Eagles Win and Clinch a Playoff Berth. Everyone is Miserable.

The Eagles won on Sunday, even if it didn’t feel like it. A three-win Panthers team gave them a scare, and while Saquon Barkley broke the franchise single-season rushing record, Jalen Hurts and the passing game did not impress.

Other winners on Sunday? Dick Allen, who was finally elected to the Hall of Fame. And the Sixers, with a special guest appearance from Joel Embiid.

Sadly, we have no wins to report for the Flyers.

In the email today:

• 🫤 Eagles Improve to 11-2 But Fail to Impress

• 🏆 Phillies Legend Dick Allen is a Hall of Famer

• 😡 Flyers Take Two Big Steps Backward in Lost Weekend

• ⬆️ Embiid Returns, Leads Sixers to Win Over Bulls

  • 📆 This Day in Philly Sports History

  • 📊 Poll

  • 🔗 Links

  • 📺 Coming Up

This game was supposed to be fun.

Your 10-2 Philadelphia Eagles were favored by double digits over a 3-9 Panthers squad. The Birds ultimately prevailed, but it wasn't pretty. 22-16 was the final.

Some highlights and reactions:

Saquon Barkley broke the Eagles' single-season rushing record

With 124 yards on 20 carries, Barkley broke LeSean McCoy's single-season rushing record. He still has four games left to play.

A.J. Brown says “passing” is a problem

Jalen Hurts threw for just 108 yards in the win. A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith combined for eight catches and 80 yards. Brown did not look happy afterwards:

This isn’t exactly Terrell Owens doing sit-ups in his driveway. But any hint of an unhappy superstar receiver is cause for concern.

Jake Elliott is now 0/5 on field goal attempts 50 yards or longer

Elliot’s miss didn’t matter today, but at some point the Eagles are going to need him to make a big kick. Can he be trusted? Right now, it sure doesn’t look like it.

It wasn’t all bad

Your Birds still won the game, their ninth straight W. They clinched a playoff spot and are in the mix for the NFC’s top seed. Barkley is a force of nature. And one unimpressive game does not define the Eagles’ passing attack or defense.

Deep breaths, Bird Gang. Let’s see how they look next week against the Steelers.

From now on, when you say his name? Make sure to preface it correctly.

It's "Hall of Famer" Dick Allen.

The National Baseball Hall of Fame righted one of its most shameful wrongs on Sunday, when its 16-member Classic Baseball Era Committee voted Allen into the Hall.

Allen's case for the Hall of Fame was always incredibly strong. For example:

• His career WAR placed him near the middle of the pack when compared to first basemen or third basemen already in the Hall; and

• His career OPS+, a metric which adjusts OPS to make it comparable across baseball's various eras and ballparks, was higher than all but two hitters in MLB history who are not in the Hall of Fame (min. 7,000 plate appearances): Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire.

Allen hit .292/.378/.533 (.912 OPS) in his 15-year major league career, with 1,848 hits, 351 home runs, and 1,119 RBI. He accumulated 58.7 WAR, as calculated by Baseball Reference, and posted a 156 OPS+.

He racked up seven career All-Star selections, won a Rookie of the Year award in 1964, and was the American League MVP in 1972. Allen played for the Phillies from 1963 through 1969, then returned to Philadelphia for the 1975 and 1976 seasons.

Mike Schmidt believes that Allen was kept out of the Hall of Fame because he spoke his mind as a Black man in the 1960s and 1970s, in the face of racial hostility. "Dick did the wrong thing; he became the best player on his team,” Schmidt said in 2020, when the Phillies retire. “He became the star of the team. He was a sensitive Black man who refused to be treatedd Allen’s number (15) as a second-class citizen . . . Dick has had to fight labels his entire life.”

John Middleton echoed those sentiments: “It makes [Allen's] extraordinary achievement even more special when you consider the circumstances, the conditions under which he had to live and perform.

It’s a damn shame this didn’t get done while Allen was alive. But on Sunday July 27, 2025--nearly 50 years after Allen played his last game--the Wampum Whammer will be forever enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

Exactly where he should be.

It was a very busy weekend for the Orange and Black. And not a good one.

Up 3-1 through two periods in Boston on Saturday afternoon, the Flyers were on their way to a statement road win. After they spit the bit against the Florida Panthers last Thursday, a win Saturday would have been useful.

Unfortunately, the same sort of undisciplined play that doomed the Flyers against the Panthers cropped up again on Saturday, with similar results.

Travis Konecny, who had taken a nasty shot early in the third period, committed a penalty and then appeared to have been removed from the game for suspicion of a concussion only after Konecny committed a penalty.

Flyers coach John Tortorella waved off speculation that Konecny was pulled for concussion reasons, which is almost worse.

The Flyers survived that Bruins power play and two others in the third period, but the accumulated toll of playing six shorthanded minutes without Konecny almost certainly played a role in the Flyers’ inability to hold the lead and finish the game.

Last night against the Utah Hockey Club, the Flyers were inexplicably played to nearly a statistical standstill by a team playing its second road game in two days.

Puck luck was not with the Flyers in this one. Utah’s first goal was a harmless shot that goaltender Sam Ersson kicked away only to see it bounce in off his defenseman’s skate.

Later, the Flyers had a goal taken off the board after video review determined that Travis Konecny interfered with Utah goaltender Jaxson Stauber.

Any hope of a late comeback was dashed when the Flyers gave up an ECHL-level shorthanded goal with a little over four minutes left to give Utah the 4-2 lead which became the final score.

Whatever good feelings the Flyers generated in the past couple of weeks as they clawed their way above .500 have largely evaporated.

The Flyers return to the ice for their third game in four days in Columbus on Tuesday night.

After Friday night’s home win over the Orlando Magic, it seemed like the Sixers had started to really figure out how to play without Joel Embiid.

Embiid returned to action Sunday afternoon in Chicago and gave his teammates and Sixers fans a happy glimpse of how easy the game can look when Embiid plays.

After starting out 0-6 from the field in his first five minutes, Embiid finished with 31 points on 13-28 shooting and 12 rebounds.

Embiid’s return restored the natural order in other important ways, too.

With Embiid playing 33 minutes (and Paul George logging 35), coach Nick Nurse was able to spot deploy the likes of KJ Martin (18 minutes) and Caleb Martin (13 minutes) rather than lean on them for significant chunks of time. The difference was noticeable.

Tyrese Maxey’s three-point shooting is still a concern (3-12 against the Bulls), but he still scraped together 25 points on his way to his first career triple-double. Yeah…we figured he had done that at least once before, too.

The season has still been a significant disappointment to date. But with this win the Sixers moved to 7-15. More importantly, they dragged themselves to within a game and a half of the 10th seed (currently held by Chicago).

The Sixers now get one of those very unusual dark windows of the schedule as they don’t play again until Friday night at home against the Indiana Pacers.

Will Embiid play? Will George? Is four days’ rest enough for them to feature on Friday night? Watch this space.

📆 This Day in Philly Sports History

On December 9, 2012, Nick Foles led the Eagles to a win for the first time in his career.

📊 Poll

Results from Friday:

Our readers nailed it once again.

🔗 Links

• 🏥 Magic forward Franz Wagner hung 30 on the Sixers with a torn oblique.

• ⚽️ LA Galaxy won their sixth MLS Cup.

• 🏈 Penn State failed up with their loss to Oregon in the Big Ten Championship game.

• 📆 Speaking of which, Alabama’s athletic director noticed how Penn State loaded up on cupcakes and is thinking of going to the bakery.

📺 Coming Up

No games for the locals tonight.

Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.

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