What the... ?!?!

So a guy leaves town for a few days and all hell breaks loose in the Philly sports’ scene? Unfathomable craziness is unleashed like a plague of locusts ready to keep the citizens up all night with their constant chirping and desecration to the foliage.

Actually, TV types described it as a “black cloud” hanging over the city. I wouldn’t go that far, but what can you do with a group of people so weighed down in cliché? After all, these people believe the world revolves around sports. Actually, in a lot of cities – including most portions of Philadelphia – it does not. Intellectual discourse occurs, deals are brokered, people live lives, sing songs, raise children and dance jigs.

Overpaid men running around in tight fitting clothing never enters the consciousness.

Oh, but boy oh boy does it ever in these parts. Frankly, as I spent a Sunday afternoon soaking in a jacquzzi in attempt to loosen a balky hip flexor spent as one of those men running around in tight clothes while watching the second half of the Eagles football game and reading Richard Ford’s latest page turner, I noticed a few things that made me smile. Oh no, it wasn’t a smile of joy or the proverbial bleep-eating grin, but an ironic smile of seeing. Seeing and believeing.

Here’s what I saw:

TV shots showing Jeff Fisher, the coach of the Tennessee Titans, calmly strolling the sidelines at Philadelphia’s corporately named football stadia with a breezy demeanor and a cup of coffee in his right hand. Frankly, with the coffee in hand, Fisher looked as if he had the happy distance of a suburban parent at a 5-year-old’s soccer game. In fact, I was waiting for another one of the parents to meander over to Fisher and ask him, “how ya hittin’ ‘em,” or how much he paid to fill up the Audi this week.

Watching Fisher made me realize a few things. Firstly, watching football in a Jacuzzi with a good book and the sound down is fun. Secondly, it’s just a matter of time until Fisher or any number of other professional sports coaches gets a sponsorship from Starbucks or Folgers or any of the other hot beverage companies. However, I doubt Jeff Fisher would need to use one of those cup sleeves around his coffee to keep him from burning his hands.

I need one, though, because I’ve spent the past 35 years avoiding all manual labor. Regardless, all that time spent in warm, bubbling water has dried out my unblemished digits.

Thirdly, that Jeff Fisher seems like a good coach. It’s hard to decipher that simply from watching a guy drink coffee on the sideline of a football game, but Fisher seemed much more involved and enthusiastic about the proceedings than Philadelphia’s coach. With his tempered and unobnoxious fist pumps and slaps on the back for his players, Fisher looked as if he was genuinely enjoying his job.

Across the way, the Philadelphia guys were shown shuffling nervously from foot to foot and speaking with laminated charts and folders covering their mouths as if under surveillance. Why bother with all of that? Based on how the game went it was clear that the Philadelphia coaches’ headsets were tapped.

Fourthly, I thought that the Fisher dude would look pretty good on the home team sidelines. Then I remembered that he was here and gone over a decade ago. Perhaps they can get him back because it seems as if he figured out how to mix in those tricky hand-off plays into the offensive arsenal. Then again I can’t be so sure about his prowess since I had the sound down.

Anyone who didn’t think Donovan McNabb was finished for the season the second he went down on that fateful second-quarter play should have their sports-watching rights revoked. Those people are just far too optimistic for the bloody, treacherous and objectionable world of sports viewership. In sports, bad things happen all the time… it’s like a sport within a sport. If a big, seemingly invincible football player like Donovan McNabb falls down and does not get up after a rather innocuous play, count on him rolling off the field in an electric-powered cart and then heading uptown for an MRI before boarding a plane for Alabama to have his torn anterior cruciate ligament and damaged meniscus repaired.

Meanwhile, in light of McNabb’s situation in which he faces nearly a full calendar year before he can take a live snap in a regular-season NFL game, I haven’t heard anyone talk about the real realities of the situation.

Perhaps the very idea of those realities hurts more than a torn cruciate ligament?

What are those notions? Well, how do we phrase this… I suppose there is no delicate way to do it, so let’s come out with it… is it over for the Eagles? By over, I mean is it time to give up the idea in which the football masterminds forget adding a piece here or there to patchwork the roster and get the team a playoff berth?

Is it time (Gasp!) to rebuild?

If it is time to (Gasp!) rebuild, does that mean A.J. Feeley is the quarterback for the rest of the way?

We all know that the window of opportunity for championships, glory and Chunky Soup commercials opens ever so slightly for a very fleeting moment in time. When that window closes, it’s better and cleaner to simply get back to work in order to make it open up again rather than attempting to break through when everyone knows it’s been bolted.

Again, I had the sound down, but it seems as if the Eagles really like to utilize the forward pass play a lot. And by a lot I mean more than 50 times a game from time to time. Since that’s appears to be the case, shouldn’t they get some wide receivers that can catch the ball?

Speaking of catching the ball, whatever happened to that Greg Lewis fellow? Or that first-round draft pick dude who liked to talk too much? Are they still around? You know the Eagles picked that loquacious fellow before Chad Johnson, Reggie Wayne, Steve Smith and T.J. Houshmandzadeh. Man, would a first-round draftee look good catching passes right about now…

According to an acquaintance who is a scout for an NFL team and could be an assistant GM before the decade is out, Andy Reid has a reputation for being very organized and on top of things.

I have nothing else to add there… just tossing it out there for everyone.