In honor of week 7 of the football season, here are famous sevens in Philadelphia sports history:
** Eagles QB Ron Jaworski — The Polish Rifle played 10 years for the birds, leading them to their first ever Super Bowl appearance. Originally drafted by the rams, he switched from #16 to #7 when he was traded to the Eagles.
** 7-0 — the final score of two of the last three Phillies no-hitters. They won 7-0 over the Natinals on Aug. 9 of this year, and beat the Braves by the same score on Sept. 1, 2014.
** Flyers 1973-1974 season — The franchise won its first Stanley Cup title in its seventh full season in the NHL. Seven members of that team ended up in the league’s Hall of Fame, including Coach Fred Shero.
** 7 feet — the height of 76ers C Joel Embiid, who won the NBA’s Most Valuable Player award last season.
** Oct. 24, 2023 — After 140 years in Major League Baseball, the Phillies franchise play their first playoff game 7 ever.
WR: Jordan Addison, 24.20 pts — started by Sam
RB: D'Onta Foreman, 30.47 pts — started by Dad
TE: Travis Kelce, 23.93 pts — started by Mike
K: Dustin Hopkins, 22.00 pts — on the wire
DEF: Chicago, 18.00 pts — on the wire
D: Myles Garrett, 16.00 pts — started by Mike
We started three of the top four defensive players this week: Garrett, Foyesade Oluokun (Dad) and Jerome Baker (Sam). That has to be a record. We often don’t even get one in the top five.
Just missing the top WR spot this week was AJ Brown (20.13 pts), who now has five straight games with at least 125 yards receiving. And he’s still 93 yards behind Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill, who had 11 catches against the Eagles on Sunday night. Hill is on pace to break 2,000 yards receiving in 16 games this season, which would break Calvin Johnson’s 1,964 mark set in 2012. But, hey, keep telling me that Justin Jefferson is actually the best wideout in the NFL today.
According to Yahoo’s record book, I have now totaled 18 points from my defenses through seven weeks this season … or the same amount that the Bears scored this week alone. When I end up losing the league title by 30 points, it’s all going to be because of my terrible team defense scoring. For comparison, Sam is the top scorer in defensive points so far this year, with 96.
“Deshaun Watson” edition3rd place: Blake Bell, -1.03 pts — on the wire
2nd place: Sterling Shepard, -1.10 pts — on the wire
1st place: Deshaun Watson, -1.80 pts — started by Jeff
It’s unusual for a starting QB to end up in negative territory, but Watson is an unusual guy. After missing the past two games due to injury, he appeared in Sunday’s contest against the Colts, completed one pass for five yards before throwing an interception, then was benched for unspecified reasons for the remainder of the game. The Browns, who gave Watson a $230 million contract in 2022, are now 5-4 in games where Watson completes at least two passes. That feels like money well spent.
FYI, Kansas City had the best TE on the week (Kelce) and the worst (Bell). There’s impressive range on that team.
** Shout out to G, who was on this one right away: As the Eagles game held a 31-17 lead late Sunday night, NBC announcer Mike Tirico noted that the Dolphins have faced a pretty difficult schedule to open the season. Color commentator Cris Collinsworth chimed in with this verbal word salad in response:
“So regardless, this is going to be a win for the Dolphins, from the standpoint that they needed this. Remember their defense coming up is going to have Xavier Howard and Jalen Ramsey coming back, which is going to allow their safeties to come down, and make some big plays. So that’s good.”
To be clear, Collinsworth is calling a 14-point loss a win for Miami because sometime in the future their defense might get better and they needed a prime-time flameout to help speed up recovery from injuries. Not a lick of that makes sense.
Just to be safe, I checked the box score on Monday morning, and in fact the Dolphins did not get a win for their Sunday night performance.
** Two weeks ago, when the 49ers thumped the Cowboys to go 5-0, Sporting News circled San Fran’s week 9 game against the Jaguars as the first real test to see whether the team could go undefeated this season.
Fast forward to two weeks later, where the 49ers are now 5-2 and still three weeks away from that matchup. Maybe next time cool the undefeated predictions until someone gets to the halfway point in the season.
A dominant Eagles defensive performance on Sunday night is the perfect time to look at one of the NFL’s most confounding questions: Why do the Eagles always give up a first down on third and 12? The team had six plays in the Miami game where their opponent faced third down with nine or more yards to go, and surrendered first downs on three of them. Why are obvious long passing downs so confounding for this team?
In 98 third-down plays this year, the Eagles have only given up 12 first downs on third and 8 or more yards. Still, that’s 25 percent of the time (12 of 47), which seems like a lot for long conversion plays. They’re over 50% for conversions seven-or-less to go (26 of 51), but a huge portion of that are third and one plays (9 of 13 successfully converted by opponents).
For the season, the Eagles are allowing opponents to convert 41% of third down plays, just a hair above the league average of 39.5% this year and 40% over the last six seasons. Take away just the three third-and-long conversions by Miami, and that drops down to about 36%, good enough to be among the elite defenses.
So what do we draw from all of this? Simple: The Philadelphia defense does not make any sense. The birds allowed only 10 offensive points against Miami, the top scoring team in all of football (34.3 points per game). They also allowed 31 against the Commanders, the 20th best offense in football (20.0 points per game). The Eagles are sixth in yards allowed per game (290.3). They’re also in the bottom half of teams in passing yards allowed (227.4 per game).
Maybe just trade for a safety or something to stop with the deep pass plays on third and long. Oh, they did that? OK then. Carry on.
Three years ago, the 49ers thought so highly of Trey Lance that they traded a boatload of picks to draft him #2 overall. After some flashes of brilliance over his first few years in the league, San Francisco traded him to the Cowboys for peanuts this past offseason. Lance now serves as the third-string QB for Dallas, an outcome that few could have predicted a short time ago. And yet, when you look at what his name spells out, you realize that his current status was all but inevitable: New Dallas Cowboys backup Trey Lance
** Con played swell, but now a creaky scab
FYI, if you anagram “QB Trey Lance” you get “recently a QB” which accurately implies that he isn’t really one anymore.
** Dad and I split our picks for the week, so I remain up five on him in the yearly standings. He gets a gold star for predicting the lifeless Giants would beat the lifeless Commies, but sadly we are not counting stars in our win/loss columns. ** The Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens smoked the Hampton Pirates 47-3 on Saturday and now sit at #6 in the FCS rankings, just behind Montana and University of the Incarnate Word which is an actual school and not one I just made up.
** Apparently I don't know the rules for World Series home field advantage because they change all the time but remain dumb.
Week 7 standings 1 — The Best (Jonathan), 891.49 pts
2 — Jalen Ain't Failin (Dad), 871.61 pts
3 — Tight Ends for Everyone! (Jo), 845.57 pts
4 — Standard Deviations (Sam), 842.86 pts
5 — DeVonta’s Inferno (Mom D), 803.79 pts
6 — Brotherly Shove Squad (Capt. Awesome), 792.21 pts
7 — No One Likes Us We Don't Care (Bob), 790.14 pts
8 — Murder Hornets (Mike), 758.04 pts
9 — Bryce’s Birthday Boys (Paul), 724.97 pts
10 — All Rogers No Sauce (Joel), 659.36 pts
11 — Jabronis (Ant), 656.23 pts
12 — Blue Collar Killers (Jeff), 602.73 pts
Huge weeks for me and Mike pushed our totals back into respectable range, but we’re still fighting our way out of the middle of the pack. But Dad’s 150.47-pts finish coupled with bad weeks from Jo, Jonathan and Mom D have reshaped the standings. The boy wonder’s once commanding lead is down to under 20 pts now, with 10 weeks of contests still to go.
Jo and Mom D are within striking distance too, despite Mom’s truly mind-bogglingly bad week, where she had three uninjured starters score a combined 1.13 pts. And yet she still beat Jeff, who had Watson, a K who scored zero, and three inactive players in his starting roster.
And Paul, who changed his team name again, had his best week of the year, topping 130 pts. We just keep seeing more and more evidence that changing your team name boosts scoring, and yet Paul is the only coach smart enough to embrace the strategy.
Thursday night’s matchup is Bucs vs. Bills, two teams that the pundits keep telling me are good despite the fact that they keep losing. Get your rosters ready early, because I know you have someone suiting up in that game.
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