Courageous Reporting

We won't even begin to know how good this draft is until training camp -- and the true story won't be told until we see what the Eagles do with that #1 draft pick next season -- but I do respect the opinion of Eagles fans worried that the team didn't make enough of an immediate offensive impact with their draft choices.  Obviously, I don't agree, but we'll see who's right soon enough.

What I don't respect are local writers who play to the worst impulses of the crowd by saying things like this:

Fans are debating whether the Eagles avoid drafting in the first round because of economics or simple wrong-headedness.

In other words, are they too cheap to pay first-round money to a guy they don't really love?

Or do they really think the holdovers from an 8-8 team are so good they cannot be replaced?

Or, hey, third option, because they could get the same guys they wanted while still picking up extra selections.  Inane, false dichotomy there.

But the lavish price the Panthers paid to get the Eagles' No. 19 pick on Saturday provided the Birds with a fig leaf of cover.

Or, rather than being a "fig leaf," it's what actually happened.  It's not like Shawn Andrews was sitting at #19.  And as I said before, I simply don't understand the anger over picking up two extra draft picks and deferring your first-round choice for a year when the guy you would have drafted wouldn't have played for at least a year anyway.

How they're gonna spin yesterday's fourth-rounder, though, is beyond me.

To quote colleague Bob Brookover, the Birds "took a cornerback (Wisconsin's Jack Ikegwuonu) with legal problems and a knee injury that won't allow him to play this year."

Spin that one!

The guy has "first-round" talent and majorly screwed up the last year of his life.  Cornerbacks are hard to find and so, much like Buffalo drafted the injured WIllis McGahee a few years ago as a development prospect, the Eagles used one of their three fourth-round picks on this guy.  It may or may not work out, given that all picks after the first couple rounds are a crap shoot, but that's kind of what you can do when you make trades with Carolina that get you a ton of picks.

Wow, that sure was tough to "spin!"

And no, I'm not linking to this jerk.  Screw giving him any traffic.