Jimmy McNulty, Connie Hawkins, blowhards and picking NFL winners

So the wild-card round of the NFL Playoffs came off without a hitch with no real surprises or upsets. Of course that could be open to interpretation considering, the Seattle Seahawks beat the defending Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints and the New York Jets beat the AFC champion Indianapolis Mannings.

Notably, the only home team to win of the four games played last weekend was the Seahawks and they faced the fattest odds.

Maybe the Saints, oddsmakers and pundits were giving the Seahawks too much of a hard time? After all, the Seahawks hosted a playoff game after they won the NFC West. Certainly that’s nothing to sneeze at. Besides, with one more victory the Seahawks will be .500 this season. The worst-case scenario is that Seattle could finish the playoffs .500, too. Either way, that’s best than the 0-2 the Eagles have posted in the past two years.

Anyway, last week our picks checked in with a sister-kissing 2-2. We covered on the Packers and Ravens, but missed on the Saints and Mannings. The goal now is to beat the 7-3 record posted last season.

So let’s get into it.

Saturday games

Baltimore vs. Pittsburgh

Pick: Baltimore (plus-3)

To be perfectly honest, I have no idea which team will win this game. My gut tells me Pittsburgh is probably a bit overrated and Baltimore could be a smidge underrated. Of course sometimes my gut has bleep for brains, but, y’know…

Nevertheless, the point spread indicates that if this were a game played at a neutral site it would be a pick ‘em. That means in order to choose a winner in this one we have to go with unconventional analysis.

So what do we have? Not much. It’s unfair to look at a pop culture angle because The Wire is the greatest television program ever produced. Of course The Fish that Saved Pittsburgh is solid work featuring Doctor J, Meadowlark Lemon, Jonathan Winters and was Flip Wilson’s last film appearance. A bunch of NBA stars of the day joined Doc in the movie, including my favorites, “Super” John Williamson, Cedric “Cornbread” Maxwell, Kareem and, of course, Connie Hawkins.

Speaking of underrated, Connie Hawkins could be the most underrated player in the history of basketball. Straight out of Brooklyn and the early street ball culture, Hawkins was blacklisted by Iowa and the NBA in a New York City point-shaving scandal even though he had nothing to do with it. As a result, Hawkins spent most of the 1960s messing around with the Globetrotters and in the ABA before his lawsuit against the NBA was settled.

Though he was named to the all-time ABA first team and finished fourth in the voting for the all-time ABA MVP (Doc was first), most basketball fans never got to see Hawkins in his prime. That’s a shame because by all accounts, Hawkins’ style was the precursor to Doctor J, who, of course, gave way to Michael Jordan.

Connie Hawkins aside, we’re going to give Baltimore this one because of Jimmy McNulty and Lester Freamon.

Green Bay vs. Atlanta

Pick: Green Bay (plus-2)

What did we learn about the Packers after last Sunday’s victory over the Eagles at the Linc? Well, for one we learned that teams are so afraid of quarterback Aaron Rodgers and the Packers’ passing attack that some are willing to allow them to run at will.

We also learned that if the Packers are allowed to run at will, they, ahem, will. To beat the Eagles the Packers got 123 rushing yards from rookie James Starks on 23 carries. The interesting part about that is Starks rushed for 101 yards on 29 carries during the regular season. Mix that with Rodgers’ three TD passes in the red zone and defenses get confused quickly.

So chalk this one up as a game where the home team doesn’t match up all that well against the Packers. Could it be that the Packers were playing possum this season?

Sunday games

Seattle vs. Chicago

Pick: Seattle (plus-10)

Did you see that run by Marshawn Lynch last weekend? You know, the one where he broke approximately 37 tackles, disappeared from view, tossed aside a defender as if he were the biggest kid on the Pop Warner team and was just taught the stiff arm before zig-zagging 67 yards for the game-clinching TD.

It was insane…

And to think, Lynch started the season for Buffalo, a team that finished the season three-wins behind Seattle at 4-12.

However, the Bears allow just 90 yards a game on the ground while Seattle was next-to-last in the NFC with 89 yards per game rushing. In other words, don’t expect much scoring in this one. In fact, the team that scores a touchdown just might be the winner…

Because there won’t be two of them.

New York vs. New England

Pick: New England (minus-9)

Remember when the Eagles were getting ready to play the Patriots in the Super Bowl six years ago? Remember how Freddie Mitchell started mouthing off about the Patriots?

Remember how the Patriots reacted? Yeah, it didn’t end well for the biggest first-round draft pick in Philadelphia sports history.

Watching the Jets yap away about Tom Brady and the Patriots this week, led by coach Rex Ryan and cornerback Antonio Cromartie, it was easy to think about Mitchell. Moreover, just as it was back then, Patriots’ coach Bill Belichick just yawned and said, “Who?”

Now I like trash talk as much as the next guy and wouldn’t have a problem if football players gave pre- and post-game interviews as if they were Randy “Macho Man” Savage talking it over with “Mean” Gene Okerlund. Actually, it’s good for business when players and coaches tall some smack.

However, there is a proper way to do it and clearly Mitchell, Ryan and Cromartie don’t understand it.

Reggie Jackson knew how to do it and if I were to rank the all-time trash talkers, Reggie, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan would be the holy triumvirate. Interestingly, Reggie went on ESPN radio in New York City this week and offered some bleep-talking etiquette lessons to the Jets.

“Go look at the hardware, dude. Walk through the lobby up there and look at the stuff that's there,” Jackson said. "You don't have that, you don't have anything close to that. You might want to shut up, you might learn something. Read, you might figure something out. Watch film, you might get educated. If not, you have a chance to get embarrassed on Sunday. I hope you don't, because I like the Jets.”

Reggie knows that the best banter is the truth. He won the World Series five times with two teams and was called Mr. October for a reason. Cromartie dropping expletives on Brady because he celebrates after touchdowns and wins is kind of dumb.

“Don't [be] mad because I get excited because I did well. Or try to pretend like I'm acting some way because I dropped 40 on you in the first three quarters,” Jackson said on the Michael Kay radio show. “This guy threw 50 touchdown passes in one year. He won three Super Bowls. Was he embarrassing to people when he was excited because he won? You don't know what he's talking about because you've never won. So don't tell me how he thinks. You don't know. Acknowledge that. That's not my opinion, that's fact.”

Zing.

“This guy is an automatic Hall of Famer, making fun of him is like making fun of Mariano Rivera,” Jackson said. “What are you doing? What are you doing?”

The Patriots are beatable. Even when they went 16-0 in the regular season they showed they could be beaten. But there is an old saying I heard from Sparky Anderson a long time ago about, “letting sleeping dogs lie.” No sense waking them up just to get bit.

That’s just dumb.

The best part about Mitchell thing was when the Super Bowl media day arrived and the mouthy receiver was disappointed to learn the NFL didn’t set up a dais for him amongst the team’s stars. Apparently that was the day Mitchell was supposed to learn that action speaks louder than words.

Eagles playoff football: Worst losses ever

Once again the Eagles ended a season filled with promise and expectation with a frustrating defeat in the playoffs. Under head coach Andy Reid, it’s an annual rite of January that his team will frustrate and underwhelm when the playoffs begin. That’s just what the Eagles do when the playoffs start.

This time it was the Green Bay Packers who perplexed Reid with a rarely seen running attack that just made the Eagles’ inability to cash in on opportunities all the more maddening.

You know… different year, same crash-landing result.

So as the Eagles push into their second half-century without a championship (the third-longest drought amongst NFL teams and 15 years longer than the Flyers’ epic run without a title amongst Philly teams) it’s only fair to size up the latest failure with the other mind-numbing defeats.

Here are the Eagles’ worst non-Super Bowl losses in the playoffs in no particular order of disappointment:

2003 NFC Championship at Lincoln Financial Field (Jan. 18, 2004)

Panthers 14, Eagles 3

You know the phrase, “It was like watching paint dry…” In the case of this game such a statement would be unfair to paint, the color spectrum and the periodic chart of elements. Truth is, it would have been preferable to watch paint dry than this football game.

Usually the numbers don’t tell the entire story of a game, but this one sure did. Donovan McNabb, playing with torn cartilage in his ribs, went 10-for-22 with 100 yards passing and three interceptions by 5-foot-9 cornerback, Ricky Manning Jr. Eventually, Koy Detmer came on to relieve McNabb, but it wasn’t enough to boost the Eagles.

Of course what would a playoff loss in the playoffs be without complaints of Reid’s coaching moves? What would we talk about if we weren’t befuddled about the coach’s decade-long aversion to a running game… even when it’s working? The word after this game was that lineman Jon Runyan pleaded with the coaches to keep running the ball, especially since Correll Buckhalter and Duce Staley combined for 137 rushing yards.

No, this one might not have been the most disappointing loss in team history, but it was easily the ugliest.

2002 NFC Championship at Veterans Stadium (Jan. 19, 2003)

Buccaneers 27, Eagles 10

This one began with Brian Mitchell’s 70-yard kickoff return to set up a touchdown run by Duce Staley that had the old stadium shaking behind the raucousness of the fans in its final football game. It ended with Ronde Barber returning an interception 92 yards with a crowd so quiet that Barber could be heard celebrating his run in the upper reaches of the stadium.

From here the Buccaneers went on to trounce the Raiders in a Super Bowl most thought was destined to be the Eagles’ to lose… only if they got there, of course. In fact, the scene in the parking lot before the game was as celebratory as it could get without the brush fires or flipped over cars. There was even one enthusiastic gentleman in moll of the parking-lot scene urging the Eagles to “Beat the Bucs” while parading around with a deer head trophy.

Wrong type of Bucs, dude.

Maybe we should have seen how it was going to turn out based off the overconfidence beforehand?

1988 NFC Divisional Game at Soldier Field (Dec. 31, 1988)

Bears 20, Eagles 12

The Fog Bowl

Unbelievably, Randall Cunningham threw for 407 yards on 27-for-54 passing with 254 of those yards spread amongst Keith Byers and Keith Jackson. However, Cunningham also threw three interceptions and by the time the thick fog rolled in off Lake Michigan and visibility was reduced to nothing, the Eagles’ chances of finding the end zone also disappeared.

Unbelievably, The Fog Bowl seems like something perfectly suited to happen to the post-1960 Eagles. That’s especially the case for the late-80s to mid-90s versions of the team where it could be argued that those Eagles’ teams were amongst the most talented in NFL history to never win a Super Bowl. It was almost as if the Eagles of this era had a starting pitching rotation with four aces but couldn’t quite get to where they were supposed to be.

The Fog Bowl personified this era. The Eagles, specifically Cunningham, did everything but score a touchdown and win the game. And for once, it seemed as if the folks watching at home and the players on the field saw the same exact things. The same goes for Verne Lundquist and Terry Bradshaw calling the action in the broadcast booth:

Lundquist: "Cunningham will throw … or run. Sacked for the fourth time. Wait a minute …"

Bradshaw: "He got rid of the ball, Verne."

Lundquist: "Must have. He completed it to somebody. And we're not trying to make light of this, but it is actually impossible for us to see the field."

Cunningham says the Eagles could have played with more than 11 players and no one would have been the wiser.

“When that fog rolled in, you might as well close your eyes and close up the shop,” Cunningham told ESPN.com. “That was it.”

The fog rolled in late in the second quarter with the Bears leading 17-6. From that point all the Bears had to do was go into a stall… for 30 minutes. Nevertheless, Bears quarterback Mike Tomczak insists the game was won because the Bears were better.

No so, defensive stalwart Seth Joyner told ESPN.com.

“Some wins you win by domination, and some wins you win by default,” Joyner said. “He needs to go back and look at the film.”

Needless to say, there are a lot of Eagles’ playoff games that could be said about.

1978 NFC Wild-Card Game at Fulton County Stadium (Dec. 24, 1978)

Falcons 14, Eagles 13

When punter Mike Michel was forced into kicking duties and missed an extra-point in the first quarter, it hardly seemed like a big deal. After all, with five minutes to go in the game the Eagles led 13-0 and were poised to win their first postseason game since the 1960 NFL Championship.

But Falcons’ QB Steve Bartkowski threw two touchdown passes to take the lead, with the game-winner coming on a 37-yard pass to Wallace Francis with 1:39 to go in the game. Actually, it was the ensuing extra point that proved to be the winning score in the first-ever wild-card playoff game (video).

Still, the Eagles had a chance to win the game. Ron Jaworski appeared to have hit rookie Oren Middlebrook at the goal line with 45 seconds left, but the ball fell out of the receiver’s hands. Jaworski overthrew Harold Carmichael with 17 seconds left, to set up a 34-yard field goal attempt, but of course, Michel shanked it.

Needless to say, that spring coach Dick Vermeil drafted barefoot kicker Tony Franklin in the third round of the and Michel, just 24, never appeared in another NFL game.

So why was Michel kicking at all and why didn’t Vermeil go out and get a real kicker when starter (and Temple alum) Nick Mike-Meyer went down with a rib injury? Better yet, why didn’t Vermeil get a real kicker before the Eagles’ first playoff game in 18 seasons especially since Michel missed three of the 12 extra points he attempted? Good questions, huh…

Actually, reports from 1978 say Vermeil did try out a bunch of kickers only Michel was the best of the bunch in practice. Though the missed kick was Michel’s last play in an NFL game (his 35.8 yards per punt average not good enough to get him a job punting), reports were that Michel rarely missed in practice. Nevertheless, kicking in practice against some guys off the street and in the playoffs is a little different.

Daily News beat writer Gary Smith, now with Sports Illustrated, wrote:

This was like taking a driver’s ed class at the Indy 500.

Sunday’s defeat was nowhere as bad as losing because of a missed extra point or because the fog was too thick to run the offense. But then again, when it comes to losses in the playoffs Andy Reid deals in quantity, not quality.

Ted Dean: The Eagles' forgotten hero

Considering that the Eagles and Green Bay Packers are two of the oldest continuous franchises in NFL history, it would seem that the teams would have a long and intense playoff history against each other. Yet despite a combined 168 seasons in the NFL, the Packers and Eagles have squared off in the postseason just twice.

Of course both of those games rate amongst the greatest games in Eagles’ history and were the site of some of the most iconic plays.

No one will ever forget the 4^th-and-26 pass from Donovan McNabb to wide receiver Freddie Mitchell with 72 seconds remaining in regulation to set up the game-tying field goal from David Akers and the eventual game-winner in overtime. Ask anyone who was around for the 1960 championship game, played on a Boxing Day, Monday afternoon and they will tell you that the most memorable play was the very last one of the game. That’s where the legendary two-way player, Chuck Bednarik, sat on fullback Jim Taylor until the clock expired at the Eagles’ 8-yard line.

As we’re often reminded, the 17-13 victory was the last time the Eagles were champions of the NFL. Only two other NFL teams (Lions, Cardinals) have suffered through a longer championship drought.

So if 50 years of history coupled with just a pair of playoff games is any indication, Sunday’s NFC Wild-Card showdown at The Linc could be another classic. Of course none of that matters now, but it sure is fun to measure how the past links with the present. There’s a line between Bart Starr, Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers. There also is one with Norm Van Brocklin, McNabb and Michael Vick and the two-game winning streak on the line.

Still, the thing about classic games like the 1960 NFL Championship and the 2003 NFC Division playoff is that people rarely remember the details of the game leading up to the final plays. They remember the broad strokes, like the ’60 title game was Vince Lombardi’s only loss in the playoffs or that the Packers have gone 1-5 in the playoffs since the ’03 loss.

But often the game’s most notable hero is the one least expected. Did anyone think McNabb would look for Mitchell on 4^th-and-26 on the do-or-die play? Sure, the immodest Mitchell, in his bizarro reality, probably talked himself into thinking that only he could have delivered on that game-turning play. The reality is Mitchell will go down as one of the biggest first-round busts ever.

But Ted Dean was a victim of bad luck and was the proverbial meteor shooting through the sky.

Certainly every Eagles fan knows all about Ted Dean, right? Just a 22-year-old rookie out of Radnor High and Wichita State during the 1960 title game, Dean scored the championship-winning touchdown on a 5-yeard run with 5:21 remaining in the game. Dean’s TD run was a run set up by his own 58-yard kickoff return to the Packers’ 40-yard line at snowy Franklin Field.

So, obviously those two plays turned Dean into an instant legend in Philadelphia… right?

Guess again.

Though he led the NFL in kickoff return yardage during his rookie year, injuries and a motorcycle accident limited Dean’s career to just 44 games over parts of four seasons. Interestingly, Dean’s TD run in the championship game was one of three he had in his career, while the 13 carries and 54 yards on the ground were the third-best outputs in the NFL.

Even more interestingly, the winning touchdown play wasn't called for Dean by Van Brocklin in the huddle, but for running back Billy Barnes instead. However, according to Reuben Frank in, Game Changers: The Greatest Plays in Philadelphia Eagles Football History, Van Brocklin changed the play while walking to the line, choosing to give the ball to the rookie.

Here's how Dean described the play to Frank in 2008:

“We were walking up to the line and he yelled out, ‘Switch,’ and changed the play,’” Dean said. “I can’t speculate why he did it, and I never had the opportunity to ask him. He had faith in me. He knew my potential and put his trust in me. I was elated, of course. I wanted to be the one running over the goal line.

“I had fumbled earlier in the game, and I rarely ever fumbled. Van Brocklin knew I was still hot from fumbling, so maybe that’s why he gave me the ball.”

By the age of 26, Dean was out of football and teaching at Gladwyne Elementary School. That wasn't uncommon, though, noting that the NFL (or even Major League Baseball) hardly paid enough in those days to be a full-time job. Interviews of Dean are tough to find and he chose not to attend the 50-year reunion of the 1960 team last September before the season opener between the Eagles and Packers. Instead, the hero of the Eagles’ last championship chose to stay at his home in Arizona, far from the limelight.

Nevertheless, Frank says he had a nice chat with Dean while working on his book and he remembered the winning play well:

“I put my head down like a battering ram, ran behind a block behind Gerry Huth, and I was in,” Dean said. “I wasn’t touched until just before I got into the end zone.”

It might have been the motorcycle accident and the resulting hip injury in 1965 that soured Dean’s interest for football. Though he attempted to make a comeback as a kicker in 1967 with the Steelers, Dean put the game behind him and never looked back.

Dean preferred to talk about piano playing, not football as he told writer J.F. Pirro.

“I got anxious with football,” he said in that old interview. “I don’t want to get serious with any other sports—but maybe some hobbies.”

No, Dean would not become a folk hero in Philadelphia like so many under-the-radar ballplayers dream about. He was the shooting star, here for a glorious moment and then choosing to make his mark in another walk of life.

Regardless, Dean’s touchdown run was not only one of the most significant plays in franchise history, but also one of the rarest. Take away Dean’s run and the Eagles have had just six, fourth-quarter rushing touchdowns to win or tie a game in the 28 years that followed.

Coincidentally, Dean and Mitchell were both out of the NFL by age 26. Counting the playoffs, Dean and Mitchell also scored six touchdowns in their career.

Makes one wonder what will happen to this Sunday’s hero.