The Washington Football Team needed to beat the Philadelphia Eagles to win the NFC East. Admittedly, the Eagles had nothing to play for except pride and professionalism.
The Eagles players upheld their end of the bargain playing hard and keeping the game within a field goal entering the fourth quarter.
That’s when Eagles Head Coach Doug Pederson brought in Nate Sudfeld, a player Cris Collinsworth kept saying the Eagles wanted to get a look at in this game. Apparently, Pederson felt compelled to play a QB in a tight game with playoff implications he had inactive 14/16 weeks.
Sudfeld is a 27 year old QB who threw exactly two passes over the past three seasons. In his five year career, he’s played in four out of a possible 80 games.
It should come as no surprise Sudfeld wasn’t just bad. No, he was completely non-competitive. You’d have more faith in Tim Tebow being up at the plate against Mariano Rivera with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.
Actually, Tebow probably would’ve had better odds.
Make no mistake, the Eagles well knew Sudfeld was going to be this bad, and they put him in intentionally. They did it for the same reason they didn’t call time outs in front of the two minute warning when Washington had third and long.
The Eagles simply had zero intention of winning this game. They wanted to lose, and when their players got too close to winning, the team did what they had to do to throw the game.
The Eagles did this so they’d move up in the draft. Due to their malfeasance, they were rewarded by moving up three spots in the draft. Instead of picking ninth, they now draft sixth.
So congratulations to them and to the NFL for incentivizing losing. They embarrassed their league, and they made a mockery of all professional sports competition. This wasn’t a tank. It was a dive.
In short, the Eagles are an embarrassment.