Eagles-Bears on Black Friday

👋 Good morning! Who does not love a couple of reporters sniping at each other?

Serious question: Is this the happiest we have ever seen Uncle Vic? He honestly might not have been this happy after the Super Bowl last season.

That Eagles press corps is unlike anything you have ever seen in terms of its sheer size. That is how crazy Philadelphia is about its Eagles. I always love when rookie mini camp rolls around, the reporters outnumber the players like 3 to 1. That press conference situation is no joke, people get testy trying to get a bird word in edgewise.

We are at Reading Terminal Market all day today. Stop by, we are going to be enjoying food (and perhaps a few beverages) after our shows. It’s always one of the best days of the year.

This is gonna be a little bit of a truncated newsletter by my standards. A lot of podcasting and a lot of writing for me over the past few weeks, your boy is a little gassed. I am gonna take a long weekend and then Your Friendly Neighborhood Newsletter Writer will be back at it next Monday, recharged and ready to go.

Thanks for your support of the newsletter and I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving. Go Birds. — Rich Hofmann

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

Injury report: Oh no, the Eagles are banged up again.

Good to see Reed and Adoree’ trending in the right direction, though.

The Eagles officially tweet about The Alliance: Love it.

Note: The easiest slam dunk in the history of social media posts is that, if the Eagles blow out the Bears on Friday, people will be posting the GIF of Shawn Michaels mouthing “I’m sorry, I love you” to Ric Flair right before hitting him with Sweet Chin Music. I am telling you, everyone will be posting that baby.

I do not really know what to think of Eagles-Bears, by the way. The Birds are seven-point favorites, which seems like a lot. I enjoy the Bears and Ben Johnson’s hilarious post-game speeches, but they do not feel like a very good 8-3 team. That defense can be had. But then again, the Eagles offense has been below-average and the secondary is now super banged-up.

So, who knows? Go Birds.

Ketel Marte: The Diamondbacks are listening and the Phils are interested, per Jon Morosi.

Marte has been a monster offensive player the past three seasons. He is 32 years old and has five years and $92 million left, a pretty reasonable contract. I imagine he would fetch a nice little prospect haul.

Orlando 144, Sixers 103: First, a bad Photoshop.

Post-game show is here. Instant observations are here.

Even down four starters, really dire stuff from the Sixers. Embarrassing effort from the players and coaches, nobody looked good here. So far this season, the Sixers have battled hard even in losses. They still have played the second-most clutch games in the NBA. It’s almost like they combined three expected stinkers during this early stretch into One Colossal Stinker. The Stinker of All Stinkers, even. Brutal game, and it’s never an excuse to lose by that much. But also something to keep in context.

I want to talk more about the people who were not on the floor, though.

The Sixers currently have a roster problem, one that is two-fold.

(1) At the top of the roster, the Sixers have two guys who just do not play. $100 million worth this season.

Joel Embiid has played in 6 of 17 games so far. Paul George has played in 3 of 17 games so far. They were both on a minutes restriction in every single one of those games, so let’s chop a third off both of those totals. We are essentially talking 4 and 2 games combined from those guys. That is nothing.

Embiid is going to miss, at minimum, three weeks with right knee soreness. He was questionable last night and did not play. George was listed as probable, but suffered an ankle injury on Sunday that took him out completely last night.

I am not questioning their injuries. I have no idea what is going on behind the scenes. But the fact of the matter is that through the first quarter of the season, two of the Sixers’ max guys have barely played basketball. Hopefully that changes.

(2) At the bottom of the roster, the Sixers have three guys who do not play basketball and an empty roster spot. The Sixers played 16 games prior to last night. Here is what they got from roster spots 12, 13, 14 and 15 through 16 games.

So, you have two guys at the top of the roster that do not play. And then you are essentially lighting four roster spots on fire.

I find all of this so unfair to the guys who play. I ranted about here.

You might wonder why I care so much about the end-of-roster. I have been pretty consistent that the current NBA is more physically exhausting than it has ever been. Teams press more now. The game is faster. Players have to cover more ground on defense with teams spreading the floor and shooting 3s. The NBA is more a physical grind than ever, it is more of a battle of attrition than ever. Players are getting soft tissue injuries more than ever.

Does that sound like the type of sport where it’s ideal to be wasting roster spots? At some point, you just need innings eaters. Embiid and George’s absences, plus the soft end-of-roster, puts so much undue pressure on Tyrese Maxey and players 4 through 11 on the roster (plus Dom Barlow and Jabari Walker, who were both available on two-way contracts).

Nick Nurse plays Maxey too many minutes, no question about it. Last night, it was insane that Tyrese played deep into the third quarter. But Nurse also played VJ Edgecombe and Kelly Oubre a lot minutes, and they are hurt now too. And as you see, because of the front and back of the roster, those guys do generally have to play a lot of minutes! Because there is nobody else.

It’s just one loss, and maybe Embiid and George come back on Friday and start to play regularly. The Sixers are still 9-8, after all. But a game like Tuesday was gonna at some point sooner or later. This is not a sustainable formula that the Sixers have with this roster, one with so many guys who do not play basketball. They need more of their guys to start playing basketball.

OK, that was a long rant. Let’s leave you on a positive, humorous note: Andre Drummond squaring like the Notre Dame mascot or a boxer from the late 1800s.

Reading Terminal Market!

Have a great Thanksgiving. Let's make it a good one today.

Rich Hofmann
Daily Newsletter Editor
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