Good morning! He’s baaaacckkkkkkk!

Great day yesterday, as Brandon Graham officially announced his return to the Philadelphia Eagles. A franchise record 16th year for the franchise legend, what an incredible career. And we will get to BG in a minute, but for the first time in a long time, we will lead off with hoops.

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

Opening night in Boston! And unlike last year, Joel Embiid is not on the injury report for this one. Baby steps.

Before we find out if the Celtics can torture the Sixers with the dreadful-on-paper Hauser-Queta-Boucher-Garza-Tillman frontcourt in that cursed building, or if Joe Mazzulla gets karmic payback for crashing the Celtics media game and boat-racing the poor Big Js with his coaching staff full of former high-level players, the season predictions pod is here. Kyle should have a piece up on the site as well.

I remember Sixers training camp in September 2018. The team had just come off a triumphant 2017-18 season, one in which Joel Embiid had played 63 games and made Second Team All-NBA, Ben Simmons had engineered a 16-game winning streak to close the regular season, Robert Covington and Dario Saric had made key contributions as young guys, the team had advanced to the second round of the playoffs and there was still plenty of ammo to make trades in the asset chest.

Optimism abounded. The previous year, Brett Brown’s stated goal was to simply make the playoffs. At that 2018 training camp, Brown upped the ante in a big way: “We want to play in the NBA Finals.”

It was a reasonable goal both at the time and in hindsight. But ever since that exact moment, regardless of who Joel Embiid shared the floor with or who held the clipboard in the huddles, the Sixers have had degrees of high expectations placed upon them entering each NBA season. Not the same level of expectations in every single year, too much turnover and too many ups-and-downs for that, but consistently pretty high expectations.

Until now, that is.

You cannot tell me with a straight face that this Sixers team can disappoint anybody this season. They might not be very good, which I will get to in a moment. But disappoint people? No way. Not after last year, which ranks way up there on the all-time Seasons From Hell in Philly Sports. Not after Embiid and the organization were treated as a punching bag both locally and nationally for the last 12 months. Not after every pundit — Tim Cato excepted — has previewed the Sixers with varying degrees of shrugged shoulders and snark.

Entering the 2025-26 NBA season, the Joel Embiid Sixers are an afterthought. There is no hype at all here, much less championship hype. Anything that they give us should be considered gravy.

Now, I do agree with the widespread belief that the Sixers have an unusually large gap between their regular-season ceiling and floor, mostly due to the injury variable. This could be a 52-win team in this garbage Eastern Conference, and it could be a 22-win team in this garbage Eastern Conference. Embrace the unknown!

The bull case for the Sixers: Embiid has participated in most of training camp and he looked good in his preseason appearance. MVP-level Joel is almost assuredly gone. Even on Friday, you saw the limitations. JoJo looked more confident pushing off his left knee than at any point last season, but can he explode off it like he routinely did back in 2022? Does not look like it.

But again, Joel looked more confident than at any point last year! That is a big deal! Maybe we see a different Joel — more passing, more 3s, perhaps not quite the same rim protector — but like the guys all said, that is still an all-star level player. Not an MVP, not a walking 50+ wins by himself, but an incredibly helpful basketball player. Joel is still gigantic and incredibly skilled, with a skillset that should age well if the body holds up.

When Joel is on the floor, Tyrese Maxey gets slotted into the perfect role for him. Maxey can do more than the off-ball/catch-and-shoot stuff we saw when James Harden and Daryl Morey were still hunky-dory. Conversely, the last two seasons showed us that Maxey is probably a tad overtaxed as the primary initiator with no Embiid (and yes, I watched in January and February last year). Right in the middle is that sweet spot, running the two-man game with Embiid. Nick Nurse had Maxey starting possessions off the ball a bunch in the preseason, which I think is smart.

Paul George should be back at some point, and while we will probably see more podcasts (giving back to the people!) than rim attempts, PG is better than a 35.8 percent 3-point shooter. Contract drama aside, Quentin Grimes is a good two-way basketball player that should help. Jared McCain will be back to drilling 3s and getting busy on TikTok by late Thanksgiving.

Last year’s Sixers had the horrendous injury luck along with a supporting cast that was so poorly suited for the hyper-athletic turn that the NBA game has taken. The Sixers were small and slow. They are still small, but Daryl Morey injected some athleticism over the offseason. VJ Edgecombe can freaking fly, he has the type of motor you saw from teams like Oklahoma City and Indy last year. Adem Bona is a jumping-jack backup center (and maybe more). Even the Sixers’ dart throws at the 4 can run and jump. Dominick Barlow is a pretty hellacious offensive rebounder.

And if the Sixers are good enough, they have the ammo to make a trade for a bigger wing or 4. Did I mention the East stinks?

The bear case: We saw it last year. Embiid and George miss a ton of time, everything else is harder for everyone else. Devon and I dust off the tank helmets, although with just a light top-four protection on the pick, tanking would be difficult this season.

I do think there is still a scenario in which the Sixers are a fun-bad team if the vets are hurt, though. There is a two timelines thing going on here, with enough young guys to at least keep some interest alive. The Sixers would play a supercharged pace, and while their defense and rebounding definitely take a hit, the Maxey-Edgecombe-McCain-Grimes group provide some good moments. Trendon Watford could have some fun moments as a grab-and-go guy. And who knows, maybe Edgecombe is awesome right away? It is at least in play. The East still very much stinks in this scenario.

43.5 wins is your over-under, and that is simply Vegas trying to find the midpoint between the two extremes. If the Sixers go over, well, then it’s a pleasant surprise. But if not, this team should not be able to hurt you. Not after all you have been through, not after last year.

How does BG fit? 51,000 views and counting as of this writing!

Some great stuff in there about BG’s mindset following the Super Bowl (he did not want to retire!), how his triceps are feeling (“brand new arm”), when we could see him (originally Green Bay after the bye, but hey, maybe this weekend) and if the podcast is continuing (of course!). BG, if you are looking to find enough time to carve out for podcasting, let me send you Paul George’s number.

So, where does BG help the most? As EJ (in writing) and Fran (in video) both noted, it might be in run defense. After thriving against the run last season, the Eagles defense quietly stinks on the ground this year. Well, BG is an awesome run defender. He plays with a relentless motor, can set the edge against outside runs and will blow up any smaller defender that tries to block him.

Last week, Vic Fangio got Nakobe Dean on the field while bumping Jihaad Campbell up to the line of scrimmage in a bunch of base snaps. Nakobe looked good, love Nakobe. And even beyond the linebacker position, BG will soak up snaps from a depleted edge group. Jalyx Hunt is playing 70-ish percent of the game right now, Josh Uche is playing 45-ish percent of the game right now and Patrick Johnson (King of the Edge! King of the Edge! King of the Edge!) is playing 35-ish percent of the game. All of those numbers could stand to go down a little bit.

I know some people do not believe this whole thing will work, but I am bullish. When BG initially hurt his triceps in Los Angeles last year, he was playing some awesome football. Uncle Vic knows.

I have been making the July 2025 Phillies Bullpen-October 2025 Eagles Edge-Rushers comp. This is the higher-approval David Robertson move, the wily vet who will be fresh and ready to go midseason. Vic, whatever the equivalent of making BG pitch multiple innings is, do not do it. But I thought that like Dave Dombrowski did with Jhoan Duran, Howie Roseman would also have to make a bigger splash.

Maybe that big splash never comes. Looks like a seller’s market, plus Nolan Smith should be back after the bye. But regardless, I think it’s pretty hard to argue with this move.

Maybe the best thing we do at ALLCITY is now live!

I am already thinking about what the Eagles might do next April, and what the Offensive Tackle Of The The Future crop might look like. Well, what about, I dunno, Caleb Tiernan from Northwestern? Fran has me covered. Now, I know everything about him. OK, not everything, but a whole lot!

There are already over 100 players with detailed scouting reports in there. Fran’s draft guide is just another perk for our Diehards, a living, breathing document that is:

We have the BG Diehard sale going right now, $36 for your first year! You get Fran’s draft guide and all of our other premium writing on the site. You get a shirt from the store. You get 20 percent off all of the other merch and events. You get access to our Discord community, which is awesome. Join now!

You know, I think that is enough for the day. For Monday, I think I wrote about ten different things. Two days later, we really only had the Sixers and BG. Sure, I saw an A.J. Brown cryptic social media post and some halfhearted Phillies trade slop, but like, why bother?

Let’s keep it at Sixers and BG for one day. We will get back to our normally scheduled programming tomorrow. As Charlie noted, the vibes were high at Flyers practice on Tuesday. Good, they should be.

Sixers tonight (7:30 p.m., NBC Sports Philly), enjoy the game everyone. No Paul George or Trendon Watford. And I know Jim Lynam has a competing pregame show with us, but I really need his take on his Action News interview in Strathmere.

Your tentative Wednesday schedule at ​PHLY. Busy day​:

Let’s make it a good one.

Rich Hofmann
Daily Newsletter Editor
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