👋 Good morning! It just means more here.

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In addition to all of the writing on the site, the included t-shirt from the PHLY Locker, access to the Discord, etc… you also get access to Fran Duffy’s Draft Guide, which is just a monster. I just looked at Fernando Mendoza’s page, and Fran has like 1,000 words and 50 clips up on “Diet Coke Jared Goff.” And Fran has that same level of detail for over 100 players!

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As always, you can reach me at [email protected]

Brutal Flyers game. So sick of Sidney Crosby. Certainly not here for a Kevin Hayes Revenge Game. Flyers’ special teams were terrible in this one, too.

But not a brutal Flyers podcast, as Bill, Steve and Charlie always bring it.

Coaches often say that the first game after a long road trip is a tough one, and perhaps the Flyers let down after an excellent roadie over the holiday weekend. But man, it hurts that this effort was so dismal against Pittsburgh of all teams.

But hey, it’s just 1 of 82 and down games happen. Rick Tocchet gave the boys a day off from practice tomorrow to recharge, and if the Flyers win on Wednesday against Buffalo, you can bet that Tocchet The Player’s Coach will be a nice easy storyline for The Big Js to sink their teeth into.

Unfortunately for the Flyers, Tyson Foerster will almost assuredly not be playing on Wednesday. Unless he pulled a Paul Pierce, that is.

(I do not think he pulled a Paul Pierce.)

Foerster got hurt in a way that you rarely see from hockey players. He took a one-timer, and without any other contact, crumpled to the ice holding his right arm. Did he dislocate his shoulder? That was the same arm in which he battled the elbow infection this offseason.

Regardless, losing Foerster is a big deal for the Flyers. I will let Charlie explain.

In some corners, there is skepticism of the Flyers rebuild because they do not have the three core pieces of most contenders: No. 1 center, No. 1 defenseman, No. 1 goalie. Maybe they have some of those players in the pipeline (Jack Nesbitt and Yegor Zavragin, anyone?), but none of them are clearly in Philly yet.

But even with the rough loss, the Flyers are still 10th in points percentage among NHL teams this year. The strength of their team is on the wing, and Foerster is a perfect embodiment of how they are doing it. He is scoring, but also playing a responsible two-way game. Not flashy, but effective enough so far this season.

We will see how long Foerster is out. In the meantime, perhaps Nikita Grebenkin gets bumped up to the Top-9 or they call Alex Bump (Bumpy!) up from Lehigh Valley.

But for a Flyers team that has exceeded expectations, losing Foerster definitely hurts.

The Day in Kevin Patullo: Man, the Eagles offensive coordinator’s name came up a bunch yesterday. Just off the top of my head…

In more important news, is Nick’s hair potentially a little shorter under that hat? Take that hat off, fella! I have “Many Men” fired up just in case.

In-person grabbies: Absolute banger of an Eagles show yesterday, with Fran at the telestrator breaking down plays in-person. Loved it. Must-watch.

And after watching Fran, the notion that the Eagles’ offensive issues are both scheme and execution-based is probably what sank in the most.

On the player side, Jalen and DeVonta not being on the same page on the play below is brutal. You just have to hit this.

But it’s not just the passing game where the Eagles are losing individually. Fran broke down the struggles of the Eagles tight ends in run blocking. Dallas Goedert has not been “The MVP of The Run Game” like he was memorably dubbed last year. He got bullied by some of the Bears defensive ends.

(I am putting Grant Calcaterra’s playing time squarely on the coaches at this point, though. Here are the percentage of offensive snaps Calcaterra has played in the last five games: 63, 40, 47, 24, 22. That is trending in the right direction, but it needs to be closer to zero. No hyperbole, Calcaterra might be the worst run blocker I have ever seen. He makes Zach Ertz look like one of the Seven Blocks of Granite. If Calcaterra was a weapon in the passing game, fine, but he has five catches for 48 yards this season. And 10 of his 12 snaps on Friday were in the run game for crying out loud! Get someone else, please. I miss Jack Stoll.)

But the coaching feels like it’s lacking, no question. Especially after you see some of the running lanes that Ben Johnson created for the Bears with motion. The run and the pass seem to be married quite well in that Chicago offense, it’s hard for the defense to know which one is coming. The Eagles defense certainly did not.

Well, compare that to the Eagles’ play-action game. Jalen Hurts is hitting the top of his dropback way before DeVonta Smith gets open on the in-breaker. That is basic stuff, and to rub in how bad it is, Fran brought examples of the Rams and Lions executing similar play-action plays. Brutal.

I can buy the idea that the Eagles players are not winning their individual matchups as often as last year. But it really does not seem like the coaching is helping them in any sort of way.

Is Penn State blowing this coaching search? I know we do not talk about Penn State all that much, and I will be honest, I am not locked in on college football like with some other sports.

Sure, I watch on Saturdays in the fall just like everyone else. I enjoy college football, but I just do not live it like I am sure some of you do. Once Fordham accepts that long-standing invitation from the Big 10 though, I will be all-in.

But let’s use this section to talk about what has become one of the most interesting periods in all of sports: the end of the college football regular season, before conference championship games and the playoff/bowl season. And that is because this is when the coaching carousel seems to heat up. College athletics have become The Wild West in so many ways, and this is maybe the craziest period every year. The season is not over, the most important part has yet to be played, and big-name coaches are bouncing every single year. It’s madness! As a neutral, I find this period riveting.

Remember Jalen Hurts’ old offensive coordinator Lane Kiffin? There is an argument to be made that Jalen is The Forrest Gump of Football, just in terms of how many notable figures he has crossed paths with. Well, Kiffin is a fascinating figure. He an incredible offensive mind and an entertaining troll at times. He was the hottest name in college for this coaching cycle, and deservedly so.

Kiffin is also a bit of a mercenary. He decided to stay on brand and leave Ole Miss, a team that is clearly gonna host a College Football Playoff game, to coach rival LSU. Movie villain type of stuff. And not only that, Kiffin reportedly tried to leverage his coaching staff to coach Ole Miss in the playoffs after accepting the LSU job. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.

Ole Miss told Kiffin to get lost and booed him on the tarmac out of town. Marty Smith spent like 48 straight hours on-air from Oxford. It was all very funny stuff.

Tons of other schools filled their openings in the meantime: Florida, Arkansas, Auburn, Oklahoma State, Michigan State, Virginia Tech. Heck, Ole Miss immediately promoted their defensive coordinator from within like Notre Dame once did with Marcus Freeman.

What about Penn State, though?

All this time, I kept quiet about the Nittany Lions because maybe they had a coach lined up in the background. But it sure seems like that was not the case. And now Penn State seems to be in a bidding war trying to lure another potential playoff coach (BYU’s Kalani Sitake) away from his program. Sitake seems like a decent coach, but a pretty weird fit in Happy Valley. He has no ties to the East Coast at all! And BYU has deep pockets, as the CEO of Crumbl Cookies is now involved trying to keep him. Maybe get Tobias Harris on the horn?

We will see where this goes. I am just a fascinated observer, not someone plugged-in on this stuff. But it sure seems to me like Penn State fired James Franklin (which was fair in many ways!) without much of a plan. Maybe it works out, as these things seem to be dart throws in general. But the process does not seem great.

Joel Embiid, all-offense and no-defense: Great Sixers pod yesterday, where Kyle and Derek added their #takes on Joel Embiid’s return.

Their main takeaway is two-fold: Number one, the offense looks so much better with Embiid out there. The Andre Drummond Corner 3 is now officially a thing and even Adem Bona is trying his luck from deep, but Embiid is the only big man on the roster who has the gravity to actually space the floor. Since Embiid is also the best passer of that trio by a mile, the first half featured the Sixers’ best ball movement in weeks.

But number two, Embiid is so incredibly bad on defense right now. The Sixers are a very good offensive team when Embiid plays, pretty much at their best. But the Sixers are a very bad defensive team when Embiid plays, pretty much at their worst. The stats spell those two things out.

I liked how Derek put it here: Embiid has to give the Sixers either one of two things on that end of the floor:

Up until two years ago, Embiid could do both… even if, admittedly, his rebounding slipped in the MVP-level Joel years under Doc Rivers. But Joel always contested and deterred shots at the rim.

At least so far this season, Embiid does neither. He had four rebounds in 30 minutes on Sunday, which is nothing. He is only rebounding 15.2 percent of opponent misses, which is a terrible number for a center. Kyle has a clip in his Embiid piece of a relatively unknown young guy named Mouhamed Gueye (actually a pretty good player) running past Embiid and then jumping over him for a putback. It’s pretty rough stuff.

Andre Drummond, who is a legitimately terrible rim protector, has been a much better defender than Embiid this season largely because he corrals the rebound when the other team does happen to miss. Back to Derek’s point, Drum gives you one of the two. Joel does not, and even in his diminished state, he kinda needs to.

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The Mets signed Devin Williams to presumably be their closer, by the way. Sad trumpet for Edwin Diaz? We will get caught up on Phils Slop tomorrow.

The Sixers are at home to take on the Wizards of Washington (7:00 p.m., NBC Sports Philly), who are not only dreadful at 3-16 on the season with a win last night… but The Wiz are also on the second night of a back-to-back. Combine those two things, and we are in the territory of Schedule Win of All Schedule Wins.

You know what would have been nice in this particular instance? If the Sixers ponied up for a private jet and sent Tyrese Maxey to a beach for a few days. The team’s next game is Thursday, so it would have been cool if they told him, “Hey, Tyrese, go put your feet up for a few days. You earned it.”

🚓 That’s right, here comes another cameo from The Minutes Police. 🚓

Maxey is currently playing 40.3 minutes per game. That is an insane number a quarter into the season. Nobody who has qualified for the minutes per game leaderboard at the end of a season has played that many minutes since 2009-10. And Gerald Wallace, who was the last person to play that many minutes, might as well have been playing against plumbers and firemen back then. The game was so much slower.

I think there are three things to blame here, perhaps all equally:

I am going to write more about Maxey more tomorrow. He has made The Leap without much help around him, which makes him resemble Prime Joel Embiid in many ways.

Alas, Maxey has to keep playing against Washington. Embiid is out, joining Trendon Watford and Kelly Oubre Jr. And then Andre Drummond, Paul George and Quentin Grimes are all questionable. So, yet again, Tyrese will be forced to lace ‘em up. Hopefully not for 40-plus, but probably somewhere close.

Love Tyrese, but I do not like how much he has to play. Does not feel sustainable.

And oh yeah, the Eagles are on Hard Knocks: In-Season With The NFC East (9:00 p.m., HBO Max). I do not have my hopes up in terms of seeing anything groundbreaking, but hey, I will still watch that garbage. It must have been quite an emotional moment when Joe Schoen reunited with the NFL Films camera crew.

Your tentative Tuesday schedule at PHLY:

Let's make it a good one.

Rich Hofmann
Daily Newsletter Editor
PHLY SPORTS