👋 Good morning! The Tush Push Wars rage on.

Adam Schefter said the following on television: “This game was lost in March. This game was lost when the NFL owners refused to ban the tush push from happening. It wasn't lost yesterday.”

Yes, sure, that makes a lot of sense. Meanwhile, we got Tom Brady wearing a headset and legitimately game-planning for the Eagles’ Week 15 opponent… two days after meeting with the Eagles coaching staff and talking strategy with them as a game analyst. Nothing to see here.

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

Y’all, I did a thing and made a quiz.

100 of my best Philly sports trivia questions (all teams, all eras, all types of questions), and I want you to have fun and take it. It’s a legitimate challenge.

How do you get to take it? By referring a few of your friends and family to the newsletter. There is no cost at all to you or to them. Just sign them up for this free, daily piece of content. Do that, and then you get basically three months of Trivia Thursdays.

We will have the following section in the newsletter moving forward. If you enjoy Trivia Thursday, I think you will love taking this one. — Rich

J.T., how many we got left?

(In fairness to J.T., there is no set number right now. Could be 11, could be 13.)

Those of us who stayed up got a treat. The Phillies won an absolutely magnificent baseball game at Chavez Ravine.

Kyle Schwarber homered off a lefty, No. 53. Emmet Sheehan was dealing. Ranger Suárez battled through six innings with less than his best stuff, like the dawg that he is. Max Muncy homered. Otto Kemp and Weston Wilson gave us a three-run seventh inning, with Wilson going deep to center field. Orion Kerkering struck Shohei Ohtani out on a perfect pitch, but then gave up a bomb to Mookie Betts. The Dodgers, pretty good. Bryce Harper homered off a lefty to give the Phillies a lead. Jhoan Duran shockingly hung a curveball to Andy Pages to blow the save.

And it was David Robertson, overcoming one of the most egregious check swing calls you will ever see, to play the role of Ghostbuster and strand the inherited runner in the bottom of the 10th inning.

That game had it all. It felt like October, all the way down to the game finishing after 1 a.m. And in the end, the Philadelphia Phillies are your 2025 National League East champions on September 15th. Feels good. In fact, this is the earliest they pulled that off in team history. Feels great.

The players celebrated on the field, took a team photo and then crammed into what looked like a high-school locker room. How do they fit a full MLB team in there? Tom McCarthy called it “a workmanlike celebration” on the television broadcast, but most of the hits were played: Rob Thomson gave his speech, beer bongs were chugged, Garrett Stubbs ran around shirtless like a madman. These Philles have bigger goals than the division, but when you work this hard for seven months, you deserve to party hard. In fact, I would argue that you gotta.

Of course, we knew the Phillies were gonna win the division for the past week. But this game was also a crucial win for their next goal: A top-two seed and first-round bye. The Phils are now up 5.5 games on the Dodgers, with two games left in Los Angeles. Let’s see if you can get one more and leave the ravine with the lead at 5.5. No traditional Hangover Game, you would think.

But for now, enjoy all of the clips from the locker-room celebration. It’s that time of year again, Red October is right around the corner.

Look, I think we call be adults about this. The Eagles are legitimately great — credit to BLG for pointing out that Jalen Hurts is 16-0 in the last 16 games that he has started and finished, which is wild — but the offense also could be a lot better.

Caveat time!

Might the offense struggling matter less than it would for most teams? Yes! Wasn’t it like this last year for stretches? Also yes! Haven’t these guys earned the benefit of doubt to a degree? They won the Super Bowl, of course they have! Did you read that Hurts stat in the last paragraph?

With that in mind, I am not raising my voice at the defending champs in Week 2. Just imagine me calmly saying the following…

Just rummage around a bit, see what you find. Here are three day-after observations (not complaints!) about the offense specifically, thanks to EJ’s Early Bird piece and a great day-after pod with Bo, EJ and Fran.

No intermediate chunks: This feels very much like a “layups and 3s” offense, which might be how you want to play modern basketball… but certainly not how you want to play modern football. Fran mentioned it here: There has been very little designed for the intermediate areas in the passing game, the 10-19 yard zones where the Sean McVays and Ben Johnsons live.

I am not asking Kevin Patullo to turn into Kyle Shanahan overnight. Just, you know, maybe take a peak in the middle every once in a while. We saw the 51-yard bomb to Jahan Dotson in Week 1, and then the 28-yard pass to DeVonta Smith against the zero blitz yesterday. But that is about it. What about, I don’t know, a 15-yard in-breaker to DeVonta? Maybe an 11-yard comeback to A.J? The world is your oyster, Kevin!

If you look at Hurts’ passing charts (Week 1, Week 2), I do not think he has attempted a pass between 10 and 20 yards so far this season. As Bo pointed out, Hurts did not throw to the middle of the field at all yesterday. Nick Sirianni loves the “wise man avoids all extremes” saying, and speaking of that…

Predictable personnel: Fran had a great breakdown of the game’s first snap, a shot play out of Pistol that might have been an A.J. touchdown if Grant Calcaterra did not mess up the block. But Calcaterra, as he is wont to do, did mess up the block.

After that, the Eagles followed a similar script to Week 1 and ran the ball out of Pistol every single play. Guys, I don’t know, maybe try to pass out of Pistol every once in a while? The Eagles are telegraphing the type of play by the formation they line up in. That shotgun number below from The Professor should be higher as well, since two of those runs were hopeless Coward’s Draws on 3rd and long that did not fool Kansas City in the slightest.

If the Eagles were predictable and moving the ball with ease, I would not be commenting on this. But since they have struggled for a few weeks now, I don’t know, let’s try and get those numbers closer to 50/50. Not all the way to 50/50, but closer.

Leaning into heavy packages: Dotson only got 22 snaps yesterday, and of course, that number is deflated when you Tush Push seven times in a game. But as Bo pointed out here, I do not understand leaning so much into heavy personnel when Dallas Goedert is not playing. The Eagles’ tight end room is not exactly teeming with great players! This is not like having both Brent Celek and Zach Ertz in 2014! The Eagles are running the ball twice as much out of heavy personnel (12 or 13) as 11 personnel, and it has been much less successful. Just like we saw last year when Goedert was hurt, Calcaterra is not a good blocker (good fumble recoverer, though, credit where due).

Saquon Barkley had 22 carries for 88 yards, and I thought he was quite good in this game. The blocking has been, maybe not Giants-y, but not what he had last season. Great Spags and Saquon post-game video by the way, Spags is all class.

Again, I am not raising my voice or anything here (Super Bowl champs, woot woot), but maybe let’s rummage around a bit fellas. Let’s see what is at the bottom of the bag. You never know, sometimes there is an extra french fry or three down there.

Jake The Make: Charley Hughlett and his cowboy collar had a little trouble with the snappy-snap, but Jake Elliott has been great to start the year.

Jake has made two 58-yarders, too. Not an original observations, but man, kickers are so good nowadays. With all of the changes in football over the past 25 years, field goal kicking might honestly be No. 1 in how much it has shifted. Anyway, it is nice to see that 2023 Jake seems to be back. I would hope that 2023 Jake, who bailed the Eagles out a ton during that 10-1 start, is not quite as necessary moving forward, though.

4th and 1: I wrote about Drew Mukuba’s great individual effort on third down yesterday, but this is beautiful team defense. Jalen Carter blows this thing up, and is Andy Reid serious making Noah Gray block Nolan Smith With A Head Of Steam? Hey Andy, Nolan destroyed your All-Pro guard in the Super Bowl! What is poor Noah Gray gonna do in the same spot? Nolan Smith With A Head Of Steam is the baddest man in the NFL!

With no team-mandated on-field punishment, I thought Carter looked pretty good in the post-loogie world.

One of my favorite wrinkles was when Carter lined up at edge, with Jalyx Hunt bumping inside. Uncle Vic was getting loosey-goosey with the play-calls!

Tank Bigsby: That Dave Toub is a smart special teams coach in KC. Toub saw Kick Return Secret Weapon Tank Bigsby fumbling against air in practice, which Michael Clay clearly told him to do on purpose, and did not take the bait even a little bit. The Chiefs kept kicking the ball to John Metchie, avoiding Eagles Dante Hall.

Carson Wentz: Starting for Minnesota this week! Must-see TV.

Luchanko and Bonk back: As Charlie explained on the pod, Luchanko’s return was the more positive surprise.

And that is a good thing, because Luchanko is legitimately battling for a roster spot on the Flyers roster in training camp and the preseason. Charlie wrote about how Alex Bump (good, but not as good as he was at dev camp) and Nikita Grebenkin (good, in an unflashy way) fared in the rookie games against the Rangers.

Positive injury updates: We are not normally an injury update newsletter, but I was reading Lochlann March’s article in the Inky and it mostly seems like good news.

Credit to the Phillies for not only weathering the bad injury luck, but putting together a great week of baseball despite it. Things could have gotten wonky for a minute there. It did not, a huge credit to them.

Skinny Joel: Presented without comment.

Not much during the day, outside of the Philadelphia media welcoming Kevin Patullo to the big leagues and holding his feet to the fire. Training camp is over, Kevin. Go get him, fellow Big Js! No softballs, let’s rattle his cage a bit!

(In retrospect, it is pretty funny that I highlighted Patullo’s answer about Jalen Hurts avoiding hard hits the same week that Hurts got absolutely lit up by Omarr Norman-Lott. Maybe the hardest hit I have ever seen Jalen take?)

And then we have Phillies-Dodgers Game 2, with the following pitching matchup: The Incredible Cristopher Sánchez against Some Guy With A 3.75 ERA (NBC Sports Philly, TBS). Good to see the SuperStation getting a Cris start, at least.

Your tentative Tuesday schedule at ​PHLY​:

Let's make it a good one.

Rich Hofmann
Daily Newsletter Editor
PHLY SPORTS