Trevor Zegras continues to save the Flyers

👋 Good morning! You gotta love hoops to take in Northwestern-Mercyhurst on your night off.

Well, VJ loves hoops. Good for him. — Rich Hofmann

You know what I love, though? Righteous Felon Craft Jerky.

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

A very funny Dallas trade: Fun NFL trade deadline! Jets GM Darren Mougey went all Sam Hinkie and cleaned house, as he should have with that garbanzo beans team. Two first-round picks from Indy for CB Sauce Gardner and a first and second-round pick for DT Quinnen Williams from…

Dallas?!?!??!?!?

JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY! JERRY!

Mazi Smith went to New York in the trade as well. Farewell to the former first-round pick drafted to single-handedly stop the Eagles’ rushing attack (note: he did not single-handedly stop the Eagles’ rushing attack). And the 2027 first-round pick that Dallas sent to New York in the Williams trade is their own first-round pick, not the one they received from Green Bay in exchange for Micah Parsons. Another note: Dallas’ pick is likely to be much better than Green Bay’s.

Speaking of which…

Let’s remove Mazi Smith and Kenny Clark from the equation. It’s basically Williams, moving up a half-round and $23 million in cap space for Parsons. Guess what? I would much rather have Parsons, who is a legitimate game-wrecker. Quinnen Williams is a good player, but not a game-wrecker. The Jets defense has been below-average for two straight years now.

I do like how Jerry saw Howie’s Quarterback Factory and decided to counter with a Defensive Tackle Factory of his own. Chess, not checkers.

Howie’s comments: No Eagles trades on deadline day. So, that means A.J. Brown is still here. And Howie Roseman was asked about it.

Truthfully, I do not think this story is gonna go away. I would love to be wrong about that, mind you. But if the A.J. story does return like I fear it will, let’s hope that it is at least not until the offseason. No more weekly anonymous reports on what an AFC scouting director thinks about the situation from afar, please.

Flyers 5, Montreal 4 (SO): Wooooo!!!!! Bill’s observations are here.

Thank you to Nikita Grebenkin for scoring his first career goal in the third period, because the Orange and Black had absolutely dominated this game up to that point and somehow found themselves down 4-3. He got the Bernie mask in the post-game locker room, and it was well deserved.

We talked about how the Flyers needed to shooooooot more yesterday, and they did that up in Quebec. They outshot the Habs 42-20 on the game, which was a nice departure from how the last week has gone. Unfortunately, the Canadiens are getting some pretty insane puck luck in the early part of this season and that continued on Tuesday night. But thanks to Grebenks, the Flyers were able to overcome that puck luck!

Even if it was not a wire-to-wire win, that first period was so much fun. Bobby Brink scores twice, including on a nasty deflection. The power play took advantage of a two-man advantage, scoring both at 5-on-3 and 5-on-4. Novel concept! The Flyers’ power play is up to 14th in the NHL on the season, which for them, might as well be first.

And those Brink goals sandwiched a no-look, behind-the-back dime from Trevor Zegras to Cam York on a two-man advantage. Just a sick pass.

And then of course Zegras comes up clutch in the shootout. 15-23 for his career now.

I regret to inform everyone that Quitter Gauthier has 10 goals on the season already in Anaheim. But hey, at least the Ducks gifted the Flyers Zegras.

Harry B declines his option: #AsExpected as me crab walking down Locust Street in mid-September.

I feel like mutual options are pretty rarely picked up. Either a player under-performs and the team wants out, or the player over-performs and wants to cash in. In Harrison Bader’s case, it was very much the latter. Plus, the Phils have to pay him a $3 million buyout anyway. Nice work by his agent! 💵 💵 💵 💵

I do not know what it will take to re-sign Bader — Baseball America, the first link I clicked on and thus the authority here, projects two years and $40 million — but I would be very interested in doing so. I made the case to Jamie last week that I strongly want to bring Bader back. Will he have an .824 OPS like we saw post-trade deadline? Probably not! But he plays a strong center field and is a right-handed bat.

I guess it boils down to whether or not the Phillies think his 2025 success at the plate was real. But man, Bader was so good down the stretch. Still bummed about his injury in the playoffs.

Let’s view yesterday through the prism of Tyrese Maxey.

Tyrese Maxey, Eastern Conference Player of the Week: See. that’s good! But it’s not just that…

Tyrese Maxey turned 25 on Tuesday: Happy birthday, young fella! The good news does not stop there, though…

Tyrese Maxey had 39 points on 14-26 shooting: The NBA scoring leader continues to cook! OK, three good things in a row, this next thing cannot possibly be bad…

Tyrese Maxey and the Sixers coughed up a game they should have won: Oof. Chicago’s only lead of the game came on Nikola Vucevic’s 3-pointer with 3.2 seconds left. Unfortunately for the Sixers, those are the only 3.2 seconds that matter. Kyle’s observations are here.

How ‘bout Vooch still being pretty good all these years later? The man was once traded for Andrew Bynum.

Can we just appreciate for a second that the Sixers made you feel legitimately terrible again? Watching that game, an old-school Sixers collapse, I recognized that this group had provided enough hope in the first two weeks to make that one sting a little bit. No small accomplishment. I did not think they would get us back here in such short order, but here we are.

Let’s go over the things I am not gonna do about an admittedly terrible loss:

Here is what I will say, though: The Sixers need to learn something from this one. Because the way they approached that fourth quarter offensively, one in which they were held to two measly points in the final 6:26, they did very much deserve to lose that one.

What was the approach, you may ask?

The Sixers scored 75 points in the first half. Have you heard of the Brazilian soccer phrase jogo bonito? It means “The Beautiful Game,” and that is what the Sixers more or less played to start the game. Just beautiful offense, with the ball pinging around to everyone. Maxey and Joel Embiid combined for 40 points, but you had 6 to 9 points from all of Kelly Oubre, VJ Edgecombe, Quentin Grimes and Trendon Watford. Everyone was involved.

And then in that last six minutes, they just played through Embiid (who, because of his minutes limit, was ice cold after sitting a full quarter) and Maxey (who, because of Isaac Okoro’s aggressive defense, was dead tired). It went terribly. Embiid and Maxey missed a few makeable shots, but the offensive approach was just not good enough. It was, to use a football term, a Prevent Offense.

The Sixers built a huge lead through running their stuff and keeping everyone involved. The strength of this team is that you have so many guys who can score. And then in Winning Time, they went to stagnant Embiid post-ups and Maxey isolations with everyone standing around. It’s not like Embiid and Maxey do not touch the ball when they run their normal stuff. They had 40 in the first half in the flow.

So, if I were the Sixers, I would simply keep running their offense next time.

Jared McCain logged 15 minutes and looked incredibly rusty, not scoring a point. That’s OK, too. Cheer up with the Top-25 plays of Maxey’s career, which the NBA put out yesterday.

The Sixers are back in action tonight against Cleveland (7:00 p.m., NBC Sports Philly), as the Cavs get Darius Garland back from injury. Gang, I am not gonna lie to you, let’s just leave the Sixers’ record at 5-3 headed into their home back-to-back this weekend. I will be keeping tabs on this one, we will very much have a post-game show for the sickos, but that baby has Schedule Loss written all over it.

Besides that, we will have plenty to talk about at PHLY like always. Your tentative Wednesday schedule, and we might have some BG for you as well:

Let’s make it a good one.

Rich Hofmann
Daily Newsletter Editor
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