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The reality is that the Eagles are a team less concerned with winning championships than they are with other business metrics. It's got nothing to do with Chip Kelly or Sam Bradford or Andy Ried or Donovan McNabb or any of the pieces along the way that predate my fandom or age or memory or yours.
Lurie is not a true business man which I think you need in your owner to elevate the championship metric to the top of the scorecard in 2015. Gone are the days where decorated military personnel, old money wealth and brass are coming to newly own teams. Those guys had personal pride and development at the forefront. Returning home was half the battle, you needed to become someone in the country you fought to protect and support. The Rooneys and Maras are anomalies today, in a league where expansion franchises are owned by tech bubble philanthropists, Pakistani tycoons and business magnates. These are the guys with the risk appetite required to compete with the institutions.
Business men like Kraft, have an inate desire to succeed and to overcome their peers. They want to use the team as a forum to demonstrate their value to an organization. Their team is a representation of a lifetime of leadership development, business acumen and of course some luck. Drafting Brady was lucky. Having Belichick coach that team was about installing the right COO for your organization. Doing whatever necessary to win, walking a fine line with the rule book, that was a conscious directive that permeated every single member of the group. Find a way to win. You take some lumps, but winning is a cure-all. This is why you often see the Patriots in articles questioning the validity of a play, set of plays, or interpretation of a rule. They unequivocally seek the limit. They hope to find the loopholes others pay out to. They want to cheat the tax man. Because the reward is tremendous.
Guys like Kraft. They will not be repeatedly embarrassed or outdone in obtaining the best talent. They'll not be public examples of failed business. It's a raging fire for success and one that our owner just does not have. Lurie wants to outthink his business minded peers but he is unable to because he simply isn't a wheelin' dealin' kiss stealin' sonofagun. He knows this but he wants to play in the same sandbox. He needs to compensate for this by turning out a "competitive" and "profitable" franchise and one that is "green" and "creative." These metrics raise the profile of his team. He is competitive where the aforementioned simply do not care to be.
All of this is quite a shame for the common fan. Guys like my old man. My dad's not a business man or a data wiz. He's not always watching the market. Like a lot of you, he is a guy that wants to be the best employee he can be, bring value to a team, love his family and be rewarded for the decades of patient loyalty he's given to the team he embraced back when being a Philadelphia Eagle meant something. You have all had wonderful, 50 year careers with the phone company and been presented a shiny gold watch. A small thank you for being a part of the team. But that watch feels like shit a lot of the time. It was bought with many others for the cheapest price and distributed without emotion.
TL;DR, The Eagles are a shit franchise because the fans and owners have different scorecards. Last night Lurie went home, had a meal he didn't prepare and signed off on those 2016-2017 Dietz & Watson contracts someone else negotiated for a better rate than this year. He turned on his television and read the Eagles media buzz. He just wasn't affected in the same way you were. His scorecard is still green and he's up year over year.
The only way that fans can influence this situation is with attendance. And Philadelphia happens to have some extraordinarily loyal fans who think that the team is theirs and their attendance will be rewarded in the end. The fans enable mediocrity to flourish.
The solution is to affect the money. And I don't mean by refusing a crab fry here and there. It needs to be an organized, unified, concerted effort. Week 1 2016. Not one Eagle fan in attendance. Not young buck HIA, KenFromCanada, resident Diggle, or Jan, 93 year old lifer from Bella-Vista. The only way to take back the team is by being a team ourselves and refusing to put our money into their hands and the team into the black. If we can't do this and be unified in resolution, we don't deserve to be unified in grief over their shitty scorecard.
Lurie's good. He's chillin'. It's all of us on here who have work to do.
Lurie is not a true business man which I think you need in your owner to elevate the championship metric to the top of the scorecard in 2015. Gone are the days where decorated military personnel, old money wealth and brass are coming to newly own teams. Those guys had personal pride and development at the forefront. Returning home was half the battle, you needed to become someone in the country you fought to protect and support. The Rooneys and Maras are anomalies today, in a league where expansion franchises are owned by tech bubble philanthropists, Pakistani tycoons and business magnates. These are the guys with the risk appetite required to compete with the institutions.
Business men like Kraft, have an inate desire to succeed and to overcome their peers. They want to use the team as a forum to demonstrate their value to an organization. Their team is a representation of a lifetime of leadership development, business acumen and of course some luck. Drafting Brady was lucky. Having Belichick coach that team was about installing the right COO for your organization. Doing whatever necessary to win, walking a fine line with the rule book, that was a conscious directive that permeated every single member of the group. Find a way to win. You take some lumps, but winning is a cure-all. This is why you often see the Patriots in articles questioning the validity of a play, set of plays, or interpretation of a rule. They unequivocally seek the limit. They hope to find the loopholes others pay out to. They want to cheat the tax man. Because the reward is tremendous.
Guys like Kraft. They will not be repeatedly embarrassed or outdone in obtaining the best talent. They'll not be public examples of failed business. It's a raging fire for success and one that our owner just does not have. Lurie wants to outthink his business minded peers but he is unable to because he simply isn't a wheelin' dealin' kiss stealin' sonofagun. He knows this but he wants to play in the same sandbox. He needs to compensate for this by turning out a "competitive" and "profitable" franchise and one that is "green" and "creative." These metrics raise the profile of his team. He is competitive where the aforementioned simply do not care to be.
All of this is quite a shame for the common fan. Guys like my old man. My dad's not a business man or a data wiz. He's not always watching the market. Like a lot of you, he is a guy that wants to be the best employee he can be, bring value to a team, love his family and be rewarded for the decades of patient loyalty he's given to the team he embraced back when being a Philadelphia Eagle meant something. You have all had wonderful, 50 year careers with the phone company and been presented a shiny gold watch. A small thank you for being a part of the team. But that watch feels like shit a lot of the time. It was bought with many others for the cheapest price and distributed without emotion.
TL;DR, The Eagles are a shit franchise because the fans and owners have different scorecards. Last night Lurie went home, had a meal he didn't prepare and signed off on those 2016-2017 Dietz & Watson contracts someone else negotiated for a better rate than this year. He turned on his television and read the Eagles media buzz. He just wasn't affected in the same way you were. His scorecard is still green and he's up year over year.
The only way that fans can influence this situation is with attendance. And Philadelphia happens to have some extraordinarily loyal fans who think that the team is theirs and their attendance will be rewarded in the end. The fans enable mediocrity to flourish.
The solution is to affect the money. And I don't mean by refusing a crab fry here and there. It needs to be an organized, unified, concerted effort. Week 1 2016. Not one Eagle fan in attendance. Not young buck HIA, KenFromCanada, resident Diggle, or Jan, 93 year old lifer from Bella-Vista. The only way to take back the team is by being a team ourselves and refusing to put our money into their hands and the team into the black. If we can't do this and be unified in resolution, we don't deserve to be unified in grief over their shitty scorecard.
Lurie's good. He's chillin'. It's all of us on here who have work to do.
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