I Know...

The blog has been fairly uninspired recently.  So have the Eagles. 

Assuming the team can take care of business this Sunday, the second season starts in earnest next week as they prep for the Giants.  I'll be back on the horse by then.

BountyBowl on the road: your Pacific Northwest travel guide (Part 2)

And we're live from Seattle!  Shockingly, it's raining, but spirits are high as we sit in a glorious coffee shop on Capitol Hill and get through the morning's mail.  Good to be here!

I really don't think we're ready for the Eagles quite yet on the day of the Phillies' parade, so in the interim  I'll offer up some Seattle - Phillies details:

1. Beloved Phils senior citizen Jamie Moyer pitched in Seattle for years, and remains a fixture in the community out here.  His face remains on billboards for more than one local organization: Brown Bear Car Wash and the Jamie Moyer Foundation.  I imagine I'll be able to chat up the locals about Moyer over the next couple days -- I can only assume they're proud of him.

2. Apparently Pat Gillick still owns a house out here.  According to this dude I played golf with last summer, it's in Magnolia and Gillick "is a good guy."  That's right, BountyBowl is your one-of-a-kind source for random rumors from stranger on golf courses!

Enjoy the parade, and in the words of Mayer Nutter, "You can be joyous, but you can't be a jackass."  Seriously.  If only someone had told me that at age 19.

Chills

Phightins are 2008 World Series Champs

Very cool.

It's a very memorable night to be from Philly.  All good.

US CAN!!!

Blogger Faux Pas

Gabe, Gabe, Gabe.  This one's gonna hurt:

Brookover reports that the Eagles are not likely to hand out any extensions this year — exactly how he knows this is never explained, but he’s a reporter and he talks to plenty of folks who’d prefer not to be quoted down there (perhaps this is a topic for another post?). So I’ll take him at face value.

At your service, big guy:

[T]he NFL owners' decision in May to opt out of the final 2 years of the collective bargaining agreement has made it unlikely that any Eagles will be signing extensions between now and the end of the season.

"It's a little hard to go do deals right now when you don't know what the landscape is going to be going forward," Eagles president Joe Banner said earlier this week...

"When you don't know what the rules of the game are going to be, it kind of hinders doing a long-term deal," Banner said. "Players don't know if they're going to be free agents after 4 years or 6 years. I don't know if the cap's going to stay relatively flat or take a significant jump.

"I'm a little reluctant to lock in to too many players without knowing what the next cap will be. Also, we're only a couple of years away from the next round of television deals. So you don't know what's going to happen with that. You don't know what your player costs are going to be. I'm glad that, for the moment, we don't really need to do anything."

Keep Digging, Lito

Geez, this guy just won't quit:

"I always tell them this: First of all, you have to do what's best for you and your family, but second of all, let's put it like this, if you don't take that money, watch how they do you," Sheppard said. "If you take it, you just better hope you're not mad two or three years down the line...

"If you're on offense, they can limit your production and not let you do what you've been doing, and on defense, they can start finding fault," Sheppard said. "Every little thing you do, they can use it against you."

Sheppard said he thinks that's what happened to former Eagles safety Michael Lewis two years ago.

This is normally the moment where I get to point out the obvious, but Brookover took care of that for us this time:

Sheppard isn't the only one in the Eagles' locker room who feels as if Lewis got a raw deal after he didn't sign a long-term deal, but the safety's benching was about performance rather than money.

Defensive coordinator Jim Johnson felt Lewis could not cover anyone, and it was a valid point. Johnson does not care how much any of his players are making. The problem was that Sean Considine was not the right guy to replace Lewis. Quintin Mikell has fixed that problem.

Bill Lyon Sighting

I'm hoping we get to read another one from him tomorrow.  For now, this will have to do.

Wow, An ST Signing Worked

Since the end of last season, the Eagles have brought in a couple handfuls of guys who were supposed to help the special teams.  With only a couple partial exceptions, this hasn't really worked out. 

Thanks to the weekly ST production tracking of reader/commenter "shlynch," we know that Tank Daniels is the only "new guy" in the team's top ten most productive players.  And even he's a repeat visitor. 

Shlynch sent me the updated numbers after the last game, though, and folks, we finally have a winner.  Reserve linebacker -- the guy who won't be getting an Igglesblog Christmas present this year because he took Tony Hunt's roster spot -- made an immediate impact, putting up 35 production points in his first game with the Eagles.  That's the biggest number anyone's dropped all year (Akeem Jordan has a 33 and a 34). 

So it looks like the team may finally have found someone.

While we're on the topic of special teams, what's going on right now with Sav Rocca?  I don't think his kicking last week was a consistency issue.  It looked like a couple of times he saw the returner lined up pretty deep, so he actually took something off the ball, trying to make it un-fieldable.  So rather than, say, a 50 yard punt and eight yard return, he was going for just 42 yards, no return.

The thing is, it didn't really work.  The first punt came back 16 yards. 

Or maybe I'm overthinking this and Sav is still just inconsistent.  After all, that last punt (you know, the one that was "muffed") only traveled 34 yards.  And it was definitely catchable. 

Wonder what's up there.

The challenges of asset valuation in these wintry economic times

Great piece by Bob Brookover in this morning's Inky about the Eagles' likely approach to contract extensions and cap management in the face of an increasingly likely labor dispute in 2011. Brookover reports that the Eagles are not likely to hand out any extensions this year -- exactly how he knows this is never explained, but he's a reporter and he talks to plenty of folks who'd prefer not to be quoted down there (perhaps this is a topic for another post?). So I'll take him at face value.

The interesting bits of the article are the compare-and-contrast views of faux starters Lito Sheppard and Sheldon Brown regarding the decision to take an extension early in your career versus risking injury for a bigger payday at a later date. Sheppard is a bit conspiracy-theory about the whole thing:

"That's basically how it is right now. You can write a book about it. Talk to people around the league, they're going to tell you if you don't take the extensions, they're going to get blackballed. You hate to say that about it, but that's the way it is."

And what did Sheppard mean by blackballed?

"If you're on offense, they can limit your production and not let you do what you've been doing, and on defense, they can start finding fault," Sheppard said. "Every little thing you do, they can use it against you."

Sheldon Brown takes a different tack:

"You have to do what's right for you and your family and not listen to anybody else," he said. "Some people may say they are low-balling you, but if it's enough for you and your family, then take it. If you don't feel like it is, then don't take it. Only you can make that decision.

"It's definitely a tough choice, but it's just like the lottery. You're playing with fire because if you look at somebody like [ex-Eagles safety] Damon Moore, he . . . tore his knee up. I just think in the end, if it's good enough you, go ahead and take it and don't be too greedy. If you perform more after that, you'll get more."

I agree with Brookover that Brown has "the better perspective," but for different reasons. (And yes, of course I don't believe that Jim Johnson cares about contracts when he puts players on the field.) What I really liked was Sheldon's approach to valuation and negotiation. That is, Sheldon seems to understand the fictions of valuation: (1) you're worth what the market will bear at a given moment, (2) said market is subject to random fluctuations, (3) only you can make a determination of your own value/ BATNA, and, most importantly, (4) beware the hindsight bias! Sure, you can hold on for a couple more years and break the bank like Nate Clements, but you can also explode your knee. This talk of conspiracy theories and blackballing assumes that you'll continue to perform.

(Also, given the seemingly increased level of uncertainty facing the League and the CBA (see here for Commissioner Goodell's assessment of the NFL's economic outlook in these wintry economic times), cash now feels like a good plan.)

Still, it'd be cruel to focus on football players as somehow being irrational economic actors. Lito may bemoan his decision to sign an early extension, but it's not like he's Jerry Yang. Lito left a few million on the table; by refusing Microsoft's $31-per-share bid for Yahoo (now trading at $12), Yang left, oh, about $26 billion in value on the table. Yang insisted that YHOO's prospects were strong and that the $31 bid undervalued his company. What he chose to ignore was the possibility that said bid overvalued his company -- which is essentially what happened when the economy blew out its ACL and demand for banner ads, umm, dipped a bit.

Jerry, my man, next time give Sheldon Brown a call!

[Editor's Note: Derek was kind enough to explain why I was an idiot over at Igglesblog in re: Joe Banner's recent comments about extensions -- while not referenced by Brookover, a more careful blogger might have figured this out -- especially one who had saved it to his delicious!  I am not that more careful blogger. Mea culpa! Someone let me know if this counts as a retraction.]