The advantage to the Eagles’ resting their starters, Bryce Harper’s inspiration, and other thoughts
There’s a decent chance that the Eagles will secure the best of all outcomes for themselves on Sunday, and that would be a timely reassertion of strength from the defending champs.
First and final thoughts …
The stakes for the Eagles on Sunday are clear: If they beat the Washington Commanders and if the Detroit Lions beat the Chicago Bears, then the Eagles would secure the No. 2 seed in the NFC playoffs.
It would likely make for an easier road back to the Super Bowl (easier on paper, anyway), because they’d be assured of having home-field advantage in at least the wild-card and divisional rounds, and the matchups they’d face in those games might be more favorable.
So the Eagles had a choice: They could play their starters against the Commanders, giving their most important players no rest ahead of the postseason, with no guarantee that, even if they beat Washington, that they’d end up with the second seed anyway.
Or they could sit their starters, banking that a well-rested team would be better off no matter who or where it plays. Nick Sirianni and his staff, as we now know, opted to rest the starters.
Mike Sielski alerts
It was the right decision, for this reason: Given that Washington is 4-12 and will have third-stringer Josh Johnson at quarterback Sunday, there’s a decent chance that the Eagles will secure the best of all outcomes for themselves.
They can give their starters a week off, still win the game, and have the Bears lose to the Lions. After a regular season that raised some questions about the Eagles’ ability to repeat, that scenario would be a timely reassertion of strength from the defending champs.
Too hot for pucks
The entire premise and most of the appeal of the NHL’s Winter Classic, when it began in 2008, were based around the notion that hockey in its best and purest form was a cold-weather sport.
A pond or stream or lake froze over. Kids bundled up, grabbed their skates and sticks and a couple of rickety little goal nets, and just played. The sport was a natural and seamless part of life in Canada and in certain regions of the United States.
But not in Miami. Which is where this year’s Winter Classic, between the Florida Panthers and the New York Rangers, was held Friday. How do you know a gimmick has gotten stale? When you’re playing an outdoor hockey game in early January in a place where it’s 70 degrees in the shade.
Hoosier daddy?
The benefit of the 12-team College Football Playoff is that it is a great revealer. Most of the sport’s regular season is marred by “expert analysis” that is based on little more than arrogance and presumptuousness: The SEC is obviously a better and more challenging league than the Big Ten, which is better and more challenging than the Big 12, which is way ahead of the ACC, and so on. It’s regional bias and figure-skating-style judging all the way down.
Then they actually play the games. And we learn that Alabama has no business being on the same field as Indiana, that Texas Tech is a long way from the days of Kliff Kingsbury and Patrick Mahomes, that Ohio State’s lopsided intraconference victories aren’t a true indication of how good the Buckeyes really are.
An elite idea
Bryce Harper recently posted a video of himself taking batting-cage swings while wearing a T-shirt with “NOT ELITE” across the front, a reference to Phillies president Dave Dombrowski’s description of Harper’s 2025 season.
You’ve got to love that defiant, near-vindictive energy from Harper, and it was a brilliant idea to take Dombrowski’s words and strip them across a shirt. Imagine an entire apparel line, marketed to individual athletes, made up of critical yet potentially inspiring phrases. The possibilities are endless.
Jalen Hurts: CAN’T PASS
A.J. Brown: READS BOOKS
Joel Embiid: GAME-TIME DECISION
Aaron Nola: TWO-STRIKE BOMBS
Alec Bohm: TEMPER TANTRUM
Ben Simmons: GONE FISHIN’
Carson Wentz: INTENTIONAL GROUNDING
LeBron James: U R NO MJ
» READ MORE: From the Eagles’ Super Bowl win to the Phillies’ bitter end, let’s look back at 2025 in Philly sports
VJ’s biggest jump
In his 33 games during his only year of college basketball at Baylor, VJ Edgecombe took 4.6 three-pointers a game and made 34% of them. In his 28 games so far with the 76ers, he is taking 5.8 a game and making 38% of them. That improvement might be the most pleasant surprise of his terrific rookie season.
One last one-liner
Congratulations to former Eagles great Frank Gore for being a Pro Football Hall of Fame finalist.
Despite playing only two seasons for the Phillies, Aaron Rowand left his mark. Literally. Twenty years ago Monday, Rowand smashed into the center-field fence and broke bones in his face to make a catch. And if that didn’t instantly boost his popularity with the fan base, his answer four days later to a question about why he would sacrifice his body certainly did. Rowand joins Phillies Extra to reminisce about “The Catch,” his role in helping to change the culture around the Phillies, and a lot more. Watch here.
You can also subscribe to the podcast version of Phillies Extra on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Previous episodes: Hunter Pence | Paco Figueroa | Gage Wood | Scott Boras | Brian Barber | Aaron Nola | Justin Crawford | Garrett Stubbs | Kyle Schwarber | Brad Keller
