Inside the mind of A.J. Brown, debut of Matvei Michkov, and collapse of the Phillies

First and final thoughts …

A.J. Brown’s most recent Instagram post was on Oct. 1. It was a reel, a brief montage of scenes from the film The Dark Knight, all of them featuring the late Heath Ledger’s terrifying turn as the Joker. Why choose that villain? Was Brown implying that he was an agent of chaos? He has been accused of being exactly that, after all.

“I don’t want to get into that,” he said Friday. “I’m ready to play.”

Brown has struggled at times to turn off and tune out the public chatter and criticism that swirl around him and other well-known athletes. It’s always worth checking in on his various feeds for any insights into his thinking, any possible message-sending, especially since he missed the Eagles’ last three games with a hamstring injury.

That’s a lot of time to wait and think and perhaps spend too many hours swimming in the dirty waters of social media, and it was an encouraging development, a sign of his possible maturity, that he didn’t lose himself in the unreality of the digital dimension. As much as his body needed to heal before he could return to the Eagles’ lineup — he’s on track to do so Sunday against the Browns — he had to make sure his mind was clear, too.

» READ MORE: The simplest fix to the Eagles offense could be having A.J. Brown and reinforcements back

“I read a lot,” he said. “I removed myself from social media again and just focused on myself, watched a lot of film. I watched a lot of film and tried to be ready and prepared each and every day. I had to get small wins. I call it ‘small wins.’ Took it day by day.

“I already had cut back, and it was just, when I went down, you can kind of fall in that loop again. I’m always trying to remove myself. I mean, it’s our world. If I can just focus on myself and feed myself positive thoughts, like nobody else exists, that’s how I try to live. That’s how I play the game.”

Brown is the Eagles’ most important offensive player — more than even Jalen Hurts or Saquon Barkley. They scored 34 points in their only game with him this season and haven’t scored more than 21 since. Nobody else threatens a defense the way he does. Every indication is that he’s physically healthy again. That’s nothing but good news for the Eagles. His greatest challenge over the remainder of the season might be remaining mentally so. That would be even better.

You may have heard that the Flyers have this rookie named Matvei Michkov and that there are some pretty high expectations for him out of the chute. Those expectations — based on his consensus status as the second-best prospect in the 2023 draft, based on his scoring, puck-handling, and playmaking skills — set him apart from just about every first-year Flyers player since Eric Lindros debuted in 1992, and they will be a heavy burden for him to bear.

But in at least one regard, Michkov will have it a bit easier than most first-round picks: He won’t have to change his style of play too much to adjust to the NHL. The Flyers want him to be a scorer, expect him to be a scorer, and will use him as a scorer. Not every young player who was a big-time point producer at a lower level of hockey earns that measure of grace right away, and some never get it at all.

“You can’t stick to things you did at junior, necessarily,” said Flyers forward Owen Tippett, whom the Florida Panthers selected with the 10th pick in the 2017 draft. “Obviously, you’re playing against guys who are way bigger and stronger than you’re used to. That skill you had is always going to be there, but you have to figure out the right time to use it and adapt and play a different style of game. It took me a while to adjust to that and play more consistently.”

Just before the Panthers drafted him, Tippett had put up 44 goals and 75 points in 60 games for the Ontario Hockey League’s Mississauga Steelheads in 2016-17. Then, he scored just 14 goals in 94 NHL games before Florida traded him to the Flyers.

» READ MORE: The Flyers will be fascinating this season. They probably won’t be good for a while.

Similarly, Sean Couturier was coming off back-to-back 96-point seasons in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League when the Flyers made him the eighth overall pick in 2011. It took him until his seventh year with them before he finally scored more than 15 goals in a season, in part because they used him so frequently as a checking center whose primary priority was defense.

“Seemed like I got labeled right there,” he said. “Felt like it took a couple of years before I gained the respect that I could also put up offensive numbers.”

The 1964 Phillies will forever be the kings of collapse in Philadelphia sports. But, man, you have to give credit to the 2023-24 Phillies, the 2023 Eagles, the 2023-24 Flyers, and the 2021 and 2023 76ers for making a run at ‘em in recent years. Yeesh.