Philly Top Five Power Rankings: Donovan Is Nuts, And Vick Is The Starter
By Spike Eskin
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – This is the part of the Eagles preseason that is usually pretty tough to get through. It's like coming down off of a caffeine high. When training camp starts, everyone is so fired up. Then there's the first preseason game, and everyone's fired up. And then we have to wait an entire month through terrible football and lesser storylines until we get an actual game.
But thankfully, we've got a quarterback battle (sort of), an owner who just doesn't give a damn (in a good way, sort of), and as usual, Donovan McNabb.
#5 Donovan McNabb Says RG III Is Being Brainwashed
It's pretty clear that because Robert Griffin III doesn't want to make his coach mad, or get whatever advice that McNabb wants to give him, that he's being held captive in some back room ad FedEx field with his eyelids pried open like in Clockwork Orange, watching videos of McNabb playing air guitar while hearing sounds of his family in pain. Must be brainwashing, and not just a decision to respect his head coach and pass on whatever advice McNabb may be able to provide. This is clearly brainwashing.
I think we have to consider only two possibilities with McNabb at this point. One, that he's actually sort of insane. The other, is that he is a master troll, and he's actually playing us all.
#4 Claude Giroux's Hand Explodes Playing Golf
Look, I don't want to make Flyers fans nervous (or maybe I do), but freak injuries like tearing your hand up when a golf club explodes in your hand are the sort of thing that are a sign of bad things to come.
I point you toward the "worst team money could buy," the 1993 Mets. Things like injuries in the clubhouse while someone was practicing a golf swing (Doc Gooden and Vince Coleman), were a regular occurance. If you hear about Scott Hartnell running around with a water gun full of bleach, start worrying.
There are many who have pointed out that there have been gay wrestlers, and this is true. But as far as I can tell, Young is the first active, WWE wrestler to do come out, and he did so at what is becoming an important time for this sort of thing in sports.
Is there something that rings of the WWE organizing something to get publicity the week of SummerSlam? Yes, tons of it. But that doesn't make it any less important an event in sports and in wrestling. How the WWE handles Young moving forward will be both important and interesting.
Many will say, "why is this a big deal anymore?" And this is the sort of response that means we're all headed in the right direction.
#2 Josh Harris Buys The Devils
Josh Harris doesn't care. Not that he's careless, he just doesn't care what anyone thinks of what he does.
Josh Harris had the opportunity to buy the Devils, and he did it. He did it because he likes owning sports franchises, and he did it because it's an opportunity to make money. Those are the reasons almost anyone buys a sports franchise. He knows there will be some friction in Philadelphia, but he also knows most of that friction will disappear with winning, and he's so confident in the Sixers plan to do just that (eventually), he's not worried about that short-term hit.
Will Flyers fans always be mad? Yeah, probably. But the overlap between Flyers and Sixers die-hards seems small, and Flyers fans always seem sort of mad at Sixers fans for one reason or another all the time.
#1 Michael Vick Basically Wins The Starting Job
Nick Foles has looked good in Chip Kelly's offense, but Michael Vick has looked great. Vick has looked like a natural. He's looked as good as he did during that run in 2010 when he looked like the league MVP.
The biggest difference, aside from basically every single physical advantage VIck could have, is the fact that he's able to get the ball down the field more often than Foles does. Foles' attack was a lot of short passes for short gains, which is fine, but the more drives that take 20 plays, the more times they will end up in turnovers. The more plays it takes to score, the longer it takes to score, the less opportunities there are to score, and in the NFL today, that's a bad thing. This is why Alex Smith got benched in San Francisco.
This is all well and good until Vick gets hurt, but let's hope that doesn't happen, because he looks like he could be primed for quite a year.
Honorable mentions: The Eagles are worth a ton of money, 99 Problems-gate, the Sixers aren't going anywhere.
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