The Eagles are great. They’re also incredibly boring. Here are few ways to make them more exciting.
The team is so good that its season has gotten dull. Here are 25 suggestions to spice things up for Jalen Hurts and the rest of the crew.
Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but the Eagles are boring.
Yeah, they’re 12-1. Yeah, they have the best record in the NFL. Yeah, they’re probably going to steamroll the Bears on Sunday, because the Bears have the worst passing offense in the NFL and one of the worst defenses in the NFL and because, lately, the Eagles have been steamrolling everybody. They lead the league in point differential and have already won seven games by two scores or more. They’re at least two games better than every other team in the NFC. They’re on a run that so far has been as good or better than the ones they made in 2004, when they reached the Super Bowl, and in 2017, when they won it.
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But just because a team is great doesn’t make it interesting. The Eagles are winning with cold efficiency, little drama, and even less controversy. They — and the people who cover and follow them — could use some excitement. Fortunately, I have a few suggestions …
1. Situps.
2. Situps in a driveway.
3. Situps in a driveway by a wide receiver who hates his quarterback.
4. Seriously, the Eagles traded for A.J. Brown, one of the best wide receivers around, and it turns out that not only is the guy affable and accommodating with the media and seems to be a team-first guy, but he’s one of Jalen Hurts’ closest friends. What? That’s no way to generate tension and bad blood in a huddle. Hey J, I was wide open there, and only a blind man or Carson Wentz wouldn’t have seen me. But don’t worry. I still love you, bro.
5. Hurts, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, hasn’t dry-heaved during the fourth quarter of a big game yet.
6. Hurts, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, hasn’t smiled during the fourth quarter of a big game yet.
7. Jason Kelce has a podcast. It’s with his brother, Travis, and it’s funny and insightful. But from now on, he can record it only on Sundays. At halftime. After chugging a six-pack of PBR.
8. Has there ever been a softer bit of bulletin-board material than what we got this past week between the Eagles and the Cowboys’ Micah Parsons? On a podcast with Bills linebacker Von Miller, Parsons asked whether Hurts should be named the NFL’s most valuable player. “Is it Hurts or the team?” Parsons said. “I’m not trying to make no enemies. I just love the game so much and I understand it so much that when things are off, I can’t just hold it in.” This marked the first time in sports history that someone suggested an athlete shouldn’t be the MVP because his team was too good — which may be a silly thing to say, but it isn’t much of a shot at Hurts or the Eagles.
9. Less than a week until Birds-’Boys in Arlington, Texas. One of those teams should sign Richard Sherman out of retirement, just so he can show them how trash-talking ought to be done.
10. Still waiting for Ian Book to refer to the 2022 Eagles as “The Dream Team.”
11. Odell Beckham Jr. was out there, Howie Roseman, just waiting for your phone call. And you let him get away.
12. Think of it: “The White Lotus, starring Jonathan Gannon.”
13. Think of it: “Top Gun: Mustache, starring Gardner Minshew.”
14. Miles Sanders needs to start fumbling the football again. He did it seven times through his first three seasons but hasn’t done it once yet this year. So dull. I remember the good old days when Ryan Mathews was the Eagles’ lead tailback. Mathews didn’t hang on to anything — six fumbles in 14 starts over his two seasons here. Dude couldn’t carry his lunch to a table in the NovaCare Complex cafeteria without having his avocado rice bowl end up all over on the floor.
15. New offensive strategy: Throw to get the lead, then nothing but double-reverses to Grant Calcaterra.
16. New defensive strategy: Darius Slay covers everybody.
17. Crap, he already does.
18. New special-teams strategy: Jake Elliott punts on second down.
19. New mascot: Meek Mill.
20. Crap, he’s already the Sixers’ mascot.
21. New contest for fans at Lincoln Financial Field: Win two tickets to an upcoming Eagles game if you find the teenager in your section who’s actually Britain Covey!
22. NBC Sports Philadelphia rehires Derrick Gunn to conduct postgame interviews with Eagles players. Instead, Gunn screams obscenities at Brandon Graham.
23. Nick Sirianni is no longer permitted to throw a challenge flag. Instead, to get a call overturned, he has to beat the back judge in either “Rock, Paper, Scissors” or a thumb war.
24. Would it be too much to ask for a decent locker-room fight? I don’t need something on the level of The Great Terrell Owens-Hugh Douglas Throwdown of 2005 or Wentz-vs.-Darren Sproles. (I’m still picking Sproles and his low center of gravity every time in that one.) I’d settle for a couple of practice-squadders rumbling during punt-coverage drills or a spirited discussion of President Biden’s debt-forgiveness edict.
25. The Eagles’ offensive linemen recorded a Christmas album. Talk about making a safe, mundane choice. Hey, Kelce. Two words: Death metal.