If you're gonna win BFIG, you have to place your trust in a wide range of teams throughout the year. Just don't trust the Eagles. (Part 2 of our "torpedoed dreams" series.)
The basic premise of a survivor pool is to pick a team to win its game. Only "Tag" and the Butt Fumble Drinking Game have a simpler set of rules.
Survival's utter simplicity holds for 31 of the 32 teams: Over several seasons, a team will behave as expected - winning when picked, losing when picked against - most of the time.
Who's the 32nd team, you ask? The Philadelphia "Torpedo Your Motherf***ing Dreams" Eagles.
2016 Update: 3-3 when picked; accounted for just TWO total picks after Week 7, going 1-1.
The Eagles are the most-picked team in BFIG history to be under .500.
Think about that. Each week, you have somewhere between six and 16 games to choose from, and you're gonna pick just one game - a game that inspires confidence. No point spreads. No tricks. Just "I'm pretty sure THAT team is going to win its game." You run this weekly proposition through seven seasons, surely eliminating fluke games and season-long aberrations. You see one team has been picked 29 times in those seven seasons, which suggests that the team is consistently regarded as pretty good, but that people don't over-pick them (~4 picks/season).
Then you notice that said team has lost more than half those games.
Philadelphia fans are notoriously ornery. Hold up, lemme change that...
Philadelphia fans are notoriously justifiably ornery.
And it gets way worse.
The Eagles don't just torpedo dreams, they torpedo very real dreams. No team can even sniff the soul-crushing futility Philadelphia has exhibited in the season's final weeks - when title belts are awarded and large sums of money doled out.
In Week 16, 2010, the 10-4 Eagles played host to the 5-9 Vikings. Michael Vick and the Eagles had serious playoff hopes at stake. Minnesota was starting Joe Webb at quarterback.
Webb's 2010 statline included zero passing touchdowns, three picks, and a yards-per-attempt just north of 5. His team wasn't very good, either.
Naturally, the 14-point-favorite Eagles lost, knocking three title belt hopefuls out and forcing a Week 17 pickoff to determine 2010's champ.
They ran it back the next year, when eight of the final 10 survivors picked Philly in a Week 10 home tilt versus Arizona and its legendary QB, John Skelton.
Joe Webb and John Skelton.
Last year, the Eagles managed to out-Eagles themselves.
In 2015's penultimate week, the Eagles blew a 16-3 halftime lead at home to punchless Miami, knocking out 24 percent of the remaining title pool.
One week later, again at home, Philly let Jameis beat them by four touchdowns. That torpedoed Roger Rignack's dreams - one of our three remaining survivors - and enabled Phil Dorjath to bring home the title astonishingly early (Week 11).
A few weeks later, Chip Kelly was canned, perhaps because Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie plays NFL survivor.
... does anybody know Jeffrey, by the way? GET HIM IN THE POOL!
Add it all up, and the Eagles haven't won a game in BFIG's final three weeks since 2009, our inaugural year. Five straight losses in that timeframe.
Five straight losses, to Skelton, Webb, post-op RG3, Tannehill, and Jameis.
On the bright side, the Eagles are proof that the NFL is not an organized crime ring. Why, you ask?
Because it'd be WAY too obvious they were the outfit throwing games.
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You can check out all five "torpedoed dreams" articles here. Truth be told, from a coldly rational, Barnwellian perspective, none of this stuff should matter. But it shouldn't have mattered in 2009-2016, either... Pick at your own risk!
And if you haven't gotten in for the 2017 NFL SZN, you have till Sunday (9/10) at 9:50am PDT. GET IN HERE!