Some people are fans of the Philadelphia Eagles. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Philadelphia Eagles. This 2016 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. And buy Drew’s new book here.




Your team: Dumpster Pool Eagles

Most polite and hygienic Eagles fan being removed from the Linc.


Your 2015 record: 7-9. Kirk Cousins took a knee at the half and blew a scoring chance and this moron team still managed to lose to him.

If you go strictly by wins and losses (never do this), it seems pretty rash of the Eagles to shitcan Chip Kelly, who won 20 games in his first two seasons, after just one mediocre season. Oh, but “7-9” gives such short shrift to the way this team spent a whole season planting dynamite inside its own asshole. You could see it coming from a mile away when Jeffrey Lurie gave Kelly all the power and Kelly subsequently came down with a form of deranged powermadness that has only been surpassed by the Trump campaign in its sheer audacity. He traded for Sam Bradford (18 turnovers), and then shelled out enormous contracts to DeMarco Murray (3.6 yards per carry) and Byron Maxwell (still being picked out of Julio Jones’s cleats). And those were just the bad football moves. Off the field, Kelly became Miami Saban 2.0, fucking fucking up Christmas parties and trashing scouting reports and installing glory hole cameras in the team showers, probably. LeSean McCoy hated him so fucking much that he feuded with him for the whole season despite not even being an Eagle anymore.

Only in Philadelphia can your professional reputation be destroyed so quickly and so thoroughly. Kelly got fired and will spend the rest of eternity rolling boulders up a hill for Jed York as punishment for his hubris. So say hello to his replacement…

Your coach: OMG it’s Doug Pederson! Mastermind of the 12-minute drill! This is just the fucking best. You Eagles fans pissed and moaned about Andy Reid for over a decade, and now the team has been forced to crawl back to the Reid coaching tree. They couldn’t even get the genuine article. They had to get the outlet store version. And Donovan McNabb got an ESPN gig! It’s the mid-2000s all over again! Remember those?!


This is gonna be amazing. I can feel hate emanating from Philly already. How long until Pederson fucks up an important clock situation? Ten minutes into the season? I bet half the clocks in his house haven’t even been adjusted to Daylight Savings yet. And he hired Jim Schwartz to run the defense! Jim Johnson is laughing at this team from the grave.

Also, did you know Ron Jaworski had a hand in hiring Pederson? Christ. Jaws is an auto show rep. He’s the perfect example of Philly fans latching onto old morons—fictional or otherwise— and holding them in the highest possible esteem. I wouldn’t let Jaws pick out movie candy for me, much less a coach.


Your quarterback: Oh look! It’s world-class chump Sam Bradford!


The only amusing part of this dead and barren NFL offseason was watching both the Eagles and Bradford play themselves while trying to play one another. This team handed Sam $22 million guaranteed—even though he’s fucking terrible—and then immediately turned around and traded the farm to draft Dakota Tebow, Carson Wentz. That caused Bradford to throw a fit and demand a trade. OH, NO! SAM BRADFORD IS UNHAPPY! WHATEVER WILL WE DO?! Hey, shithead: The only team that would be dumb enough to trade for you already did. Medical schools would reject your cadaver if you tried to donate it.



Wentz, currently still trying to master a gas station bathroom lock, has already proven to be one of the most insufferable rookies to enter the NFL in years. This is the part where I remind you about his (agent’s) Players’ Tribune essay:

That toughness comes in handy in a place like North Dakota. You see, up there, jamming your numb fingers against someone’s ice-cold helmet happens every practice. Getting decked on the cement-like dirt is just how a play ends. And here’s the thing: I love it. Because in North Dakota, we don’t care for flash or dazzle. That’s not our game. We don’t do things the fanciest way. We do them the right way.


I wish he had fallen into a mining pit. Needless to say, your average WIP caller fell for this immediately. Wentz already has the best-selling jersey in the state. I wonder if Eagles fans will be as impatient and demanding of Wentz as they were with Donovan McNabb. I wonder what strange and exotic factor might cause them to treat him more kindly. BIG FUCKING MYSTERY.

What’s new that sucks: Turns out you may not see much of Bradford OR Wentz this season because Pederson brought Little Chase Daniel along with him to audible into a fullback dive four straight times from the 1-yard line. There’s a very good chance the Eagles will use lots of QBs this season because the line—which couldn’t pass block a turtle—is about to lose Lane Johnson for 10 games.


As for the rest of the team, GM Howie Roseman is back in charge. YAY! Let’s see if he can bring Vince Young out of retirement and create a SECOND Eagles Dream Team. That first one did so well. Roseman spent the majority of this offseason packing up all of Kelly’s old players in a box and sending them to the Iron Mountain storage facility: Mark Sanchez, Kiko Alonso, Riley Cooper, Maxwell, Murray, etc. He also burned all the snacks Kelly hid under his desk.

Also, Buddy Ryan died. Buddy Ryan was an asshole.

What has always sucked: These fans are human waste and I hate them. Bradley Cooper’s Silver Linings Playbook character represents the most STABLE Eagles fan possible. It’s a bunch of moody assholes who are even moodier because they can’t gloat about success. Only Patriots Twitter is more thin-skinned.


By the way, Philly fans insist that their reputation is undeserved, but then they FLIP THE FUCK OUT over the littlest things. “Oh, what, you’re gonna bring up the battery throwing? Real mature, fella. We aren’t like that. (*sees that someone said something bad about cheesesteaks*) FUCK YOU, YOU PIECE OF SHIT.” With literally any story about fan violence, the comments will be full of Philly assholes saying “See?! It happens in other cities! Why does everyone only talk about us?” Because you suck, that’s why. Here is our own Samer Kalaf with a story that sums up both Philly and its fans:

I spent a month in Philadelphia when I was unemployed. And my strongest memory from there is the time I was playing catch with a football with a friend and the football bounced behind a dumpster and when I picked it up I realized it had landed in a pile of human shit. I had human shit on my hand, so I had to wash it off.


Also, the Wing Bowl is where all Trump supporters are spawned. They spring from the arena fully formed, like the Uruk-hai.

What might not suck: Fletcher Cox will make 18 more Pro Bowls in the time it takes Wentz to finally shed to “project” label. HE’S VERY RAW.


Let’s remember some Eagles:

Izel Jenkins



Mark McMillian



Kevin Turner



Torrance Small



Mark Simoneau



Hear it from Eagles fans!

Daniel:



I am an Eagles fan who recently relocated to Boston. Because of this, I’m under the impression that Boston sports fans are kind, civil, and polite human beings.


Scott:

I once ordered an Eagles jersey online, but for some reason the order got delayed. So, I contacted the vendor wondering what was going on, and they told me they would send me a new one right away, which I got a few days later. However, a few days after that, the jersey I had originally ordered finally arrived. I thought to myself, “This is fantastic. I have two Eagles jerseys for the price of one.” I figured I’d let my fiancée wear one of them when we watched games together. Those two jerseys were LeSean McCoy and Nick Foles jerseys.


John:

Fuck the Eagles. Fuck them forever. We just spent the last 3 years farting around with racist lunatic who firmly believed that talent didn’t matter, and to replace him we’ve brought in a worse version of the incredibly fat coach we ran out of town not even 4 years ago. Our quarterback situation is completely fucked as we have: Sam Bradford who is bad, Chase Daniels who is overpaid, and Carson Wentz who we spent everything to go get and who likely won’t play this year. Our receivers can’t catch anything aside from sexual assault lawsuits. Our defense looks surprisingly not terrible but I’m sure that it will turn to Swiss cheese come week 5 when Fletcher Cox just doesn’t care anymore and every linebacker we have simultaneously destroy their knees. And the average IQ of WIP callers is somehow lower than the win total this team is gonna post this year.


David:



Wentz played college ball at basically my high school.

Max:

I don’t think this fanbase realizes the fucking hypocrisy in booing Donavon McNabb after he was picked and practically giving reacharounds to Carson Wentz in the lead up of the draft. Donavon McNabb was a proven Division 1 QB, who had all the tools. While Wentz went to fucking North Dakota State University. I bet half of these mouth breathers didn’t even know that North Dakota was a state until draft night. McNabb was the right pick, at the time AND the organization didn’t have to give anything up to draft him. With Wentz, Howie Roseman went all Redskins on us and practically gave up two drafts to pick a player who gets himself locked in gas station bathrooms. Even to this day, people criticize McNabb for not having “it”. I guarantee this town will call Wentz the greatest quarterback in team history when he wins 2 playoff games and fails to get past the divisional round. He is the embodiment of the term “Great White Hope”. And, FUCK DOUG PETERSON. They literally re-hired Andy Reid. They have the same clock management problems and the personalities of my flaccid penis.


Nathan:

We gave up five draft picks to draft Andy Dalton’s yokel cousin because we were blown away by his game tape against schools like Ferris State and Incarnate Word. God help us the first time Wentz tries to run past a linebacker who isn’t a 5'10" 200-pound farmhand from Boise.


Eric:

I went to the Dolphins/Eagles game this past year and I shit you not, all of these things occurred. -At the tailgate we attended, a guy and his fiancé got into a fight. The guy responded by keying the car that they both own together. Later they went into said car to argue, and the guy had his cheek bitten by the girl. -This was the game Sam Bradford had gotten injured. Before going out, Sam Bradford was 19-25 for 236 yards with 1 TD and 0 INT. However, this guy behind us was shouting at the top of his lungs that Bradford was a bum and that Sanchez needed to be put in. When Bradford went down and got taken out, this guy ERUPTED in euphoria as if Mark Sanchez was some Tom Brady clone that was misunderstood. Even crazier is that a good amount of fans cheered Bradford coming out of the game due to a serious injury and Sanchez coming in. Sanchez threw three straight screen passes that gained decent yardage to which the idiot behind us said, “I told you guys Sanchez was better!” He proceeded to finish a very pedestrian 14-23 for 156 yards, 0 TD and 1 INT, which ended the game. -Finally, and this is my absolute favorite. We were leaving after the disappointing loss back to our cars. All the sudden, this girl in a Dolphins jersey stops, turns around, and smacks as hard as she can a guy who at the time we assumed was her boyfriend in an Eagles jersey, saying, “You never talk to a female like that!” The slap was so loud you could hear it clearly over the max exodus of everyone heading to their cars. We thought this guy would argue back with his girlfriend, only to find out they weren’t dating at all. This random Eagles fan said something presumably terrible to the girl Dolphins fan where she turned around in her Tannehill jersey and smacked him across the face. He didn’t respond, he just held his cheek and walked dejectedly to his car, completely embarrassed in front of everyone. Yeah, that was all during one game.

Dan:

They are the Browns with a bigger little brother complex.

Chris:

This is the most utterly nondescript Eagles team I’ve ever seen. We have the weakest WR corps since those halcyon days of James Thrash and Todd Pinkston. But at least in those days we had Duce Staley and Brian Westbrook at RB. Now we have what’s left of Darren Sproles, plus a bunch of rookies and backups. And of course it’s all led by Sam Bradford, who’s just keeping the seat warm for another guy and is only still here because no one else in the league would give him a shot. Plus we’ve got Doug Pederson, who was something like our 12th choice for coach. For all Chip Kelly’s blunders, at least he had ambition and drive. Pederson, so far, is about as inspiring as oatmeal and his only goal seems to be “put things back the way Andy Reid left them.”


Nathan:

My father has been attending Eagles games since 1948, when his father took him to the championship in the snow against the (Chicago) Cardinals. When I earned my first paycheck, the first thing I did was to start paying for the tickets, as his annual Father’s Day gift. Now that he’s too old to make it to games regularly, I take my son. That’s nearly 70 years of Eagles games, spanning four generations. And every year, I have to be talked out of giving the seats up, because, really, what’s the fucking point? I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars and nearly as many hours on this team, and they’ll never, ever win. If a miracle happens and the Eagles finally DO win a Super Bowl, we, the long-suffering fans, will be too drunk, stupid and miserable to be able to enjoy it. Fuck Bryce Paup.

Chris:

I don’t know where to start. I could go on and on about how Chip Kelly over the course of one season completely ran this team into the ground faster than a Port Richmond caller on WIP shoves that fifth water ice with custard on the bottom into their face. I could go on about how we pissed away years of draft picks just to land Carson fucking Wentz, a quarterback that didn’t really beat anybody worth talking about in his college years, yet our inept management and fans with the logic of Hodor from Game of Thrones thinks he’s going to be the next Joe Montana even though we burned up cap space (and our future) to acquire him. We aren’t fit to live on a petri dish much less in civilized society. And it’s not just one class of ignorant fans. We’re broken down into sub genres. Take your pick. You got the Chester Country/Main Line 34 year old dudes with chin strap beards that vape, crash high school parties and pass around staph infections who think the latest Linkin Park album is a game changer. Wanna see the heart of the City of Brotherly Love? Let’s talk about the South Philly/Deleware County rubes ingesting scrapple lined cheeseteaks, who froth at the mouth for the days of Frank Rizzo and have Trump bumper stickers and hurled racial epithets at the TV every time Donovan McNabb botched a play yet are still overly butt hurt that we didn’t draft Ricky Williams back in ’99. Ricky fucking Williams is STILL brought up to this day by every bro inhaling beer towers at Dave and Busters before they get a DUI on their drive back to Ardmore. Our entire coaching program finally began to collapse last year after week 10 and all these shitheads were complaining about was that we didn’t get to play a game in London the following year. That being said, I’ll be suiting up in my coat of ignorance known as Eagles gear come week 1 and hate myself more and more by the 3rd quarter of each game while our wet paper bag of an offensive line gets decimated by a fifth rate opponent while I ugly cry with tears running down my wing sauce covered face with a Bud Light in one hand and a 4000 calorie hoagie in the next knowing that I can never stop having unrealistic expectations year after year for this perpetually heaping pile of rhinoceros shit of a team.


Brian:

When I was in high school my mom, aunt and (much older) sister decided to take me and my nephew to Disney World. This trip just so happened to align with the Eagles going to the Super Bowl for the first time in my lifetime (or since). We arrived Saturday, the game was Sunday. I was destroyed by the loss in a way only a young boy in the Magic Kingdom could be. My only solace was knowing that I didn’t have to see my dad for a week. Only the Eagles could ruin Disney World for a child.

David:

In just three years we went from unadulterated glee that the Andy Reid era was finally over, to that same level of glee because the new guy will “follow Andy Reid’s blueprint.” We are a ruthless horde of idiots.


Joshua:

Our fight song starts with “Fly Eagles Fly, on the road to victory”. Even birds understand that you can’t fly on roads.


Steve:

Holy fuck I’m so sick and fucking tired of Brent Celek. Saw an article on Philly.com that had the headline, “Eagles’ Celek takes tough to another level.” He’s a shitty tight end. Jermichael Finley with half a spinal cord would be more effective.


Nate:

First we brought in Andy Reid Jr. to coach the team. Next we banked our entire future on a D2 quarterback who will have zero talent around him.


Michael:

Philly fans (or Phans) love to say that they’re the “most knowledgeable and passionate fans” in the country, so it might be hard to follow this logic: Eagles bring in Sam Bradford for Nick Foles and a 2nd round pick, the city hates him. Bradford lights up GB in a preseason game, city LOVES him. Phans watch his league average play and city hates him, wants no part of him going forward. Team resigns him for two years for big $$$, city is OUTRAGED. Team gives up 3 players and 3 draft picks to move up and get QB of the future, Bradford wants out of town, city HATES him and how DARE he want out of town. Rumors leak Denver offers a 2nd or 3rd round pick for Bradford, phans say “NO WAY! He’s worth more than that!”


John:

We shit on the only good QB to ever come through Philly that’s not named Randall Cunningham. We got beaten by the fucking Cardinals in 2008 so they could turn around and lose to Santonio Holmes’ toes. We haven’t won a playoff game since the Bush administration. We hired an “offensive guru” to replace The Walrus. He then turned around and fisted our roster into oblivion for seemingly no reason.


Carter:

Josh Huff’s fingers are literally made of butter.

Ken:

Pederson is a clone of Andy Reid if the cloning machine was broken and you only got 50% mass from the original.


Brandon:

Pederson is an apple-faced goon whose only head coaching experience is a Louisiana high-school football team. His only notable NFL coaching moment is giving Tom Brady the ball back last year in the fourth quarter of a playoff game (which he still justifies stubbornly!).


Adam:

The Eagles were so excited to hire Doug Pederson, a guy who had exactly zero interviews with any other team and is one year removed from running an offense where no WR scored a single touchdown, that they pulled the trigger before the season ended. They never interviewed Sean McDermott who was, at the time, busy coaching one of the best defenses in football to the Super Bowl. This is after McDermott went on Philly radio and more or less asked for the job. That’s like if Ryan Coogler said he really wanted to direct your movie, but he needed to wait two weeks, so you went out and hired the employee of the month at the local Ford dealership.


Ian:

One can still easily spot no fewer than ten Tim Tebow jerseys at home games despite the notable fact that he never made the fucking team.


Shaun:

My wife is from Philadelphia and her whole family are Eagles fans, except for her middle sister who has rooted for the Cowboys her whole life. One time during a family event we all got drunk and I told her she was a frontrunning attention whore who chose the Cowboys and doesn’t even really care about football the way a real fan like me does. I proceeded to list off the colleges of every Eagles player they drafted this year to show her that Eagles fans are the only passionate fans and people who root for front runners are the worst. I am from Oklahoma and did not start rooting for the Eagles until the early 2000's because I thought Brian Dawkins looked cool. I am 30…..fuck me and fuck Eagles fans like me.


Doug:

Money wrapped up in QB’s who have never won a playoff game as a starter and a single DT? 11 Billion Dollars. Money spent on the rest of the roster? $5.75.

Alex:

FUCK CHIP GODDAMN KELLY WITH AN ATOMIC MISSILE BACK TO FUCKING OREGON.

Submissions for the Deadspin NFL previews are now closed. Next up: Oakland Raiders.