The 10 most haunting Philly sports moments since 2000, from Ronde Barber’s pick-six to Ben Simmons’ pass

Philly sports fans have suffered enough. They have witnessed costly losses and infamous trades, watched players suffer major injuries at the worst times, and have had championship aspirations ripped away in devastating ways. We’re looking at you, Joe Carter.

To get into the spirit of Halloween, we’ve decided to relive some Philly sports moments that make your skin crawl — and apologize in advance, because it’s been truly scary reminiscing about some of these.

In chronological order, here are our 10 most haunting moments in Philly sports history over the last 25 years …

The 2003 NFC championship game between the Eagles and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers is certainly one fans want to forget — not only did it end the team’s Super Bowl dreams, but it was also the last Eagles game at Veterans Stadium.

All the talk leading up to the game was about how the South Florida team couldn’t play in the cold — and it was cold at the Vet that January day. But it didn’t seem to bother the Bucs. In the first quarter, Joe Jurevicius made his only reception of the game, a 71-yard catch-and-run to set up the game’s first score.

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But the play that really haunts Birds fans is Ronde Barber’s 92-yard pick-six late in the fourth quarter. With the Eagles driving and looking to cut the score to 20-17, Barber stepped in front of the McNabb pass and took it all the way back for the score, sealing the 27-10 victory for Tampa and shutting down the Vet.

“You couldn’t hear a sound,” former Bucs safety John Lynch told the team website in 2018. “The stadium noise stopped. There was that sweet silence. There was nothing to say.”

The game is just one example of the Eagles’ weird and unhappy relationship with the Bucs. In the team’s season opener in the fall, they again played host to the Bucs, this time at Lincoln Financial Field. And Jurevicius was at it again, scoring both his team’s touchdowns, including one on a pass he tipped to himself.

Following a loss to the Carolina Panthers in the NFC championship the following season, the Eagles got over the hump and made it to the Super Bowl for the first time in over two decades. The team finished the 2004 season with a 13-3 record, and headed to Jacksonville, Fla., to face Tom Brady and the New England Patriots.

The Eagles took an early lead, but in the fourth quarter, everything went wrong for the Birds, before eventually losing, 24-21. Although McNabb’s interception in the final seconds may have sealed the loss, the team’s fate was more likely decided on their previous drive, a 79-yard touchdown march that ate up nearly four of the game’s final six minutes. After the game, rumors began to circulate that McNabb was vomiting while on the field and that’s part of the reason the team didn’t go with a no-huddle offense.

Although no camera footage caught the moment and some players claimed he was dry heaving or coughing after two hard hits, former teammates Lito Sheppard and Jon Ritchie both said the quarterback hurled on the field. McNabb, however, still says he didn’t throw up.

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The Chicago Blackhawks ended a 49-year Stanley Cup drought with a win over the Flyers in 2010. The Flyers were the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference, and were one of the surprises of the playoffs, defeating the New Jersey Devils, Boston Bruins, and Montreal Canadiens in prior rounds. Their conference semifinal win over the Bruins was one of the most memorable in franchise history, as the team overcame a 3-0 series deficit and a 3-0 scoring deficit in Game 7.

But the fun didn’t last. Patrick Kane ended the Philly’s title hopes in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final , scoring the series clincher past Flyers goalie Michael Leighton in overtime. Officials initially missed the goal because the puck went under the padding of the net. Upon review, the goal was confirmed, and the Flyers’ season was over.

The Flyers have not gone past the second round of the playoffs since.

After a spectacular 2011 season that saw the Phillies win a franchise-record 102 games behind four aces and their core of Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, and Ryan Howard, the fan base’s dreams of returning to the World Series came to an abrupt end.

The Phillies fell to the St. Louis Cardinals in five games in the NLDS, but it was more than just a singular loss. Howard suffered a torn Achilles tendon on a game-ending groundout, altering Howard’s career, and ending one of the franchises’ winningest eras. The team didn’t return to the postseason until 2022.

While this might not haunt every Philly sports fan, it certainly stands out to Temple fans, and gets bonus points for when it took place. Exactly 10 years ago, Oct. 31, 2015, the Temple Owls suffered a tough loss to Notre Dame on Halloween at Lincoln Financial Field.

Temple, ranked 21st in the nation and 7-0 heading into the game, was leading the No. 9 Fighting Irish, 20-17, with under four minutes to play in the fourth quarter. A late 17-yard touchdown pass from Notre Dame quarterback DeShone Kizer to receiver Will Fuller put the Irish up, 24-20, with 2:09 left to play.

The Owls still had a chance to turn this into one of the school’s greatest victories with a game-winning drive, but Temple quarterback P.J. Walker was picked off by KeiVarae Russell to end any last threat of a Temple win.

During the 2018 NBA draft, the Sixers selected Mikal Bridges with the 10th overall pick. He was a prospect out of Villanova, he grew up in the Philadelphia area, and his mother was employed by the Sixers. Sounds like the perfect fit, right? Wrong. The Sixers instead made a draft-night trade, sending Bridges to the Phoenix Suns for Zhaire Smith and a 2021 first-round pick.

This is the only trade to make the list — there are plenty in the honorable mentions — because of the visceral reaction it had at the time. While the impact of some bad trades can take years to be realized, most Sixers fans were against this from the moment it happened. The trade was so controversial at the time even Bridges admitted he was “mad as hell.”

Of course, the trade is also haunting because the Sixers didn’t win in the long run either. Far from it. Smith only played 13 regular-season games as he was rarely healthy, in part due to an allergic reaction to sesame. Meanwhile, Bridges blossomed into a young star, finding success in the league with the Phoenix Suns, Brooklyn Nets, and now the New York Knicks.

A former NBA All-Defensive First Team member, Bridges was exactly the kind of player that could have helped the Sixers reverse these next two moments. And the 2021 first-round pick the Sixers got back? They sent that to the Los Angeles Clippers in the deal that brought Tobias Harris to Philly.

It’s been six years and the sound of the ball bouncing on the rim still echoes in the minds of Philly sports fans.

The score was tied at 90 with less than five seconds to play in the fourth quarter of Game 7 of the 2019 Eastern Conference semifinal between the Sixers and Toronto Raptors. Kawhi Leonard had the ball and made his way to the corner as Joel Embiid guarded him. The Raptors forward pulled up, and with a fadeaway shot in the face of the Sixers center, nailed the first-ever game-winning buzzer beater in a Game 7.

The moment seemed to last forever, as the ball bounced four times on the rim before falling into the net. The Raptors, led by current Sixers coach Nick Nurse, went on to beat the Milwaukee Bucks in the conference finals and advance to the NBA Finals, where they defeated the Golden State Warriors to win their first-ever title.

Ben Simmons. (Cue the iconic scream from Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween.)

Just mentioning his name can be enough to send chills down the spines of Sixers fans. The former first-overall pick in 2016 has quite the history with the organization — and it’s not all great memories, to say the least.

One of the moments that still makes fans cringe took place during Game 7 of the 2021 Eastern Conference semifinals. With under three minutes left in the game, and the Sixers trailing 88-86, Simmons passed up an open dunk attempt and instead dished the ball to Matisse Thybulle, who was fouled.

The Hawks would go on to win 103-96, advancing to the Eastern Conference finals, where they would lose the series to the Milwaukee Bucks. In five of the seven games, Simmons failed to record a shot attempt in the fourth quarter, including in the Sixers’ Game 7 loss. He also earned the title of worst free throw shooter in playoff history at 34.2%.

That was Simmons’ last game with the Sixers. The next season, he held out after demanding a trade, and was eventually dealt to the Brooklyn Nets for James Harden.

Nov. 5, 2022 was a difficult day to be a Philly sports fan — perhaps the worst day — so we’ll keep this one brief. The Phillies lost Game 6 of the World Series to the Houston Astros, after Yordan Alvarez hit a 450-foot blast off Jose Alvarado. And earlier in the day, the Union lost the MLS Cup Final to LAFC in heartbreaking fashion, scoring late in extra time to take the lead before surrendering an equalizer to Gareth Bale in the 128th minute and ultimately losing in a penalty shootout.

With the pair of losses, Philly became the first city to have two professional teams lose championship games on the same day.

A few months later, the city was again knocking on the door of a championship, before another haunting moment took place during the Eagles’ 38-35 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII

Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs were driving with under two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter and the score tied at 35. On third-and-8 from the Eagles’ 15-yard line, Mahomes threw incomplete to JuJu Smith-Schuster, but a penalty flag was thrown.

Eagles cornerback James Bradberry was called for defensive holding, which gave the Chiefs a first down and allowed them to run the clock down to eight seconds before kicking the game-winning field goal. Of course, the controversial call led to a lot of disagreement on social media, but Bradberry later said it was the right call.

Bad trades

Unlike the Bridges trade, these deals are bad for a variety of reasons, even though some of them didn’t look that way at the time.

Big mistakes

Brutal losses