Anonymous Eagles player calls out Howie Roseman to ESPN over Jalen Ramsey trade

"We dropped the ball. I don't even want to talk about that," the unnamed Eagles player dished to ESPN.

Eagles head coach Doug Pederson, left, walks with general manager Howie Roseman before a game against the Washington Redskins at Lincoln Financial Field in South Philadelphia on Sunday, Sept. 8, 2019.Read moreTIM TAI / Staff Photographer

Published Oct. 17, 2019, 8:59 a.m. ET

Apparently Eagles fans and sports talk radio hosts weren’t the only ones upset over the team’s decision to pass on cornerback Jalen Ramsey.

One anonymous Eagles player voiced his frustration to ESPN NFL Insider Josina Anderson, saying he thought the Birds and general manager Howie Roseman “dropped the ball” by passing on the two-time Pro Bowl cornerback, whom the Jaguars traded to the Rams for three draft picks, including two first rounders.

This isn’t the first time an Eagles player has dished anonymously to Anderson. Last year, she reported on NFL Live that an unnamed player blamed the team’s struggles on a lack of chemistry, suggesting that Zach Ertz being targeted so much was “disrupting the rhythm with everyone else.”

Jeff McLane reported in Tuesday’s Early Birds newsletter (sign up here) it was unclear how serious Roseman was about acquiring Ramsey, who drew interest from multiple teams. Here’s what McLane wrote about the Eagles’ decision to pass on Ramsey, who will also be a free agent at the end of the season:

The Rams surrendered a lot of draft commodities for one player. The Eagles have one of the NFL’s oldest rosters, and with quarterback Carson Wentz’s expanding contract, they need to hit on more draft picks... Ramsey is also going to command a massive contract extension, with significant leverage after the Rams forfeited their future. Mr. Brinks Truck will likely become the highest-paid cornerback in the NFL.

The Eagles are hoping injured cornerbacks Jalen Mills and Ronald Darby are back in time for Sunday’s primetime match-up with the Cowboys. The team’s two other injured cornerbacks — Avonte Maddox (neck) and Cre’Von LeBlanc (foot) — could be returning in the next couple of weeks, according to Paul Domowitch.

The Birds certainly need the help. Through the first six games of the season, the Eagles secondary has struggled, ranking 29th in passing yards allowed and 28th in touchdown passes allowed. And Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins lit up the Eagles defense, completing 22 of 29 passes for 333 yards and four touchdowns.

The NFL trade deadline is 4 p.m. on Oct. 29, meaning the Eagles still have time to bolster their secondary. But as Domowitch noted, a bigger trade priority for the Eagles could actually be a pass rusher.

Coverage of ex-Flyers player’s coffee shop job draws fierce criticism

Many Canadian news outlets drew backlash from hockey fans and sports journalists after reporting that former Flyers enforcer Donald Brashear, who spent 16 season in the NHL, is now working at a Tim Hortons coffee shop in Quebec City.

It’s a questionable story to run at best, considering Brashear’s post-retirement financial and legal struggles (he’s facing cocaine-possession charges). Sports reporters at some of the same media outlets that covered the story were among the loudest critics.

“This is a disgraceful, effortless, and rude little snipe of a story,” National Post reporter Joseph Brean wrote on Twitter, sharing his newspaper’s own story (which mistakenly used a mislabeled photo of Georges Laraque, a different retired NHL player of color).

Here is a better headline and better story from @adamfrisk, with the right photo. Former NHL enforcer Donald Brashear helping hockey friend Pierre Sevigny run a Tim Hortons https://t.co/HdwMJrVPnR
— Rosa Hwang (@journorosa) October 17, 2019

The reaction mirrored the response after news broke that former Cosby Show actor Geoffrey Owens was spotted working at a Trader Joe’s earlier this year in Clifton, N.J. Ultimately, the positive response to Owens’ employment situation got the former actor back on TV, with roles on CBS’s NCIS: New Orleans and Showtime’ Billions.

“The way he made headlines for working at Trader Joe’s exposed something really ugly about us: We’re a nation of snobs,” my colleague Jenice Armstrong wrote about the response to Owens’ job. “Too many of us feel certain work is beneath us. And when we saw a former “star” whose face we remembered from TV dressed in a stained T-shirt and working at a grocery store, we were straight-up appalled.”

Quick hits:

• NFL Network host and Philly native Colleen Wolfe appeared on The Ringer’s Slow News Day opposite Kevin Clark, where she dropped her own personal nickname for Doylestown — “D-Town.” Fortunately, Wolfe was justifiably embarrassed by her on-the-fly moniker, shamefully admitting, “Nobody calls it that.”

Why did Doylestown come up? Clark was plucking small-town stories from USA Today, and Pennsylvania’s involved some Bucks County covered bridges getting a $2.5 million makeover. “You might go to Florida for gators, but you come to Pennsylvania for covered bridges,” Wolfe noted.

• WIP host and former Eagles defender Ike Reese turned 46 on Wednesday, and Eagles production manager Fran Duffy celebrated by tweeting a clip of Reese being greeted by someone dressed in a Velociraptor costume on the set of NBC10’s Eagles GamePlan.

So what’s the joke? Reese doesn’t believe in dinosaurs, and has suggested on-air that bones found by archaeologists are man-made. “There’s two things I don’t believe in. That’s aliens and dinosaurs,” Reese told former on-air partner Michael Barkann in 2016.