Unpopular Sixers owner Josh Harris and his Commanders are coming; NFL divisional-round madness

It’s difficult to gauge just how unpopular Josh Harris has become in Philadelphia.

Come Sunday, it will be easy to gauge it.

Since he led a group that bought the 76ers in 2011, Harris has mismanaged the franchise with the relentless irresponsibility of Norman Braman’s Eagles and conducted himself with a complete lack of consideration for Philadelphia’s tender feelings.

The first thing Harris did was, in 2012 engineer the worst trade in Philly history: Andre Iguodala, Nikola Vučević, Moe Harless, and a future first-round pick for damaged-goods center Andrew Bynum, whom he paid $18 million and who never played a single game for the Sixers. He then hired inexperienced GM Sam Hinkie, traded Jrue Holiday in 2013, and began the catastrophic strategy called “The Process,” in which poor drafting, bad luck, and abysmal oversight created bust after bust and embarrassment after embarrassment. To date, now in its 12th year, “The Process” has produced zero series wins past the second round of the playoffs and a Sixers team that entered Monday at 15-26.

» READ MORE: A Sixers move to Camden lurked until the new South Philly arena deal was struck, as more details emerge

There’s so much more.

Most recently, Harris and the Sixers spent two years ram-rodding a scheme to build a $1.3 billion arena just East of City Hall, and three weeks after they finally got City Council approval, they struck a deal with the Flyers to build an entirely different arena adjacent to the current one the teams share in South Philly. Details have emerged that even after getting Council approval the Sixers still threatened to move to Camden.

In the middle of it, in 2013, Harris and his group bought a Flyers rival, the New Jersey Devils.

As if that wasn’t galling enough for Philadelphians, Harris and his group, now working under the name of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, in 2023 bought the Washington Commanders.

Those Commanders, a wild-card Cinderella story with a new coach and rookie quarterback, visit Lincoln Financial Field on Sunday for the NFC championship game. It is the second time the teams have met in the postseason. Washington won a wild-card game in Philadelphia after the 1990 season.

Like many owners, Harris loves to hang out on the sidelines. Given his rocky recent record and his role as rival and foe, he might not love hanging out on the sidelines at the Linc on Sunday.

At any rate, while his Sixers haven’t yet managed it, Harris finally has a team that has made it past the second round playing in Philly.

» READ MORE: Eagles fans react to Josh Harris’ joy after the Commanders’ win

A.J. Brown now has three catches for 24 yards in two playoff games and has cast nary a vibe of discontent.

Jalen Hurts was sacked a career-high seven times Sunday, and while not all of them were the fault of the league’s best offensive line, the line bore at least part of the blame on most of them. Hurts was sacked six times twice before but never had been sacked more than three times in his six previous playoff games.

The two most astonishing phenomena from Saturday’s games:

A player committed a penalty, then committed assault, a coach threw away a game when a poorly conceived trick play imploded, and nobody seemed to care.

First, the assault.

Journeyman special-teamer Kris Boyd, a defensive back for the Houston Texans, forced a fumble at the end of a long opening kickoff return of their playoff game in Kansas City. He then shed his helmet while on the field as the play continued. Taking off a helmet in that situation is a 15-yard penalty. As Boyd exited the field, special teams coordinator Frank Ross was giving him an earful, and Boyd didn’t want to hear it. So, he shoved him with both hands. Ross was moved back three full steps.

You might think that act would have been Boyd’s last as a Texan, right? No. Ross chose to ignore it. So did head coach DeMeco Ryans, who, even after the game, claimed, absurdly, that he didn’t know about the incident.

However, Ryans did make sure to jump on the bandwagon of whiners and accuse the officials of favoring the Chiefs: “We knew going into this game, man, that it was “‘Us versus everybody,’ and when I say everybody, it’s everybody.”

Ryans, who has made a slew of sideline errors in his two seasons in Houston, should take care of his own house before he blames the refs. The biggest error of his brief career as a head coach came Sunday.

Ryans should have sent Boyd to the locker room immediately and fined him his playoff game check. Instead, Boyd, a veteran in his sixth season, appeared to apologize to Ross and remained in the game. He explained afterward, “I was just turnt,” which is slang for excited, or “turned up.”

» READ MORE: Eagles ride Saquon Barkley and Jalen Carter to a messy win over the Rams to reach the NFC championship game

He should have been turned out.

That act of insanity was more jarring, but far less costly, than what Dan Campbell did to his Detroit Lions against the Commanders.

Trailing by 10 early in the fourth quarter with the ball near midfield on first-and-10, Campbell, who loves controversial trick plays, allowed offensive coordinator Ben Johnson to call a trick play. It was a reverse — an end-around, handed back off to another ballcarrier going the opposite way — with the intent of throwing deep to a running back who was covered by a frontline starting cornerback. Jameson Williams, who has never played quarterback, was tasked with throwing deep to Jahmyr Gibbs, who is an excellent receiver, but usually against linebackers or safeties. This time, he was covered by cornerback Mike Sainristil, who already had one interception, and who intercepted a laughably poorly-thrown pass.

The Lions lost by 14. As they should have.

The execution of the throw was almost as bad as the play call, but Campbell’s becoming notorious for bad play calls. This particular play call was even worse than the two calls that cost the Lions the NFC championship game last year, when Campbell twice went for it on fourth down instead of kicking field goals. The Lions lost that game by three points. As they should have.

The Chiefs benefited from a specious unnecessary roughness call on which Patrick Mahomes feigned running out of bounds, cut back toward the middle of the field, then abruptly slid as two defenders converged over him. It was a tough judgment call, and one the officials got wrong.

In that same vein, after Lions quarterback Jared Goff threw the first of his three interceptions, he put himself in position to tackle the returner. He was blocked, and hard contact was made with his head. By rule, this should have been a penalty, since a quarterback is considered a defenseless player and cannot be hit in the head or neck area.

So yes, the officials missed both calls. However, they aren’t at fault. The rules are. We consistently see officials make mistakes both ways on quarterback runs when QBs slide or dive. We rarely see quarterbacks bother to tackle interception returners, but the returning team’s blockers are literally compelled to check the identity of the player they hope to block to avoid penalty.

A solution: Eliminate these protections. It might sound barbaric, but why should quarterbacks be protected when they’re not distracted by trying to find receivers?

Sure, protect their heads and necks and knees while they’re in the pocket, but eliminate the slide/dive protections and penalties. If quarterbacks want to run then they should be subject to the same punishment every other runner risks. Their protection should not fall to the officials who have to make split-second judgment calls from 30 yards away.

The best way to protect quarterbacks: Have them not run.

Also, if quarterbacks don’t want to get their blocks knocked off during a runback, then they shouldn’t pursue the returner.

Lamar Jackson, Derrick Henry, and John Harbaugh are good for the league, and maybe they deserved better than a two-point loss in Buffalo after Mark Andrews dropped a two-point conversion pass inside of two minutes, but it’s hard to have sympathy for a team that commits three turnovers vs. zero turnovers and commits five penalties vs. one penalty. The less talented but more disciplined team won.