For the Eagles, a Loss Is a Loss

I’m confused often, but especially today.

I’ve got people telling me that the Eagles losing Tuesday night to the Vikings in the Ed Rendell Memorial Bowl is actually a good thing. Here’s their theory: the Eagles, especially Michael Vick, are battered and bruised. The loss to Minnesota therefore gives them a chance to ignore the final game of the season — at home against the Cowboys — by resting their regular players since a loss now means nothing anyway, The Eagles are locked into the No. 3 seed in the playoffs because of that Tuesday loss. [SIGNUP]

If they had beaten the Vikings, then they still would have had a chance to gain the league’s No. 2 playoff seed and the all-important first round bye, by beating the Cowboys. That meant, of course, they would have HAD to play their first team players, including Michael Vick.

So now it’s settled. The Eagles can rest their players this Sunday to prepare for the arduous task of having to play three tough, physical NFL games with a span of 12 or 13 days.

Here’s what I know: the Eagles showed on Tuesday they are not Super Bowl quality.

We have put our heads in the sand all year long about the Eagles defense, which is as depleted right now as a stripper’s closet. We put our heads in the sand because the Eagles had a guy who wore No. 7 on the field, giving them a chance in every game they played, so long as he was making big plays. Tuesday, Vick looked battered and bruised and tired; slower, and of a duller football mindset as we’ve seen for most of this year. He was back to the old Vick, throwing the ball all over the lot, carrying the football carelessly, turning it over. And the bottom line is that if Vick isn’t sharp, the Eagles aren’t good enough to get anywhere in the playoffs.

Consider this: had the Eagles been able to get a bye in that first week, they would have waited for the world to come to them. They would have sat there and played the highest seeded winner in the first round, which probably would have been the New Orleans Saints. No small task that, but it would have been at Lincoln Financial Field off a week’s rest. As it is now, the Eagles will play that first week, off a loss to the Cowboys (they undoubtedly will rest their starters for at least half the game) and a horrendous loss to the Vikings. They will host the game, but it could very well be against the Packers and Aaron Rodgers, two of the league’s hotter entities right now. They must hope and pray this week that the Bears beat the Packers (and the Bears have really a lack of incentive to do so since the Eagles loss to the Vikings clinched the No. 2 seed for Chicago), and the Giants or the Bucs get that sixth seed.

You can interpret what you want from last night’s game. You think it’s a good thing because if gives the Eagles a chance to rest the final week of the season? Knock yourself out.

I think the Eagles just bought themselves a first round exit from the playoffs. And that is unbelievable.
* * *

The one thing I despise about the Internet and the blogosphere is that it allows bottom feeder types a forum to claw desperately at some kind of pseudo self-worth.

Case in point, the ridiculous rumors than some mental midget with a keyboard was allowed to publish regarding Joe Paterno.

This salacious e-mail had spread like a fungus over the last couple of weeks that Penn State’s New Years Day bowl game against Florida would be Paterno’s last. The information came from some “inside source close to the program.” It said that Paterno’s health was failing. That he had had a stroke. That he was battling cancer. That Tony Dungy was the leading candidate to take over the Penn State program when Paterno, after the game announced his retirement.

It was all nonsense.

What is clear to me (and equally upsetting) after this latest Internet caper is that people will believe anything, even if it comes to them through some nonsensical internet garbage, written by some loser from his mother’s basement who has no girlfriend, no job, and no life. At the end of the day, this nitwit goes to his buddy’s house to play X-Box and they sit around drinking Four Loko, yuking it up about the national furor they’ve caused. At the end of the day, this 30-year-old misfit is putting his stained underwear into a pile in his Fathead decorated room so mommy can wash them.

It’s the same type of nonsense that people bought when another loser published falsehoods about Jayson Werth and Chase Utley’s wife and before that, Eric Lindros and Rod Brind’Amour’s wife.

Not sure who’s the biggest loser: the idiot who publishes this stuff, or the people who believe it.