Eagles 33 Cowboys 38: How Did it Come to This?

Another Eagles defeat, but this time I've got something to celebrate!
Forgive the shameless self indulgence, but this week marks the first birthday of this blog.  More importantly, it's marks the first anniversary of my journey to becoming an Eagles fan.  It actually seems as like I've been supporting Philadelphia for an entirety - I guess that's what 8 defeats in a row does to you!

If you're late to this, then I've been following the NFL for around 6 years, but for the first 5 of those I was a complete neutral.  Last year I decided to change that and have some fun whilst doing so.  I became an Eagles fan by starting with all 32 NFL teams as my potential franchise, then eliminating 31 teams 1 at a time for a wide variety of football and non-football related reasons.  It lead to some very strange evenings at home - including a pretty dull couple of hours spent working out which NFL ground would take the longest to get to from my house and a soul destroying episode of coin tossing in order to eliminate a team through blind luck.  My initial plan was to eliminate one team every week, but as I started getting into the project I upped my work rate, and ended up finding my team in about 3 months.  It all ended with a scintillating game of Madden 07 between the Eagles and Lions.  If, you've not read about that game (Reuters didn't seem interested for some reason) then just watch a compilation of bad punts and you'd get the general idea.

It all left me as an Eagles fan, but it also gave me a thirst for discovering more about the NFL and writing more about it.  As such, I've been regularly contributing to the excellent 1amsports.com and have also written articles for the equally excellent Second City Fanatics and the British Eagles website.

Supporting a team with a fan base in the UK has been beneficial in building up my support, and the British Eagles has been great in this regard. Whilst I don't have the same depth of Eagles knowledge or experience as some of the members, I like to think I can support the team just as much.  I've certainly built up my knowledge of the team and the league as a whole over the last few months.

Having dabbled with a couple of over writing projects, I've now decided to write a History of the NFL in the UK and look at the various connections this country has had with the League and American Football in general.  I'm aiming for this to be a somewhat more substantial piece of work, so there's plenty of research going on at present.

As for my Eagles supporting life?  Hmm, well it all started well enough, I was pretty optimistic heading into the season, on paper we had one of the strongest squads in the NFL, with playmakers all over the pitch. A 3-1 start justified my optimism and the Eagles were set to crown my opening season in glorious fashion.

2 months on, the victory column still sits at 3 and the Eagles are one of the worst sides in the League.  They are definitely the most disappointing side in football.  This latest defeat in Dallas came as a surprise to absolutely nobody.  Injuries, poor form, worse coaching and numerous botches have led to a highly frustrating period for fans.  In truth, this display was an improvement and young players like Bryce Brown and Nick Foles are showing signs of maturity and being NFL calibre players.  This campaign is clearly over so I agree with giving the rookies a go for the last 4 games.  I also agree wit releasing Jason Babin, and hopefully a few more will be joining him in the departure lounge soon (Kurt Coleman!).

In a way, this season has been good for my development as an Eagles fan.  Let's face it, I'm not likely to encounter many worse years during my supporting life!  The only way is up, and a massive rebuild is surely going to take place in the off season.  The odds are that it won't bring positive results overnight - the NFL is cyclical and the Eagles are pretty much at the bottom of that cycle currently.  But I just want a team full of young, hungry players who are playing with passion and not just dialing it in so they can take home their paychecks.  There were signs of that on Sunday night, and after a miserable few months, there may be a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.  It just might take a long time to get out of said tunnel!

Overall, I've loved my first year of writing about the NFL.  My appreciation of the sport has grown immensely, I regularly bore friends by crowbarring it into conversations and I watch far too much of the sport on TV.  Supporting a team has been a big part of this, and if you don't already support an NFL team then I'd highly recommend you start doing so...just maybe not the Eagles!