Philly.com – IT BEGAN with the acquisition of Terrell Owens. It continued with the drafting and re-signing of receiver DeSean Jackson, the signing of cornerback Asante Samuel, the disloyalty to safety Brian Dawkins, the hiring of Jim Washburn. After spending his first 5 years building a foundation of players and coaches of concrete character and solid talent, Eagles coach and football operations czar Andy Reid allowed himself to hire a handful of low-character, high-output prima donnas.

Reader Email

Maurice,

I feel like you agree with me on this point. Pretty short and sweet:

17-5 with TO on our squad
Got us to our only Super Bowl appearance under Reid. Straight beasted it in that game (9 catches, 122 yards; albeit on a broken leg)
Reid’s only failure was how he handled his departure; not bringing TO in. What the hell is that guy talking about? I need some answers on the Eagles, but actually who cares; we suck anyway.

-Andrew

Hell yeah I agree with you. Hayes’ article is the dumbest shit I’ve read all day, and I have both a Facebook account and Twitter account full of people ranting about guns. If anything, signing Terrell Owens was the steal of the century. One of the NFL’s greatest WRs of all-time in his prime refused to go to the Ravens and instead bullied his way to an Eagles team who only had to give up a 5th round pick and Brandon Whiting? “Big mistake”? FOH.

Real Birds fans know the deal — TO hit up the Super Bowl for 9 catches and 122 yards on A BROKEN LEG. The 2004 Eagles were maybe my favorite sports team ever. They regularly blew other teams out of the water and had an entertaining collective personality to boot. Koy Detmer was walking around with a neckbeard and mink coat. TO had his own signature endzone dance AND chant. Hell, even Freddie Mitchell was fun for those couple games that he actually played well in TO’s absence. What is Hayes talking about?

If he wants to make a point about shying away from high-character guys and towards desperate attempts at that brass Super Bowl ring, fine. I get it. But don’t say TO was the start of the problem. The problem was the team deciding NOT to pay TO after balling out on a broken leg, which then created a wedge between TO and Donovan since McSoup was making a ton of money yet was throwing up in the biggest game of his career. If the team would have simply payed TO what he deserved (wasn’t in the top 10 WRs salaries) and maybe showed some class by acknowledging his 100th TD, maybe he and McNabb could have played another 2-3 years of high level ball and won a title. Instead the team decided to be dicks only to end up fucking themselves.

Oh, and the Birds shouldn’t have drafted DeSean Jackson because of his “character”? What receiver should they have taken in the second round in ’08? Malcolm Kelly? Limas Sweed? Dexter Jackson? Eat a dick, Hayes.