee. His heir apparent is one suspect creatine shake away from a year suspension. Our linebackers are made of glass. Our premier pass rusher is on PUP and not at all happy with his contract after he made the play that won the fucking Super Bowl. Our secondary is Malcolm Jenkins, who himself is an untouchable god on and off the field but he’s surrounded by a guy who’s barely played a down and 2 dudes who are more recognizable for their hair than their coverage.
That’s just the guys on the field. 95% of Eagles fans are just the shitty, awful bud light huckers everyone thinks we are.
Despite all this, if we don’t repeat as champions I’m going to be insanely disappointed. I’m a fucking idiot.
Brian:
Christine Flowers hasn’t given up her fandom yet.
Michael:
I cried when the Eagles won the Super Bowl, it was fantastic. One of the best nights of my life. But then those stupid fucking E-A-G-L-E-S chants started and haven’t stopped since. Every fucking Sixers, Flyers, and Phillies game I’ve watched since, without exception, at a lull in the game some dipshit from Mayfair and his drunk buddies in North Catholic t-shirts launch into ten successive Eagles chants. I went to the Phillies-Dodgers game last week to get one last glimpse of Chase Utley. Not ten seconds after we walked through the gate some dummy screamed the chant three feet from my face. It’s a blatant ripoff of the Jets’ chant and it’s not even a good one at that. I hate that I have to share my joy with these mostly racist puds who probably wouldn’t know how to spell the word if it weren’t for the goddamn chant.
Keith:
I can’t help having a constant nagging feeling that the Super Bowl was FAKE NEWS and we’re going to go 7-9 and miss the playoffs. And because we both snubbed the president and have players with the nerve to speak out about cops murdering people and the injustice of poverty, our demise will be live-tweeted in all-caps mangled English.
Dave:
Our fans, in their minds, now have a reason to act like the biggest assholes in sports. You’ve been warned.
David:
The underdog role is only going to make things more unbearable. Can’t wait to tune in to local sports talk radio on Monday mornings and hear the morons discuss how we won in spite of the refs AND Joe Buck.
Drew (not me):
They’re going to squander every scrap of goodwill in inevitable, soul-crushing fashion.
I give it three weeks before Sal from Manayunk decides not being hated is for pussies and whips a Yuengling bottle at some 7-year-old Bucs fan. Or Jake Elliott misses a field goal that costs us a game, and the Linc is deafened by cries to cut his ass. Or Carson Wentz wears a MAGA hat in public. (God, please not that one.) And then it’s right back to being loathed.
The worst part is that it’s totally avoidable. Sharing a division with the Cowboys, Giants, and Washington is like having Martin Shkreli, the Mooch, and Milo Yiannopoulos for brothers. You don’t have to do ANYTHING to be the most popular member of that family, but our fans will find a way to fuck it up anyway. Someone’ll get a tattoo of Nick Foles teabagging Millie that goes viral. Or they’ll learn we aren’t in the top 5 “most arrests per stadium” and decide that insult cannot stand. Whatever it is, it’s coming. Book it.
Joel:
Maybe the Eagles will repeat this year or maybe they’ll be an absolute dumpster fire, it doesn’t really matter that much to me anymore. I saw them reach the pinnacle of the NFL and as a fan, what more could I ask for? I feel like it’s better to walk away on a high note.
Michael:
Basically the only reason they won is because the league got sick and tired of giving the Patriots every review call in their favor the past 20 years, so we had Gene Steratore openly rooting for us, and choosing to ignore Brent Celek committing offensive PI on the the biggest fourth down play of the season.
Nathan:
THEY’RE JUST GETTING MY HOPES UP IT’S ANDY ALL OVER AGAIN THEY’LL NEVER BEAT THE VIK—
FFS JUST LIKE THE EAGLES TO GET RIGHT TO THE BRINK BUT CRUSH MY HEART AT THE END HERE COME BELICHICK AND BRA—
I ...
I ...
I KNEW IT ALL ALONG YOU LOSERS YOU DIDN’T BELIEVE LIKE I DID
John:
The only thing that’s really gonna change is that now when we’re insufferable we’re gonna constantly bring up Nick Foles, whose career should have ended the moment he got the slightest bit of Jeff Fisher on him. We aren’t going to be better, but we ARE going to have one more thing to bring up when complaining.
Eric:
A timeline of my relationship with Nick Foles:
February 2nd, 2014: I’m at a family Super Bowl party, adamantly defending Nick Foles as the future of this franchise, saying he’s a top-half QB after only one great season.
March 10th, 2015: After the Nick Foles trade to St. Louis is confirmed on the radio, I text my friend saying, “I think Bradford is what this team needs. if he can stay healthy, they can make a run. Nick Foles can never be a franchise QB”
March 13th, 2017: I gleefully exclaim what a great move it is to bring back Nick Foles, somebody who is familiar with Doug Pederson and has history here, and that he’s the perfect backup.
Also March 13th, 2017, later that day: I angrily exclaim “they’re paying him how fucking much?!?”
November 5th, 2017: The Eagles were torching Denver enough that Wentz could be pulled from the game and Foles could get some reps. He fumbles the ball for a TD his very first snap. I turn to my buddies while at the bar, “Well, thank God he’s not our starting QB haha”.
December 10th, 2017: “Welp, what could’ve been this season” I dejectedly say to my dad as we’re watching the Eagles/Rams game at the bar. “This would’ve been the year but of course, as fate has it, Eagles fans deserve at least one dick punch a year”
December 31st, 2017: Status I put on Facebook: “Watching Nick Foles play QB makes me want to start New Year’s drinking right now”
January 1st, 2018, at 330 AM in the morning at the NYE party drunk off my ass: “FLY EAGLES FLY, ON THE ROAD TO VICTORY!!!!”
January 13th, 2018 after watching the first drive vs. Atlanta: Welp, this game is over, Nick Foles is bad.
January 13th, 2018, in the 4th quarter: Status I put on Facebook: “Anybody blaming our offense not putting up points on Nick Foles clearly doesn’t understand football, he’s been great this half”
February 8th, 2018, drunk at the Eagles parade: “BIG DICK NICK, BIG DICK NICK!”
February 9th, 2018, to a coworker: I think you gotta trade Foles if you get something good for him.
I am the reason why this team sucks.
Alex:
The first Sunday of every May, Sly Fox, a brewery in suburbs of Philadelphia, has an annual goat racing festival. It’s a great time; a folksy band plays German drinking songs, there’s food and beer, and of course, dozens of adorable goats that eventually race down a small grassy field with their owners. The winning goat gets their name put on Sly Fox’s annual maibock release.
For the most part, the goats have adorable, inoffensive names. This year’s winner was “Princess Jenny”. However, there was one goat that was not adorably named. This goat’s name was Tom Brady.
Did this group of a couple thousand Eagles fans, fresh off a Super Bowl victory, let the cute pun slide? No. We did not. I’ve been in the Linc when the Cowboys players have been announced; the booing this little lamancha goat named Tom Brady received was louder. This was a family event with numerous small children present...did a “FUCK TOM BRADY” chant break out? Of course it did.
Was I doing both? I don’t need to answer that.
If you think Boston fans are awful, pray to whatever deity you favor that the Eagles don’t sustain any sort of success. You will beg Bill Bellichick and Tom Brady to save you from this scourge.
Matthew:
Our fanbase managed to surpass post-2004 Red Sox fans in being insufferable about 30 minutes after the Super Bowl ended.
Jason Kelce is now a hero to every human trashbag from Grays Ferry, Fishtown, and Northeast Philly.
I give it one so-so Carson Wentz start while still not 100 percent from his knee surgery until Bobby from Mayfair is calling into WIP demanding to know why Nick Foles isn’t starting.
Fuck Angelo Cataldi.
Jack:
I was pretty good friends with a Cubs fan a few years back when I was still in school, and he was humble and took accountability for his shit franchise’s failures in stride. And then the 2016 World Series happened. In one night, he and every other Cubs fan I met became the most insufferable people on the planet. You’d have thought every prior World Series between 2016 and when the Ottoman Empire still existed was just a mirage, and the Cubs had always been a perennial powerhouse.
Is this the fate that awaits Eagles fans? Probably. We’re not used to having this success, and I wish my fellow Eagles fans would remember that before they run around acting like the 2017 Eagles were the best team ever assembled. But they won’t, because Philly fans are the dumbest on the planet.
My grandfather chose the perfect time to leave this world; he saw the Eagles celebrating at Tom Brady’s expense, and he peaced before it could sink in and make Eagles fans act like even bigger assholes.
Special thanks to all the Deadspin staffers and readers who contributed to this year’s previews. Enjoy the season, everybody.