—Jim Skipper

No one, and I mean no one, had NFC-champion Carolina Panthers on their bingo card heading into the ’03 season. Google the preseason Las Vegas odds for that year and you’ll find that just four other NFL teams were given a slimmer chance of making it to the Super Bowl than the Panthers.

The Panthers were just two years removed from 1–15. They had improved their win total by six games in ’02, which clearly was a promising sign. But heading into the ’03 season, they didn’t even know who their starting quarterback was going to be, and neither of the options—37-year-old journeyman Rodney Peete and inexperienced Jake Delhomme, who had spent the previous four years as the Saints’ third-string quarterback—seemed all that enticing.

Sam and Mark Fields’ cancer diagnoses were also weighing heavily on everyone’s minds entering the season, both inside and outside the locker room.

Fox settled on Delhomme as his starting quarterback. Delhomme was competent, throwing three more touchdown passes (19) than interceptions (16). But the Panthers’ ’03 offense under Dan Henning was more the old-school ground-and-pound than quarterback-driven.

They had signed former Washington Redskins running back Stephen Davis in the offseason. The 6’2”, 230-pound Davis, who had averaged 1,244 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns the previous four seasons with Washington, would rush for a career-high 1,444 yards for the Panthers in ’03.

Still, the Panthers were hardly an offensive juggernaut. They finished 15th in scoring. They managed to score just 21 more points than their opponents (325–304). They put up more than 24 points in a game just twice in the entire regular season—once in a 27–24 Week 10 win over Tampa Bay, and then again in a 37–24 win over the 4–12 New York Giants in their final regular-season game.

The Panthers won their first five games and eight of their first 10, including an unlikely 12–9 overtime win over the Bucs in Week 2. The Bucs scored with no time left in regulation to tie the game and needed only the extra point to win. But Panthers defensive tackle Kris Jenkins blocked Martin Grammatica’s PAT to force overtime. Carolina won the game on a 47-yard field goal by John Kasay.

They would finish 11–5 and win their first division title since that magical ’96 season. Most of those 11 wins were by very thin margins. Ten of the 11 were by seven points or less, and seven were by three points or less.

“Looking back, I do think that what happened to Sam and Mark was a big reason we were so centered that year,” says head coach John Fox. “What they were going through allowed us to keep things in perspective. It was, Oh, you think you’ve got it bad? Look at them. We could always bring it back to the two of them.”

While his team gutted out wins, Mills relentlessly battled his cancer. He endured the chemo treatments and somehow found the strength to continue to coach. The doctors’ three- to- four-month survival prognosis came and went, and Sam was still standing strong.

“Sam already was held in high regard in that city long before he got sick,” says assistant coach Ken Flajole. “But when people saw how he fought and how he battled and the character that he showed and the spirit that he showed after he was diagnosed, it just emboldened the spirit of the team. Our players embraced it and embraced him. They loved him for the kind of guy he was.”

Sam’s oldest son, Sam III, joined Jackie Miles’ equipment staff that season, which gave him the chance to spend more time with his father as he battled the cancer. He and his dad would ride to work together each morning. He would take his father to chemo treatments and sit and talk with him.

“I didn’t know how much time my dad had left, but it meant a lot to be there with him,” he says.

Carolina’s 11–5 record was the third best in the NFC, which earned them a first-round home playoff game against the 10–6 Cowboys. The Cowboys had beaten the Panthers in Dallas in mid-November, 24–20.

The Carolina offense had struggled mightily in that game, with Delhomme completing just nine of 24 passes. Stephen Davis had been held to 2.3 yards per carry. The Panthers had converted just one of 11 third-down opportunities.

Before the Panthers hired him as their head coach, John Fox had spent five years as the defensive coordinator for the New York Giants. His boss there, Jim Fassel, had a tradition of picking a player or coach each week to address the team after its final walk-through practice the day before the game. Fox had brought that tradition with him to Carolina.

The morning before the Cowboys rematch, Fox approached Mills and asked him if he would address the team after practice.

“It was kind of spontaneous,” Fox said. “There was nothing real planned or orchestrated about it. It was one of those situations where Sam was as healthy as he’d been in a while, if that makes sense. He hadn’t been around a lot [because of the cancer treatments]. The team was very excited to even see him, let alone hear him speak to them.”

Fox says he had no idea what Mills was going to say.

“No clue,” he says. “I just knew it would be thoughtful and from the heart. And that’s exactly what it was. Sam wasn’t a big rah-rah guy. But oftentimes, those end up being your best leaders because when they do speak, it’s very meaningful.”

In Charlotte, it will forever be known as the Keep Pounding speech. After practice ended that morning, the team’s players, coaches, and training staff gathered in the middle of the field behind Ericsson Stadium. You could hear a pin drop as Sam spoke.

“Everybody talks about how my cancer battle has been an inspiration to you guys,” Sam said to them. “But the truth is, it’s been you guys who have inspired me and taught me how to keep fighting, keep pounding.

“When I got diagnosed, the doctors told me that I probably only had three or four months to live. But I refused to accept that. In life or football or whatever you do, you can roll over or you can keep pounding.”

Mills referenced the improbable overtime win over the Bucs when Kris Jenkins blocked the PAT with no time left to send the game into overtime. He said that game was the turning point for him personally in his cancer battle.

“No one blocks extra points; it just doesn’t happen,” Mills said. “But you guys believed you could and you did it.

“Just like you did that day, I’m going to keep pounding. They gave me three months. Three months and I was supposed to be dead. But I’m still here, and it’s because of you guys.”

Safety Mike Minter, who had played with Mills as a rookie in ’97 and spent 10 seasons with the Panthers, called it a “simple speech.”

“But that was Sam,” he says. “The great speeches aren’t great moments until later. Everybody who left the field that day knew.”

“Sam’s address became a big part of our success,” says John Fox. “It rallied the team. It rallied the whole city. I coached for more than 40 years and I never saw anything like it.”

Dan Morgan, a starting linebacker on that team and now the Panthers’ general manager, said he was fighting back tears by the end of Sam’s speech. He wasn’t alone.

There are some cynics who will tell you words can’t inspire a team to play better. But none of the people who would say that were there that day. Less than 24 hours after Mills addressed the team, the Panthers would go out and play their best game of the season, manhandling the Cowboys 29–10.

The game was never close. The Panthers scored on seven of their 12 possessions. Stephen Davis, who had been silenced by the Cowboys back in November, rushed for 104 yards in the win-or-go-home rematch, including a 23-yard touchdown run in the second quarter that gave the Panthers a 13–0 lead.

Delhomme also came up big, completing 18 of 29 passes for 273 yards, including a 32-yard touchdown pass to Steve Smith in the third quarter that put the game away. Smith also had a 70-yard catch that set up another score.

Keep Pounding became the team’s inspirational battle cry for the ’03 postseason. But it would become much, much more than that. It would become a legacy to one of the most beloved players in Panthers history.

Walk into the team’s locker room or weight room today more than two decades after that speech, and you will see Keep Pounding signs on the walls. A year after Sam’s death, Nike embroidered Keep Pounding inside the neck of the Panthers’ game jerseys. It’s been there ever since.

“What Sam said that day was a big part of our success,” says John Fox. “It rallied the team. It rallied the whole city.”

There is a giant Keep Pounding drum on the sideline at Panthers home games. Right before kickoff of every game, a special guest bangs the drum four times. Sam’s wife Melanie has done it. So have three of his children. There is a Keep Pounding cancer fund. There is an annual Keep Pounding 5K run in Charlotte. There is a Keep Pounding Blood Drive and a Keep Pounding Kids Program. Nearly $25 million has been raised under the Keep Pounding banner for cancer research.

The week after their wildcard win over the Cowboys, the Panthers defeated the St. Louis Rams in overtime, 29–23, on a 69-yard touchdown pass from Delhomme to Steve Smith.

That set up a rematch with the NFC’s top seed, the Eagles, in the NFC Championship Game in Philly. The Panthers had lost to the Eagles at home in November, 25–16. But they went into Philly and beat the Birds 14–3 to earn their first-ever trip to the Super Bowl. Carolina’s defense had four interceptions and five sacks in the win. Dan Morgan had a team-high 13 tackles.

As Jim Skipper was leaving the field after the game, he saw Sam sitting alone on the visitor’s bench at Lincoln Financial Field. Two decades earlier, they both had started their pro careers in Philadelphia with the Stars, Skipper as an assistant coach on Jim Mora’s staff and Mills as a linebacker. They had become close friends. Their families were close.

“He had tears in his eyes,” Skipper says. “I didn’t bother him. He wanted to be alone. He needed time to reflect on whatever he was reflecting on. That touched me big-time. I’ll always remember that moment. It should’ve been one of the happiest times of my life. We were going to the Super Bowl. But I was a little subdued in the locker room thinking about Sam.”

The Super Bowl that year was in Houston. The Panthers’ opponent was Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots. The team flew down the Monday before the game, but Mills had a chemo treatment on Tuesday and was going to fly down separately later in the week.

The chemo treatment sapped Sam’s strength worse than usual. He had waited his whole life to get to the Super Bowl. And he could barely walk to the bathroom. He called his agent and friend, Brett Senior.

“I can’t believe it,” he told him in a soft, raspy voice. “This is something I always dreamed about. Getting to the Super Bowl. And I don’t have the energy to get up and walk right now.”

Senior said the two of them prayed together over the phone for a few minutes. Before hanging up, Mills said, “Brett, I’m going to be there.”

Somehow, someway, Mills made it to Houston. At 6 a.m. on the morning of the Super Bowl, Senior’s phone rang.

It was Mills.

“I’m going out for a run,” Mills told Senior. “I feel great.”

“You do? Really?” Senior said in disbelief. “That’s terrific.”

“Now, I don’t know if he actually felt great,” Senior says now. “But he did go out for a two-mile run.”

That night, Mills was on the sideline coaching against Tom Brady and the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXVIII. Trailing by seven in the fourth quarter, the Panthers drove 80 yards on seven plays to tie the game with 1:08 left on a 12-yard pass from Delhomme to Ricky Proehl. But John Kasay’s ensuing kickoff went out of bounds, giving Brady the ball on his own 40-yard line. He drove the Patriots close enough for Adam Vinatieri to win the game with a 41-yard field goal, 32–29.

To this day, the players and coaches on that Panthers team are convinced that Mills’ inspirational Keep Pounding address before the Dallas game was what propelled them to the Super Bowl.

“Did Sam’s speech give us a little more juice in that playoff run?” Ken Flajole says. “No doubt about it. You like to think that when you finally get into the tournament, you should have enough juice.

“But I think the guys had a little something extra. Because they weren’t only playing for themselves, and their families, and the organization. I think they felt they were playing for Sam.

“They wanted to win for Sam.’’

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From the minute Vic Fangio arrived in Charlotte to become the Panthers’ defensive coordinator, he had lobbied hard to sign Sam Mills. They had been together for 11 years—nine in New Orleans and two in Philadelphia. They were good friends. Fangio knew the Saints were in a salary-cap bind and hadn’t yet made an offer to Mills, who was about to become a free agent. He also knew better than anybody that, despite his advanced age, Sam still had plenty of gas left in his tank. “To get a guy of Sam’s stature and his ability and what he would bring to a new franchise, to me it was just a no-brainer,” he says.

Panthers head coach Dom Capers, like Fangio, was all for bringing in Mills. He told general manager Bill Polian he couldn’t think of a better guy to start a new franchise with.

Polian, who as a young scout with the Chiefs in 1981 had made the mistake of thinking Mills was too short to play in the NFL, long ago realized he had gotten that wrong. As soon as Capers brought up Sam’s name, he contacted Brett Senior and offered Mills a two-year, $2.8 million deal, which was pretty good money at the time. Senior reached out to his client, who happened to be at Disney World at the time with his family. Sam wasn’t going to make the decision on his own. Everybody had a say. He and Mel and the kids held an impromptu meeting in their hotel room and voted unanimously to take the Panthers’ offer.

“He asked us what we thought,” said Marcus, who was 12 at the time. “His feelings about the way the Saints had treated him were pretty clear. We were all onboard for going to Charlotte. All I had ever known was New Orleans. I was excited to see what else was out there. I think my dad was too.”

With the possible exception of Capers and Fangio, nobody was more excited to have Mills sign with the Panthers than Brett Maxie. Maxie and Mills had been teammates in New Orleans for eight seasons. They were also close friends.

Maxie, a safety who started 72 games for the Saints, had left New Orleans a year before Mills after suffering the second ACL tear of his career. He considered retirement, then signed with the Falcons in ’94 before joining his old Saints position coach, Capers, in Carolina after he got the head-coaching job. Maxie signed with the Panthers a couple of weeks before Polian made the offer to Mills.

He was in Capers’ office at the team’s training facility at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, about 25 miles south of Charlotte, watching game film when the Panthers head coach told him they were going to try to sign Mills.

“We’re going to make him an offer,” Capers said. “I think he wants to come. But why don’t you give him a call? It would help.”

Maxie called Sam. He told Maxie he was excited about the prospect of playing for a new team.

“We’re going to make it happen, Max,” Mills told him. “I never thought I would ever be leaving New Orleans. But I think I have to.”’

For the second time in his career, Sam Mills was joining a startup franchise. He helped lead the first one, the Philadelphia Stars, to two USFL championships in three years. Now, at the age of 35, after four Pro Bowl appearances with the Saints, he was getting in on the ground floor of an NFL expansion team.

His signing with Carolina in early March of 1995 barely caused a ripple in the NFL free agency waters, even in Charlotte. The Dallas Cowboys’ signing of Deion Sanders to a seven-year, $25 million deal got the biggest national headlines. Sanders had been the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year with San Francisco the season before. A week before signing Mills, the Panthers flexed their salary cap muscles by handing out a five-year, $13.8 million deal to 28-year-old pass-rushing linebacker Lamar Lathon.

Mills’ signing flew well under the radar. Counting his three years in the USFL, he had played in nearly 250 professional football games. Besides Carolina and the Saints, no other teams had expressed any serious interest in signing him.

But the Panthers knew what they were getting. Mills would provide immediate leadership to a young expansion team. He would be a steadying force and a coach on the field.

“I had so much trust in him that I was going to listen to everything he said,” Capers says. “It didn’t take long for our players to feel the same way.”

Much like he did in New Orleans, Mills mentored younger teammates and helped many of them deal with the pressures of professional football.

Lathon, who would record 21 ½ sacks in his first two seasons with Carolina, was an extraordinarily talented athlete. At 6’3” and 260 pounds, he was a physical freak and had incredible power, explosion, and range. But he also was high-strung and had a short fuse. Mills kept him focused and under control.

“The second Sam would see Lamar losing his cool and losing his concentration, he would settle him down,” Capers says.

The Panthers won the coin flip with the league’s other expansion team in ’95, the Jacksonville Jaguars, so they had the first pick in the draft. Everyone thought they were going to take Penn State running back Ki-Jana Carter.

But Polian wanted a quarterback to build his new team around, much like he had done in Buffalo with Jim Kelly. He traded out of the top spot down to No. 5 and took Carter’s Penn State teammate, Kerry Collins.

The 6’5”, 247-pound Collins had a linebacker build like Kelly. He was a sturdy, strong-armed quarterback who would go on to play 17 years in the NFL and start 180 games. But the early part of that long career was, for lack of a better word, erratic.

When he arrived in Charlotte in ’95, Collins was very immature and more interested in enjoying the celebrity perks of being a professional athlete rather than putting in the time to learn how to become a consistently productive NFL quarterback. “He went into the NFL thinking it was going to be one big party,” his brother Pat said later.

Collins lasted just three seasons and a part of a fourth with the Panthers before they ran out of patience with his drinking, partying, immaturity, and inconsistent play, and released him. He would eventually get sober and turn his career around, but not in Carolina.

Mills tried unsuccessfully to get through to Collins. One time, Collins admitted to reporters that he was dealing with a lack of confidence. Mills sat him down and tried to talk him through it and give him some advice on how to deal with the media.

Another time, during training camp in Spartanburg, South Carolina, a drunk Collins was at a nightclub with some of his teammates and made a racist joke. He was an immature kid and was just trying to be funny and fit in. He thought his Black teammates would laugh. They didn’t. The story got out and Collins found himself branded as a racist. He made a public apology, but the damage had been done.

“Sam sat me down and said, ‘C’mon, man. You’re better than this,”’ Collins says. “It wasn’t judgmental. He was trying to help me. I always appreciated that. Unfortunately, at the time, I was battling a lot of stuff and wasn’t ready to be helped at that point. But I was always grateful to Sam that he took the time to try and help me.’’

Mills’ leadership skills were off the charts. Hall of Fame coach Tony Dungy has a phrase he likes to use: quiet strength. It fit Mills to a tee. Sam wasn’t a yeller or screamer. If he had something to say, it came from his soul. And the value of those words was multiplied by 100.

“Sam was a thermostat instead of a thermometer,” Brett Maxie says. “You could see the room change when he walked into it. He was just the consummate pro and teammate because he was always doing the right thing, even when nobody saw it.

“It was how he challenged men to get better. A lot of great players would meet Sam for the first time and immediately feel like they had known him their whole lives because the impact he made on them was genuine.”

The veteran Mills was the perfect fit for the inexperienced Panthers in so many ways in ’95. Capers was a first-time head coach. Fangio was a first-time defensive coordinator. Kevin Steele, the team’s inside linebackers coach, came from the college ranks and had never worked in the NFL before. Bill Davis, who was the team’s outside linebackers coach, had been a defensive assistant under Capers in Pittsburgh but had never been in charge of a position group before.

Mondays and Tuesdays typically are off-days for players in pro football. But never for Mills. He called them his “advantage days.” Those were the days when he got to be the coach and do the work. He would get an early look at the defensive game plan from Fangio. He would have Sam III or Marcus quiz him on it. By Wednesday, when the coaching staff would be giving the rest of the team the game plan for that week, Mills already had committed it to memory and would help his teammates learn it.

“The biggest piece for a defensive player is [figuring out] if it’s going to be run or pass,” Bill Davis says. “You have a run assignment to execute and a pass assignment. That’s hard. But when Sam gives you the answer to the test before the play, well, now your chances for success go through the roof. That’s what Sam brought to a young team. It was a hidden value that he brought to every practice and every game.”

Kevin Steele had spent 14 years as a college assistant at Tennessee, New Mexico State, Oklahoma State, and Nebraska before Capers hired him. The Panthers were his first NFL job. Steele was a very good coach, but there’s a significant learning curve when you go from college to the NFL, whether you’re a player or a coach. Mills helped Steele navigate that learning curve.

“Many of the coaches on that staff had an impact on me as I made the transition,” Steele says. “But to be quite frank with you, Sam taught me more about being a pro coach than anybody else, and it wasn’t even close.”

Like Fangio, Steele was only a year older than Mills. He would ask him questions about the pro game and would even ask him questions about Fangio and Capers’ defense since Sam knew it a lot better than he did.

“I tell people all the time, as a rookie coach in the NFL, coaching a guy that was pretty close to the same age as me, the transition was pretty easy because Sam didn’t allow me to make mistakes,” says Steele. “He was always there to make sure, in his coded way, to not let me make mistakes as a transitional coach.”

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Inside the box was a pair of brand-new custom Air Jordan Eagles cleats. On the white toe of the cleats was an inscription: To M. Reese. You saw it when nobody else could. Love always, Jalen Hurts.

You may recall that the Eagles received quite a bit of criticism from both fans and media in 2020 when they selected Hurts in the second round of the draft, just 10 months after giving Carson Wentz a $128.9 million contract extension.

But Reese, who is entering his 50^th year as the “voice’’ of the Eagles, applauded the move from moment it was announced and has been one of the quarterback’s biggest advocates during his six seasons with the Eagles.

“That meant more to me than the [Super Bowl] rings,’’ Reese said of the Air Jordans. “I mean, rings are great and they mean a lot to me. I don’t mean to minimize that.

“But to think that the quarterback, the Super Bowl MVP, would think about something other than himself and appreciate the fact that I’ve been somebody who has believed in him from the beginning, well, that meant a lot to me.’’

Life has been very good to Merrill Reese. He’s been married to Cindy, the love of his life, for 47 years, or as they say, 23 ½ if you don’t count football season. They have two children – Nolan and Ida – and two grandchildren.

He is less than two months away from his 84th birthday and still is healthy and fit enough to play golf 4-5 times a week during the summer before training camp starts.

Reese is the longest tenured radio play-by-play broadcaster in NFL history. Fifty years and counting. Fifty years!

In April, aware of Reese’s approaching milestone, Hurts approached the team and asked if he could do a little bit of role reversal and interview the broadcaster.

“We went up to the draft room,’’ Reese said. “What it really was was an hour of conversation. It wasn’t really a Q&A. It was him talking to me and me talking to him. Just back and forth.

“It was one of the most enjoyable hours of my life sitting there with him and talking football and our attitudes and thoughts going into games and what he feels. It was really amazing because he’s a quiet guy. He’s not Mr. Outgoing Broadcast Personality. He’s one of the most sincere, nicest people on the face of the earth.’’

The quarterback’s interview with Reese will air on all of the team’s online channels on September 8. A week later, on the 15^th, WIP, which airs Eagles games, will celebrate Reese’s 50 years in the booth with a special event at the Kimmel Theater.

For his part, Reese is taking all of the hoopla in stride. While he certainly understands the significance of his historic run, 50 is just another number for him.

“I just love doing this so much,’’ he said. “I’m as excited as ever for the season to come. I truly appreciate [the attention], but it’s just not my focus. My focus is football and doing the best job I can.’’

It’s not unusual for broadcasters, like athletes, to “lose a step’’ as they get older. But Reese still is at the top of the game. His distinctive baritone voice is still as strong and as appealing as ever. His ability to paint a picture of the game for the listener is as good as ever.

“My eyes, my voice and my memory are the same, thank God,’’ he said. “That’s why I can still do it and still love to do it. Physically, I feel great.

“The thing that people worry about in this job is your eyes. But I had cataract surgery a number of years ago and my eyes are great. I have some distance glasses that I’ll put on from time to time if I’m in a tough stadium.

“But my voice, I listen to tapes, and it hasn’t changed. I don’t smoke or do anything to hurt my voice. I don’t yell. The night before a game, I’m very careful with my voice. I don’t talk much on the phone the day before a game. I try to kind of go into training a little bit the day before a game.’’

Reese has been working with the same people for years. His partner on Eagles broadcasts, former All Pro wide receiver Mike Quick, is entering his 28^th year in the Eagles booth. Producer Joe McPeak has been with Reese for 41 years. His spotter, legendary talk-show host Bill Werndl, has been with him for 35 years.

“Merrill has a lot of history and has tremendous recall of that history,’’ said Quick. “He has a lot of things that make him the great – and I do say great – broadcaster that he is. But the most important thing is the passion that he brings to it every time. It’s a passion that seems like it’s the first time every time.’’

Over the years, Reese has had offers from the television networks that broadcast NFL football to come work for them. It would’ve meant more money, more national prestige and recognition. But he said he never has been really tempted to leave.

“I love the lifestyle I have in that I only travel half the time [compared to being on the road every week as a network broadcaster],’’ he said. “I’ve been able to be home with my family.

“And I love doing Eagles games. It’s the team I grew up rooting for. And I love doing radio and painting the picture [for listeners] rather than filling in the essentials [on television broadcasts]. It’s just what I love doing.’’

Reese, who was inducted into the Eagles Hall of Fame in 2016, is one of the best football picture painters who has ever lived. Two years ago, he was presented with the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award by the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Previous winners included Joe Buck, John Facenda, Al Michaels, Andrea Kremer, John Madden, Jim Nantz and Brent Musberger.

He was driving on the Blue Route on his way to play golf two years ago when Jim Porter, the president of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, called him to let him know he had won the Rozelle award.

“I pulled over and all I could do was cry,’’ Reese said. “I’m not Dick Vermeil, who cries at basketball games. But I was really emotional. When I called Cindy to tell her, I started crying again. She got concerned. She said, “Have you been in an accident? Are you hurt?’ I said no, no, no. I’m going into the Hall of Fame.’’

An honor that means every bit as much to Reese as the Rozelle award and his induction into the Eagles Hall of Fame, was one he received in 2013 from the Allied Services for the Blind, the Louis Braille Award. The plaque hangs in a prominent spot in his office.

“I’ve received countless emails and letters over the years from people who are unsighted who thank me for teaching them football and allowing them to enjoy the game through my eyes,’’ Reese said.

Reese said a radio play-by-play man has to be fundamentally sound. He calls it STDD – score, time and down-and-distance.

“If I don’t give the score every minute-and-a-half or two, Joe McPeak puts a card in my face that says score/time,’’ he said. “You’ve got to be fundamentally sound. Don’t get so hysterical on a play where [the listener] can’t follow it.

“No one knows this, but I’ll slow it down a little bit. I may be a second behind the catch or the move because it’s easier for people to follow. I’m broadcasting to people who can’t see the game, so I have to paint the picture for them. And you can’t do that if you’re talking a million miles a minute.

“They can’t understand you. I’d rather say [slowly], ‘complete to DeVonta Smith in the corner of the end zone,’ rather than [faster and more excited], ‘completoDeVontaSmithinthecorneroftheendzone!’’’

Reese’s early career aspiration was the same as a lot of young boys. He wanted to be a professional athlete. “I was like every other kid, dreaming of striking out the last batter in the ninth inning of the World Series or making the one-on-one [free throws] that won the basketball game,’’ he said.

Reese grew up in the Overbrook Park section of Philly. His father was a dentist and his mother was a kindergarten teacher. They lived in the house behind his father’s dental office.

His mother had show-business flair. She was a dancer and ran her own dance school during summers when she was in college.

When Merrill and his sister were young, their mom would take them for drama and singing lessons. By the time he was nine, Reese was appearing in television commercials. He also made regular appearances on a local radio show called Let’s Pretend.

His drama teacher insisted that he memorize the script for the show rather than read it. So, his mother would help him memorize a 26-page script until he knew it backwards and forwards.

“I attribute that to the fact that I can memorize a roster very quickly,’’ Reese said. “Cindy walks around the house with flashcards during the week. She picks one up and calls out a number. When people say I have an amazing memory, I really believe it developed at a very early age when I was memorizing those scripts.’’

Reese’s first broadcasting job was doing high school games for WPAZ in Pottstown. The station owner had some initial reservations about hiring Merrill. “He looked at me and said, ‘I’d give you a chance, but you look like you’d have a nervous breakdown [on air],’’’ he said. “I had no confidence at that point.’’

The station owner decided to take a chance on Reese, mainly because he didn’t have any other options. He told Merrill that it was between him or dead air.

His first play-by-play assignment was a high school football game between Pottsgrove and Spring-Ford. He didn’t have a nervous breakdown, handled the assignment well and was hired full-time, working seven days a week for the princely sum of $65.

He went to WBCB in Levittown from there. While he was working for them, he auditioned for a job at KYW Radio. The news director at KYW at the time was a guy named Reggie Laite. He had Reese write and record a newscast.

“When I was done, I thought I had absolutely nailed it,’’ Reese said. “I didn’t mispronounce any words. I didn’t stumble. He called me and said, ‘I’m going to do you a big favor.’ I’m thinking, ‘Oh, man. I’m going to be on 50,000-watt KYW.’

“Then he said to me, ‘This is the nicest thing anybody will ever do for you. I’m going to tell you that if you want to have a productive career, if you want to make a successful living, it’s got to be in another field.’

“He said, ‘You will never work in a major market because you don’t sound like what we want people to sound like. You sound different. Go into something else.’’’

Needless to say, Reese was absolutely crushed. Here was a respected news director at one of the biggest radio stations in the country telling him he had no future as a broadcaster.

He was still living at home at the time. When he got home that night, his mother could tell something was bothering him.

“What’s wrong?’’ she asked him.

He told her what Laite had said.

“You know what, he’s right,’’ his mother said.

A stunned Reese looked at his mother and said, “What do you mean he’s right?’’

“It’s my fault,’’ his mother said. “Because I obviously raised a weakling. If you’re going to let one guy throw you so off-kilter that you can’t even look at your dinner, then he’s right.’’

His mother’s message got through to Reese loud and clear. The next day, he went back to WBCB, determined to prove to Reggie Laite that he was wrong about him.

From WBCB, Reese went to WWDB, which was a jazz music station with hourly newscasts at the time. At one point, he went to the program director and suggested doing five minutes of sports on the hour from 6 to 9 in the morning. The program director told him it wasn’t a sports station.

“How about if I come in and do the sports at 6:05, 7:05, 8:05 and 9:05 for free, then come back and do my regular news shift from 12 to 8?’’ Reese said.

“Hmmm,’’ said the program director. “Maybe sports in the morning could work.’’

A couple of years later, Reese found out that WIP was looking for somebody to fill in for the station’s sports director, Charlie Swift, during his month-long summer vacation. Swift also was the Eagles’ play-by-play man for their broadcasts on WIP.

Merrill auditioned and got the job. He did so well that they offered him a job doing the pre- and post-game Eagles shows and the coach’s show. He did that for four years until 1977, when he replaced Al Pollard, a former Eagles running back, as the color analyst on Eagles broadcasts alongside Swift.

“It was different for a non-player to do color,’’ Reese said. “But I came prepared. I was always armed with a lot of information. I’d be at practice every day. I prepared.’’

The ’77 season was Dick Vermeil’s second as the team’s head coach. He still was in the throes of rebuilding. His first Eagles team had finished 4-10.

A 24-14 early-December road loss to the Dallas Cowboys dropped the Eagles to 3-9 in ’77. As they were getting off the team flight in Philly that night, Swift turned to Reese and said, “I’ll see you next week, kid.’’

Three days later, Swift put a gun to his head and killed himself.

Reese replaced Swift as the interim play-by-play man for the Eagles’ final two games that season. Future Hall of Famer Herb Adderley stepped in as the color analyst.

“I had sat next to Charlie for 12 games and paid attention to everything he did,’’ Reese said. “I knew how mechanically sound he was. I also had done all of the Temple games in college for the student station. And one of the years I was at WWDB, I got them to pick up Penn football and did that. So I knew how to do play-by-play to a point.’’

Reese did a good job broadcasting the Eagles’ final two games that season, but wasn’t immediately offered the job on a permanent basis. Al Meltzer, who had been the sports anchor at Channel 3 from 1970 to 1977 before moving to Chicago, wasn’t happy in the Windy City and wanted to come back to Philly.

Channel 10 wanted to hire him as their sports anchor and he also was WIP’s No. 1 choice ahead of Reese to replace Swift as the Eagles’ play-by-play man.

“What’s easier to sell to sponsors?’’ Reese said. “The name of Al Meltzer, who everyone knew? Or me, who basically was a pre- and post-game guy? I wasn’t going to translate into instant [advertising] dollars.

“I had this dream all winter where they called me and told me I had the job, and then I’d wake up and realize it was only a dream, The other dream I had was them telling me they decided to go in another direction, and I’d wake up happy.’’

WIP eventually offered the job to Meltzer, but he also wanted the Channel 10 job. WIP told him it had to be one or the other. He opted for Channel 10, clearing the way for Reese to become the station’s sports director and the voice of the Eagles.

As he was driving to the radio station to sign his new contract, he suddenly wondered if being offered the Eagles job had been another dream.

It wasn’t.

Fifty years later, Reese still prepares for a game the same way he did back then. Stan Walters, the former Eagles offensive tackle who was Reese’s broadcast partner from 1984 to 1997, used to say his pal would go into Merrill mode before a game, poring over his information and studying it.

“He gets locked in,’’ Mike Quick said. “He has his routine, and he doesn’t like to break routine. From the time he wakes up in the morning [on game day], the routine starts then. And it really works.

“The sweet thing for me is, I know I’m working with a living legend when I walk in there. I know that I’m in a really good place.’’

So does the listener.

At some point, Reese will ride off into the sunset. But not anytime soon. He still loves what he’s doing. He still is at the top of his game.

“I’ll never want to stop,’’ he said. “There obviously are things that realistically could factor in at some point. Vin Scully did it until he was 90.

“But I still get the same thrill out of it. I still love it as much as ever. I actually see a game better now than when I first started. Quarterbacks talk about how, after a while, the whole game slows down for them. The same thing with me.’’

Cindy has written a book about her husband’s prolific career. It’s titled His Story: Merrill’s 50 Years With the Eagles. Published by Temple Press, it will be released next February around the Super Bowl.

My new book, "Just Give Me A Chance To Fail,'' about the inspiring life of NFL Hall of Fame linebacker Sam Mills, will be out on July 28. Use this link to order it now.

Between now and the July 28 release date, I’ll be posting a few excerpts from the book on Substack. Sam’s story is truly inspirational. At every level, he was dismissed as being too short to play. Division I football schools shunned him. He was cut by the Cleveland Browns and even the CFL’s Toronto Argonauts.

Just when he thought his dream of playing football might be over, the United States Football League came along and provided him with a lifeline. He made the most of it.

Along with Reggie White, he became one of the two best defensive players in the short-lived league, leading the Philadelphia Stars to three league title games and two championships.

Even after his success in the USFL, few thought a 5-9 linebacker had a chance in hell of making it in the NFL. But Sam not only made it, he played 12 years for the New Orleans Saints and Carolina Panthers and went to four Pro Bowls.

Click here to order Just Give Me A Chance To Fail: The Life of NFL Hall of Fame Linebacker Sam Mills

He was the leader of the best linebacking corps in NFL history with the Saints, the Dome Patrol. His influence on the Panthers was so great they built a statue of him after he retired.

Sam died of cancer in 2005 at the too-young age of 45. Even then, he refused to take no for an answer. Given 3-4 months to live, he survived for 20 and made it to a Super Bowl as an assistant coach with the Panthers. His inspirational Keep Pounding address to the Panthers before their 2003 playoff win over the Dallas Cowboys is credited with being a big reason for their Super Bowl run that year.

In 2022, seventeen years after his death, the little 5-9 linebacker who always said he just wanted a chance to fail was inducted posthumously into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

The following excerpt from my book deals with Sam’s early days with the Philadelphia Stars. I hope you like it.

The idea of a spring football league in the early ’80s was a good one. People can’t get enough football, regardless of what time of the year it’s being played. Even today, as the NFL plays on almost every day of the week, there doesn’t seem to be a saturation point.

While it would only last three years, the USFL was a lot of fun to watch, and it gave a lot of good players an opportunity to extend their careers. The quality of play was very good. The USFL managed to lure dozens of players from the NFL. It outbid the NFL for a significant chunk of the top college talent. And it developed stars who had been shunned or had fallen between the NFL cracks, like Sam Mills.

Mills’ team, the Philadelphia Stars, would become the best team in the short-lived league. They would make three USFL title-game appearances and win two of them. Twenty-nine of their players would go on to play in the NFL after the league folded. Five of their players would appear in a total of 18 Pro Bowls. Eighteen players would play in at least 30 NFL games and/or make 15 NFL starts.

The Stars’ talent wasn’t just on the field. They produced four future NFL general managers—Carl Peterson (Chiefs), Bill Kuharich (Saints), Terry Bradway (Jets), and Rod Graves (Cardinals). They also produced four NFL head coaches—Jim Mora (Saints, Colts), Vince Tobin (Cardinals), Dom Capers (Panthers, Texans), and Vic Fangio (Broncos). Several more of Mora’s assistants with the Stars would become NFL coordinators.

Mills is one of five former USFL players in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, along with Reggie White (Memphis Showboats), Gary Zimmerman and Steve Young (LA Express), and Jim Kelly (Houston Gamblers).

Because it initially was viewed as a second-class league, the players in the USFL developed an us-against-the-world mentality. It brought them closer together than they might’ve been under ordinary circumstances.

“We all had a collective chip on our shoulders,” says Mike Johnson, a linebacker who signed with the Stars out of Virginia Tech and would later play 10 years and make 125 starts in the NFL. “I remember talking to Reggie White about it once. It was something we all carried with us out of the USFL. Because people were questioning: Can you play? And the last thing you want to do with people that can play is question that they can’t.”

Mills was used to being doubted. It drove him throughout his entire career. Even after he became successful, he continued to take the attitude that he had very little margin for error. One bad practice.

The weather in Philadelphia in February wasn’t ideal for a football training camp. So, the Stars and several other cold-weather USFL teams copied baseball and headed to Florida and Arizona to prepare for the league’s initial spring season in ’83. The New Jersey Generals trained in Orlando. The Birmingham Stallions and Michigan Panthers were in Daytona Beach. The Washington Federals were headquartered in Jacksonville.

The Stars hunkered down at Stetson University in Deland, Florida, a small town about 25 miles southwest of Daytona Beach.

Stetson didn’t have a football program in 1983. They had discontinued the sport in the ’50s and wouldn’t bring it back until 2013. The school gave the Stars use of some of its fields to practice on. Because school was in session when they were there, the Stars couldn’t use Stetson’s dormitories to house their players, coaches, and staff. So, they bunked at a couple of local hotels during training camp. The team’s coaches and staff stayed at a Holiday Inn. The players were at a Motel 6 across the street from the school’s fieldhouse.

The Stars used two different practice fields, one for their morning practice and another for the afternoon session. The second field was in the middle of town. The team would take school buses back and forth.

Peterson, the team’s president and general manager, and owner Myles Tanenbaum had to scramble to find a new coach after George Perles abruptly resigned in early December to take the head-coaching job at his alma mater, Michigan State. In mid-January, just two weeks before the team was scheduled to open its first training camp, they hired New England Patriots defensive coordinator Jim Mora. Peterson knew Mora. They had worked together on Dick Vermeil’s UCLA staff in the mid-’70s.

Because Mora was hired so late, Peterson had to put together most of his coaching staff for him. The only assistant that Mora personally hired was his running backs coach, Jim Skipper. The first time Mora met the rest of his staff, including his offensive and defensive coordinators, Joe Pendry and Vince Tobin, was when he arrived in Deland the day before the start of training camp in early February.

It was the same with all his players. He didn’t meet any of them until he walked onto the practice field at Stetson. Terry Bradway, a young personnel assistant, was still making copies of the offensive playbook with Pendry right up until they boarded the plane for Deland from Philadelphia.

“That was kind of nuts,” Bradway remembers. “But that was the reality of the situation.”

The coaching staff came from all over. Tobin and offensive line coach Jim Erkenbeck were hired out of the CFL. Tobin had spent the previous six years in Canada as the defensive coordinator for the BC Lions. Erkenbeck had been an assistant with the Calgary Stampeders.

Defensive line coach John Pease, quarterbacks and receivers coach Carl Smith, defensive backs coach Dom Capers, and special teams coach Joe Marciano all were college coaches. Pease had been at the University of Washington, Smith at North Carolina State, Capers at Ohio State, and Marciano at Temple.

“Nobody knew each other,” says Tobin, who also coached the team’s linebackers in addition to being the defensive coordinator. “We were all thrown together.”

Prior to coaching in Canada, Tobin had spent six seasons as the defensive coordinator at his alma mater, the University of Missouri. He had been a running back at Mizzou and played in the same offensive backfield with Tigers quarterback Jim Johnson. Interestingly, both Johnson and Tobin would go on to become two of the most respected defensive coaches in the NFL during their careers.

Mora was an ex-Marine, and he ran a grueling training camp. He wanted the practices to be harder than the games. He felt that if you survived his practices, the games would be a piece of cake.

Hard practices were just fine with Mills. It provided him with more opportunities to prove that he belonged, which was all he ever wanted.

There were a lot of players in Deland like Mills. With the exception of center Bart Oates and a few other draft picks like offensive tackle Irv Eatman, and some NFL veterans like John Bunting and Scott Fitzkee who had switched leagues, the camp was full of players who had been cut once, twice, three times, or more by NFL teams.

For Mills, the biggest difference with the Stars compared to his training camp experiences with the Cleveland Browns and Toronto Argonauts was that he had an immediate supervisor—Tobin—who didn’t give a shit about the fact that he was only 5’9”.

When Tobin was hired by the Stars, he immediately began trying to put together the best defense he could. He would’ve played with a 4’6” linebacker if the guy could get off blocks and tackle people.

Tobin might not have had any objections to a 5’9” linebacker, but Mora was a different story. The Stars coach initially felt there was no way the Stars could possibly keep Mills on the roster, let alone start him. He wanted to cut him.

Every night after practice, the Stars coaches and personnel people would gather around a table in a room at the Stetson fieldhouse and evaluate their players at each position. Because Tobin also coached the linebackers, he would be asked to rate that position’s players. Every night, from the first practice on, Mills would be his top-rated linebacker.

And every night, Mora would look at Tobin in disbelief and tell him that they can’t play with a 5’9” middle linebacker.

“We just can’t do that,” Mora would say. “We’ve got to get somebody better. People will laugh at us.”

Tobin would reiterate that Mills, regardless of his size, was the best linebacker they had on the roster. He looked at his boss, whom he barely knew at that point, and told him, “If you want to get rid of every other linebacker we’ve got and start over, that’s fine. But as long as I’m evaluating them, he’s our best player.”’

This went on for the first couple of weeks of camp. Every night Mora would say they can’t keep a 5’9” linebacker, and every night Tobin would inform him that Mills was not just his best linebacker, but his best defensive player. Mora kept looking for a reason to cut Mills, but Sam wouldn’t give him one. At every single practice in Deland, he was the best defensive player on the field.

“If Vince hadn’t been there, I’m not sure anybody would’ve stood up for Sam,” says Bill Kuharich, who, at just 29, was the Stars’ player personnel director. “But Vince wasn’t afraid to stand up to anybody, including Jim. With Vince, it could’ve been Tom Landry or Bill Walsh he was talking to. He believed what he believed. He stood right up to Jim.”

As that first training camp drew to a close, Mora would grudgingly admit that Tobin was right about Mills. That didn’t mean he was crazy about the idea of starting a 5’9” linebacker. But his attitude was: He’s obviously the best we’ve got, so let’s go play with him and see what happens.

While Mora might’ve been slow to come around to the idea of playing with a 5’9” linebacker, the defensive players in the Stars’ training camp weren’t. They watched Mills, whom they affectionately nicknamed “Field Mouse,” fly around the practice field every single day, drilling ball carriers and beating blockers who were more than a half-foot taller than him. Mills wasn’t crazy about his new nickname, but he didn’t object too strongly.

“Nobody was going to call him Field Mouse unless Sam was okay with being called that,” says fullback David Riley

.

Mills took his share of kidding over his size, but he was used to it. His jersey number with the Stars was 54. Running back Allen Harvin used to ask him whether that was his number or his height. The irony there was that Harvin was no bigger than Mills.

“I used to tell him, ‘When you walk into a room, even little babies are trying to measure themselves up against you,”’ Riley laughs.

Whenever the Stars would play on the road and the bathroom in their locker room would have a little boy’s urinal, Riley would put a sign on it that read: “Reserved for Sam Mills and Allen Harvin.”

Mills’ off-the-field personality was very different from his on-the-field personality. Bart Oates said Sam was a “gentle, easygoing, go-with-the-flow guy” off the field. He would wear big horn-rimmed glasses that made him look more like an accountant than a professional football player.

“He didn’t have that intensity until he got on the field,” Oates says. “When he was on the field, he became someone who was very different than what his normal nature was.”

John Bunting signed with the Stars two weeks into the ’83 season after spending 11 seasons with the Eagles. He had started 116 games for the Eagles at linebacker. He was 32, almost 33, and at the tail end of his career. Bunting had been one of the Eagles’ defensive leaders who helped Dick Vermeil’s 1980 team make it to the Super Bowl.

Bunting’s first impression of Mills after he signed with the Stars was the same as everybody else meeting him for the first time. “He was so short,” says Bunting. “I’m like, really?”

Bunting thought Peterson had brought him in to be the Stars’ defensive signal caller. That’s what he had done with the Eagles. That’s what he was very good at, besides beating the shit out of the tight end and playing zone coverage and reading plays and tipping off his teammates. But he quickly realized that on the Stars’ defense, that job already was taken.

By Mills.

He also realized after getting in the huddle with Mills that Sam was a guy who demanded attention and was as sharp as a tack. Bunting was immediately impressed with his mental acuity.

“He was always calm,” Bunting says. “He never got mad. He never got flustered. He never got excited. That’s what a signal caller needs to do. He reminded me of myself a lot. And I appreciated that.”

Stars offensive tackle Joe Conwell, who would start 21 games for the Eagles in 1986 and 1987 after the USFL folded, said Mills was the best teammate he ever had, and he believes most of the other people who ever played with Sam would say the same thing.

“He so quickly and thoroughly proved himself that everybody totally bought into Sam and looked up to him,” says Conwell. “Combine that with the fact that he was the most fundamentally sound football player that you can imagine—from reading keys, to pursuit angles, to block-shedding, to tackling, to filling holes, to huddle management, to game preparation—it’s like it all came naturally to him.”

Mills was like a coach on the field. He had an uncanny knack for reading what the offense was going to do and would quickly relay the information to his teammates. No defense he ever played on was caught off guard by the offense.

Glenn “Moe” Howard, who played alongside Mills at the other inside linebacker spot in Tobin’s 3–4 scheme, remembers Mills telling him to watch for particular plays depending on what he saw pre-snap from the offense.

“We’d always be communicating back and forth,” Howard says.

Like so many others on that Stars team, Mills and Howard were football rejects. They had been cut by other teams. They had been told they weren’t good enough, big enough, or fast enough. They were on their second, third, or even fourth try at living out their childhood dream of playing professional football. The Stars and the USFL gave all of them that.

Mills’ training camp roommate was another NFL reject, George Cooper. Cooper, a linebacker out of Michigan State, had been cut by the Steelers the year before. “Sam didn’t talk a lot, and neither did I,” Cooper says. “But we became close. That was the time of our lives, those three years [with the Stars]. Just an unforgettable experience.”

Sam would be the best man at Cooper’s wedding, and George would be the godfather to Sam and Melanie’s son Marcus, who was born during the Stars’ first season in ’83.

The entire defense bonded very quickly. Many of them would hang out in the locker room after practice and play chess. That was their outlet. It was a terrific team-building exercise.

They ribbed each other and constantly played practical jokes on their teammates. Mills became one of the ring leaders. “You’d be hustling to get out to practice and Sam would hide your shoe or something like that,” Howard says.

Even though they were only in their 20s, both Sam and Duck Riley were already losing their hair. Rex Patterson, who was the Stars’ equipment manager, would throw towels to the players after they came out of the shower. When Mills and Riley would come out, he’d throw them washcloths to dry their hair.

“Sam and I would be next to each other by the sinks in the locker room looking in the mirror,” Riley says. “Sam always would say, ‘Yours is leaving quicker than mine.’”

“Every day there was something going on in that locker room,” Riley recalls. “Nothing inappropriate or mean or anything. But we had fun. Coach Mora’s practices were grueling. He had to always be thinking, I don’t understand. I’m killing them. Why are they in such a good mood?”

It includes anyone whom he believes has ever wronged him, including politicians, judges, prosecutors, government officials, foreign leaders, late-night talk show hosts and comedians, porn stars, former staff members, journalists and, oh yeah, the National Football League.

At Trump’s behest, the Department of Justice opened an investigation into the NFL in April over its broadcast deals with streaming services such as Amazon Prime and Netflix. Trump accused the league of overcharging their customers by putting its games on the streaming networks, which charge a subscriber fee to watch.

Prime has been broadcasting Thursday night NFL games since 2022. It also broadcasts a first-round playoff game each year.

Netflix has been televising a pair of Christmas Day games for the last three years, but recently signed a new four-year deal with the league that will feature five games a year beginning this season. Peacock, which is owned by NBC, became the first streaming service to broadcast an NFL playoff game in 2024.

Google-owned YouTube TV, which acquired the rights to NFL Sunday Ticket in 2023, also has been negotiating with the league to purchase a five-game package of games.

The NFL currently is raking in $12.6 billion a year from all of its television deals with Fox, CBS, NBC/Peacock, ABC/ESPN, Prime, Netflix and YouTube. That represents 55 percent of the league’s total annual revenue of $23 billion.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have expressed concern about the NFL and other professional sports leagues partnering with streaming networks, which charge separate subscription fees, for a while now.

The minimum monthly fee for a Netflix subscription is $8.99. Prime Video also charges $8.99 a month for a basic subscription with ads. Peacock, which is owned by Philadelphia-based Comcast Corporation through its entertainment division, NBC Universal, charges $10.99 a month for a subscription.

Forbes Magazine recently estimated that it now costs NFL fans nearly $800 a year to have complete access to NFL games, including those on Prime, Netflix, Peacock and ESPN+.

Congress passed the Sports Broadcasting Act in 1961, which granted professional sports leagues, including the NFL, limited antitrust immunity to negotiate separate television deals and pool them into a single entity for its teams.

The idea of the SBA was to foster the growth of free over-the-air broadcast television. But with the evolution of cable television and networks like ESPN, and now streaming networks, the television landscape has changed dramatically since the SBA was passed 65 years ago.

The NFL has pointed out that, even with its new streaming partnerships, 87 percent of its games still are available on local TV. When NFL games are shown on streaming services, they still are available on a free local channel in the cities of the teams that are playing.

“It’s the most accessible game out there, and most accessible in any league,’’ Goodell, who does a terrific imitation of Santa Claus, said this spring. “We go to platforms that are new. We went to ESPN back in the 80s. That has been a great move for our fans and has developed new ways to engage with the NFL. But we’ve been surviving and thriving on the basis of being available to the broadcast audience.’’

At this point, it’s still unclear how committed the DOJ is to investigating the NFL. What is clear is that Trump, who has had a long and contentious relationship with the league over the last 40-plus years, relishes any opportunity to make its life miserable.

A fair share of his hard feelings toward the NFL have to do with the fact that he has tried unsuccessfully multiple times over the years to buy an NFL team and always has come up short.

Most recently, he made an unsuccessful bid for the Buffalo Bills in 2014 before he decided to run for president.

During his first term as president, Trump took every opportunity to cast the NFL in a harsh light. He expressed outrage over San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and other players kneeling during the National Anthem to protest social injustice. Trump, who never was particularly patriotic himself as a civilian, said the league needed to “fire’’ the players. At one point, he said they “shouldn’t [even] be in the country.’’

In June of 2018, Trump rescinded the Super Bowl-champion Philadelphia Eagles’ invitation to the White House when it became apparent that a number of their players were going to skip the event.

But Trump’s animosity toward the NFL goes back a lot longer than a few years. It goes back to the mid-80s when he was a hotshot thirtysomething New York City real estate developer.

After an unsuccessful attempt to buy the Baltimore Colts from Robert Irsay a couple of years earlier, Trump purchased the New Jersey Generals, a team in the United States Football League, which played in the spring, in September of 1983.

You can read more about Donald Trump's involvement in the United States Football League in my new book "Just Give Me A Chance To Fail: The Life of NFL Hall of Fame Linebacker Sam Mills.'' Click here to order.

The league’s 12 original owners all firmly believed in the concept of a professional football league in the spring. It’s why they sunk their money into it.

But Trump, who bought the Generals after the league’s first season for $9 million from Oklahoma oilman J. Walter Duncan, thought spring football was for losers. He told his fellow owners as much.

At the very first league meeting he attended after purchasing the Generals, Trump told the other owners that their only chance for survival was to move to the fall and go head-to-head against the NFL.

“Even if we had cut our losses in the spring, there was no foreseeable chance of making a profit,’’ he said in his 1987 book, Trump: The Art of the Deal.

He called the spring a “wasteland’’ for football. “If God had wanted football in the spring, he wouldn’t have invented baseball,’’ he said.

Why then, you might ask, did a man who saw no future in spring football, buy a team that played football in the spring?

Well, because, from the outset, he viewed the USFL as a pathway to what he really wanted, which was his own NFL team. And he saw a way to get one at a discount price.

He felt that if the USFL moved to the fall, it could force a merger with the NFL, much like the American Football League had done in the late 60s.

When the USFL was formed, the owners agreed to a five-year plan that called for judicious spending early on. But by its second season, the spring league found itself in a full-scale bidding war with the NFL over players.

Because it held its draft in January, four months before the NFL’s, it had first dibs on college players. It followed its blockbuster ’83 signing of Heisman Trophy-winner Herschel Walker by the Generals with the signings of future Hall of Famers Steve Young, Jim Kelly, Reggie White and Gary Zimmerman and dozens of others top-tier college players.

They successfully raided NFL rosters. Trump’s Generals signed quarterback Brian Sipe away from the Cleveland Browns, linebacker Jim LeClair and center Dave Lapham away from the Cincinnati Bengals and three-time Pro Bowl safety Gary Barbaro away from the Kansas City Chiefs.

Unfortunately, their modest TV contracts with ABC and ESPN, which paled in comparison to the NFL’s network deals with CBS and NBC (Fox hadn’t yet gotten involved in sports programming), weren’t enough to offset the money they were paying all of these players.

A month after the ’84 USFL championship game, Trump got his wish when 15 of the league’s 17 financially-strapped owners reluctantly buckled and agreed to a move to the fall.

The league still had one year left on its agreement with ABC. So, they would play one more year in the spring and then move to the fall in ’86.

Trump denied that the goal of a move to the fall was a merger with the NFL. “We’re not looking for a merger,’’ he insisted. “We’re looking for a fight.’’

Actually, he was looking for a fight that would lead to a merger, or at least a huge payday. Two months after the USFL announced that it was moving to the fall, the league filed a $1.3 billion antitrust suit against the NFL in the Southern District Court of New York.

The USFL played its third and final spring season in ’85. Nearly a year later, on May 19, 1986, United States Football League v. National Football League went to trial at the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan.

The trial lasted 11 weeks. The parade of witnesses included NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, several NFL owners including the Los Angeles Raiders’ Al Davis and the New York Jets’ Leon Hess, ABC broadcaster Howard Cosell, a litany of television executives and economists, and last, but certainly not least, Donald John Trump.

Trump had orchestrated the lawsuit. He handpicked the USFL’s lead counsel, a flamboyant New York lawyer named Harvey Myerson, who arrived for court every day in a chauffeured Rolls Royce, wore $3,000 suits with silk handkerchiefs in the breast pocket, and smoked foot-long Cuban cigars. Myerson’s law career would come to a crashing end a few years later when he was convicted of fraud and spent four years in federal prison.

The gist of the USFL’s case was that the NFL had tried to run the young league out of business and had pressured and coerced ABC, CBS and NBC not to televise USFL games in the fall. The league had a deal with four-year-old ESPN to broadcast its games in the fall in ’86. But all of the big networks, including ABC, which had partnered with the USFL in the spring, said they weren’t interested in broadcasting their games in the fall.

The USFL had a number of owners who would’ve made sympathetic witnesses at the trial. Men who had lost millions during the league’s three spring seasons and could make compelling cases that they had suffered financial ruin at the hands of the big, bad NFL.

But Trump wanted to be the star of the show. He convinced Myerson that only one owner needed to testify, and that was him.

Even Trump later admitted that was a huge mistake.

“I was part of the problem,’’ he said in his 1987 book, Trump: the Art of the Deal. “As a witness, I was well-spoken and professional, I think. But that probably played into the NFL’s hands. From day one, they painted me as a vicious, greedy, Machiavellian billionaire, intent only on serving my selfish ends at everyone’s expense.’’

It didn’t take much paint. The NFL’s lead outside counsel, Frank Rothman, who had once run MGM and was a partner in the powerful New York law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, managed to bring out the arrogant worst in Trump on the witness stand. The jury had great difficulty hiding their dislike for him during several days of testimony.

The NFL had conducted a mock trial before the actual trial. In the mock trial, the USFL actually won a huge verdict. That prompted Rothman to change his entire trial strategy.

Rather than attempt to defend some of the NFL’s individual predatory practices, which included a damning Harvard Business School study it had commissioned on how to kill the USFL, Rothman set his sights on Trump.

He made him the face of the league, portraying him as a rich, brash opportunist trying to extort money from the established NFL. Again, it didn’t take much doing.

Rothman died in 2000 at the age of 73. But as has become clear, Trump has an elephant’s memory when it comes to retribution. If he couldn’t get retribution on Rothman he would get it on his old firm.

Skadden, Arps was one of 14 law firms he went after early in his second term with executive orders, accusing them of being dishonest and engaging in conduct he claimed was detrimental to American interests. He threatened to cancel federal contracts they had, suspend security clearances and other punitive measures.

Skadden, Arps was one of nine firms that buckled. It agreed to do $100 million of pro-bono work for initiatives backed by Trump’s administration rather than fight the baseless accusations.

Even after deciding to center their case around Trump, the NFL still was worried about how the verdict might go. They had merger discussions with the USFL during the trial. The NFL proposed the possibility of absorbing two teams from the spring league. An overconfident Trump and Myerson wanted at least four, and possibly as many as six, absorbed, including of course, his New Jersey Generals. The NFL told Trump and Myerson to go pound sand.

On July 23, 1986, testimony in USFL v. NFL ended. Six days later, after 31 hours of deliberation, the six-person jury handed down its verdict.

Technically, the USFL won. The jury found that the NFL had indeed used its monopoly power to damage the younger league in an attempt to retain control of the pro football market.

But the jury also found Trump and the spring league so unsympathetic that it awarded them only $1 in damages.

Margaret Lilienfeld, one of the six jurors, explained their decision this way: “We decided that there was a monopoly and that the NFL had tried to maintain it, but that the USFL mostly had damaged themselves.’’

The USFL could’ve played that fall. They still had a year left on their deal with a young ESPN, which was desperate for programming. They were down to eight teams by that point, seven of them in non-USFL cities, which would’ve minimized the head-to-head competition.

But the embarrassing $1 verdict had pretty much broken any remaining resolve that the USFL owners had. Plus, Myerson told them they’d be better off not playing while he appealed the damage award.

Eight days after the verdict, the USFL let all of its players and coaches out of their contracts, allowing them to sign with NFL teams.

Two years later, a federal appeals court upheld the the verdict and the $1 damage award.

Nearly 40 years later, the perpetually vindictive Trump still is trying to make the NFL pay for making a fool of him.

“Just fine,’’ said the former All Pro wide receiver and the team’s longtime radio analyst. “They’re just fine.’’

Half of you are nodding in agreement with Mike right now, either because you really believe that or because you need to believe that.

The other half feel fine should be replaced by a different f-word. You’re convinced that Brown’s exit is going to further cripple an offense that plummeted from seventh to 19^th in scoring last season.

Understand what Quick is saying. He isn’t saying the Eagles are better without Brown. We’re talking about the departure of a three-time All Pro who averaged 85 catches, 1,258 receiving yards and eight touchdowns per year in his four seasons with the Birds. You don’t subtract that kind of prolific production from your offense and claim to be better.

What Quick is saying is that the Eagles offense, with a new coordinator and a new scheme and without Brown, will be different this season. And different is a good thing for an offense that looked as dysfunctional as this one did last season.

“I’m saying they’re just fine because you find other ways to make it work [without Brown],’’ Quick said.

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Even with Brown last season, the Eagles offense was a hot mess. It wasn’t all AJ’s fault, but the bottom line is the Eagles averaged five fewer points, 56 fewer yards and three fewer first downs per game than in 2024.

Saquon Barkley went from the NFL rushing champion to the league leader in negative runs. Jalen Hurts averaged nearly a yard less per pass attempt (from 8.0 to 7.1) and saw his completion percentage drop almost four points (from 68.7 to 64.8).

The Eagles finished in the bottom third of the league in three-and-outs, third-down percentage and average gain on first down.

This wasn’t an if-it’s-not-broken-don’t-fix-it-situation. While the injury-ravaged offensive line was the biggest problem with the offense last year, the passing game was inconsistent, operating like a car with a clogged fuel line. Starting and stopping. Running great one minute and coughing and sputtering and dying on the side of the road the next.

Brown’s yards-per-catch average dropped from 16.1 to 12.9. He had 22 fewer receptions for first downs even though he played in two more games. His yards-per-target average (8.3) equaled the lowest of his career. His catch percentage (64.5) was his lowest since 2022.

He was frustrated and pissed and he didn’t try to hide it, which negatively impacted both the quarterback, Jalen Hurts, and the offensive playcaller, Kevin Patullo.

AJ wanted out, and the fact of the matter is, he needed to be gone. Keeping him here for another season wasn’t an option.

“The pressure that the quarterback may have had because of all the smoke surrounding (Brown) is now no longer there,’’ Quick said. “Sometimes when you have a guy that outspoken and you’re the guy pulling the trigger, you feel like [you force the ball to him].

“Even for the guy calling the plays, [there is pressure] to get the ball to him. Sometimes that’s not always the best way to approach games. The ball needs to go where the ball needs to go based on what’s happening with the defense.’’

Patullo was fired in January and replaced by Sean Mannion, a 34-year-old former quarterback from the Shanahan/McVay offensive system who has never called plays before. He will be the fifth different playcaller Hurts has had in the last five years.

Mannion is shaking up the offense. There will be a lot more pre-snap motion. Hurts will be lining up under center much more. And in what will be the biggest adjustment for the Eagles quarterback, he’s going to be throwing the ball over the middle a lot.

Since throwing 15 interceptions in 2023, one of Hurts’ major focuses has been avoiding picks. And he’s done a magnificent job of that. Over the last two seasons, he’s thrown just 11 interceptions in 885 pass plays, or one every 80.4 pass plays. He has the second-best interception percentage in the NFL during that period.

One of the ways he’s kept his interceptions down has been by avoiding the middle of the field, where there’s a lot more traffic than outside the numbers. Last year, just 16.3 percent of Hurts’ pass attempts were to the middle of the field. That was the second lowest percentage in the league. The year before, when the Eagles won the Super Bowl, just 13.3 percent of his throws were to the middle of the field. Nobody threw to the middle less.

“You have to be somewhat coachable when you’ve gone through the number of coaches and coordinators and playcallers that Jalen has,’’ Quick said, “I think he’ll adjust to [the changes]. He’ll have to adjust to it. And he’ll make it work.

“It’s not what he’s mostly done since he’s been in the league. But he’s done it enough to realize how effective it is.’’

For a lot of reasons, Quick likes the fact that Mannion will be putting Hurts under center more. For starters, he thinks it will be a huge benefit for both Barkley and the Eagles offensive line.

“For the offensive linemen, it’s much easier when you’re down in a stance to move people around v. when you’re standing with your hands on your pads when the quarterback is in shotgun.

“You’re much better at getting leverage on the defender when your hand is in the dirt. The run game works better when you’re under center. Saquon is going to have more momentum going toward the line of scrimmage and also more time to see. He’ll be able to see what the defense is doing.’’

Mannion’s offense is going to force Hurts to change a lot of his approach to quarterbacking. That’s not to say he can’t do it. It just means it will be an adjustment. He will need to get the ball out quicker. He will be throwing it over the middle, often to spots where the receiver will be rather than where he is at that moment.

“For this offense to work, he has to [throw the ball over the middle],’’ Quick said. “Many times in the style of offense they’re going to run now, you have to trust that there’s going to be a [throwing] window. That second window to the inside is going to be open. Your receiver is not going to be there [yet], but you have to put it in that window, because by the time the ball gets there he’s going to be there.

“There’s a lot of anticipation. Especially against teams playing zone, there are going to be voids in the zone. And you have to trust that receiver to get to that void. Jalen, as a quarterback, has to let it go even before they get to that window for the timing and the precision of this style of offense to work.’’

Quick thinks Hurts may have some growing pains early on with the new offense, but will eventually get comfortable with the new emphasis of utilizing the middle of the field.

“I think he’ll find a comfort level,’’ he said. “Having had the entire offseason and knowing how this offense is going to run and what they intend to do, I think he’ll be good.

“He’s talked about the rhythm. And the rhythm is, when that back foot hits [the ground], it’s got to go there. If it’s not there, you stay in rhythm to your second potential target. If that’s not there, you go to your third.

“It’s all about footwork. Mannion is really strong about footwork. He’s going to harp on really good footwork. As long as your footwork is correct and you stay in that really good rhythm, you can have a lot of success in this system.’’

AJ Brown wouldn’t have been a happy camper in Sean Mannion’s system. The passing game is going to be about spreading the ball around. Take what the defense gives you.

In the nine years that the architect of this system, Kyle Shanahan, has been the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, a non-wide receiver has led the Niners in receptions six times, including running back Christian McCaffery last year (102 catches). The Niners haven’t had a wideout with more than 78 receptions since Shanahan took over in 2017. There’s no telling how many books AJ would have managed to read on the bench this season if he had hung around.

Quick likes the additions to the Eagles receiving corps. He likes first-round pick Makai Lemon and veterans Dontayvion Wicks and Hollywood Brown. He thinks all three will be good fits.

“Perfect fits,’’ Quick said. “Especially Lemon. He just adds to what this offense is geared around. If you go back and look at some of the college tape of him at USC, a lot of it is him working inside the numbers. Most of his catches were inside the numbers. He’s a tough kid. Knows how to separate. Really good at the top of the route in getting movement and separation.

“His toughness and the way he catches the ball in traffic, I told him he reminds me of Hines Ward the way he can go inside and take the ball away from people. He’s got really good hands.’’

Wicks also is an inside-the-numbers pass catcher. He caught 108 passes in three seasons with the Packers. Very few of them were outside the numbers.

“He’s another guy who is smart enough to understand where the little pockets in zone defenses are,’’ Quick said. “You run to those open pockets and the ball should be there. Both of these guys are just suited for that.’’

Hollywood Brown is a speed guy. He’s entering his eighth season, but still runs as fast as he did at his Pro Day at Oklahoma in 2019 when he ran a 4.27-second 40.

“He has that crazy speed that scares you,’’ Quick said. “He’s in Year 8, but still has the ability to pull the top off the defense. As much as this is going to be a horizontal style of passing game, you still need vertical threats like him and DeVonta (Smith).

“You’re able to pull the defense up and it just opens up all these other weapons that you can get the ball to. You can get it to Saquon and he’s got space to operate. You can get it to (Dallas) Goedert and he’s got space.

“I like the whole receiving corps from DeVonta on down. And I like that they’ve added more tight ends (second-round pick Eli Stowers and veteran Johnny Mundt) as well because this system is going to utilize a lot of two- and three-tight end sets.’’

Owner Jeffrey Lurie never has been afraid to make bold gambles when it’s come to coaching hires. He hired Andy Reid to be his head coach in 1999 even though Reid had never been a coordinator or called plays.

He hired Chip Kelly out of the college ranks in 2013. He took a flyer on Doug Pederson in 2016 and hired Nick Sirianni in 2020 when none of the other six teams looking for a new head coach had him on their short list.

Mannion, a former backup and practice squad quarterback, has been a coach for just two years, one as an offensive assistant and last season as a quarterbacks coach. But the early reviews on him from both inside and outside the organization have been positive.

“Just listening to everybody that talks about him, they really like his football IQ,’’ Quick said. “The way he thinks ball. The way he talks ball.

“The big thing for him will be how he processes all of the knowledge that he has when he’s under fire. When you have just seconds to spit it out and anticipate what the defense is going to do and how you can take advantage of what they’re trying to do.

“To me, that’s the hardest part of playcalling. We can all sit and draw plays given the right amount of time. But how do you handle that, how do you do that efficiently, when you’re under fire. When you have seconds to get it in to your quarterback so he can relay all of the information to everyone else.’’

How big a deal is it that they’ve got to wait two years to receive their primary payment for the three-time Pro Bowl wide receiver rather than one?

Well, given a choice, general manager Howie Roseman obviously would’ve preferred getting the first-round pick next year, just like you or I would prefer to receive a $10,000 refund from the government sooner rather than later so we could put it to use quicker.

Assuming the pick wasn’t a bust and managed to stay healthy, the Eagles would’ve been able to get some level of contribution from him in 2027 and he’d go into the following season with a year of experience under his belt rather than being a wide-eyed rookie.

But Howie wasn’t given a choice. He took the best offer he received for Brown. You have every right to feel a guy who has averaged 75 catches, 1,184 yards and eight touchdowns a year in seven NFL seasons is worth more than a first-round pick two years down the road. But as a young Joe Namath once said when someone questioned the quality of the woman he was exiting a bar with at closing time, “It’s 2 a.m. and Miss America ain’t coming through the door.’’

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This isn’t Howie’s first rodeo. He’s made deals for down-the-road picks before and understands the pluses and minuses of it. He and the Eagles’ player personnel and analytics people did their research.

Aside from getting it a year later, history suggests that the Patriots’ 2028 first-round pick will have virtually the same value as their 2027 first-round pick as far as where in the round that selection will be.

The average record of the last 30 Super Bowl runner-ups the year after they played for the Lombardi Trophy has been 9-7. The average record of the last 30 Super Bowl runner-ups two years later: also 9-7.

Eighteen of the last 30 Super Bowl losers made the playoffs the next year, which is the same number that made it two years after they lost.

NFL teams do draft studies two years in advance. So the Eagles have a vague idea of the potential quality of the 2028 draft compared to next year’s. But it’s virtually impossible for them to know whether the players that might be available to them at, say, No. 23, two years from now are going to be any better than the group that will be at that spot next year.

Under Jeffrey Lurie, the Eagles long have followed the philosophy of sustainability. Build a team that can remain competitive year in and year out rather than one with highs and rebuilding lows. Roseman always is looking at the Eagles’ roster two, three and even four years out.

This is a team that has made the playoffs five straight years and has gone to two Super Bowls and won one during that period. Even without Brown, they are considered a legitimate Super Bowl contender again this season.

Roseman already has done the math on what needs to be done for the Eagles to remain a contender in 2027. All-Pro right tackle Lane Johnson is likely to retire after this season.

The list of potential 2027 free agents includes tight ends Dallas Goedert and Grant Calcaterra, defensive tackle Moro Ojomo, and this year’s group of free agents that signed one-year deals – cornerback Riq Woolen, wide receiver Hollywood Brown, cornerback Jonathan Jones, edge rusher Arnold Ebiketie and backup quarterback Andy Dalton.

Jalen Hurts’ cap number is going to jump from $31.9 million this year to $42.5 million next year. The Eagles exercised the fifth-year option on defensive linemen Jalen Carter and Nolan Smith through 2027. But Roseman is going to need to sign them to second deals long before they can become free agents.

Right now, they have eight selections in the 2027 draft, including the fifth-round pick they got in the deal with New England.

Bottom line: as long as they can find an adequate replacement for Lane Johnson, either on their current roster or in free agency next year, they don’t have a crying need for a second first-round pick in 2027 and can afford to wait and collect it in 2028.

The Eagles will be playing twice on Thursday, twice on Monday, twice on Sunday night, once on Saturday and once on Sunday morning in jolly old England.

Their two Thursday games both will be holiday events. They’ll be playing the Cowboys in Dallas on Thanksgiving and then hosting the Houston Texans at Lincoln Financial Field on Christmas Eve, which falls on a Thursday this year.

We’ve known for months who the Eagles will be playing this season; we just didn’t know when. We’ve known that they have the 10^th easiest schedule in the league based on 2025 opponent win percentages (.481).

We’ve known that they will be facing eight playoff teams, but that just three of those eight games (at Chicago, Jacksonville and San Francisco) will be on the road.

We’ve known that, thanks to the road games in London, Phoenix and San Fran, the Eagles will be traveling 22,115 miles this season, the ninth most in the league, which isn’t really a big deal unless you’re the guy paying for the jet fuel. They traveled 22,756 miles two years ago and somehow managed to fight off the jet lag and win the Super Bowl.

Bottom line: the Eagles were a team capable to winning their third Super Bowl in 10 years before the schedule came out, and nothing that we found out on Thursday has changed that.

A few quick observations about the schedule:

The Eagles will have their bye in Week 10, which typically is a good time to have it. They’ll be a little more than halfway through their schedule and the break will give them an opportunity to rest up for the November-December-January homestretch.

Of course, if they suffer several early injuries to critical personnel, they may wish their bye was earlier. But there’s no way to predict that. Nick Sirianni’s whole keep-‘em-healthy approach to training camp and the preseason is about about trying to minimize injuries early on.

For what it’s worth, five of the eight participants in the last four Super Bowls had their byes during Weeks 7-10. The defending-champion Seahawks had theirs in Week 8 last season. The Super Bowl-runnerup Patriots had theirs in Week 14. The Eagles’ bye week last year was in Week 9.

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When the Eagles won the Super Bowl in 2024, they had their bye in Week 5, which is usually considered too early. But it ended up being perfect for a team that struggled out of the gate and split its first four games. Sirianni used the bye week to have his coordinators make critical corrections and they were off to the races after that, winning 12 of their next 13 games.

When the Eagles made it to the Super Bowl in 2022, their bye was in Week 7. When they won it all in 2017, it was the same as this year -- Week 10.

One of biggest negatives about the schedule is that the Eagles will be playing four – count ‘em, four – teams that will be coming off byes. That’s a big number.

Carolina, who they play at home in Week 6, Washington, who thy play on the road in Week 8, the New York Giants, who they play at home in Week 9, and Indianapolis, who they play at home in Week 14, all will be coming off byes.

Their Week 6 game against the Panthers comes the week after they travel to London to play Jacksonville. Teams once were assured a bye the week after playing abroad.

But with the league continuing to expand its number of international games – there are nine this season and they are shooting for 16 in the very near future – no team is guaranteed a bye any more following an international game.

Not only will Washington be coming off a bye when they host the Eagles in Week 8, but the Birds will be playing on just five days rest. They’ll be coming off a Monday night game against the Cowboys. At least the Dallas game is at home.

The Week 14 game against the rested Colts comes the week after the Eagles have to travel to Arizona to play the Cardinals.

Right after the Colts, the Eagles will have their toughest three-game stretch of the season against Seattle, Houston and San Francisco. All three teams made the playoffs last season.

Their combined record was 38-13. They had a combined point differential of plus-354. The good news is they’ve got the Seahawks and Texans at home.

For the first time since 2014, the Eagles have to play their final two regular-season games on the road. They’ll be at the 49ers in Week 17 and then will bus up to the Meadowlands to play John Harbaugh’s Giants in Week 18. The game against the Niners will be a Sunday night game, which means they won’t be getting back to Philly until early Monday morning.

Jason and Travis had former Eagles offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland on as their guest. Stoutland, who had been with the organization since 2013, resigned after the season.

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While most of the half-hour he spent on the podcast was happy talk dealing with his hiatus from the NFL and how nice it was to finally have coffee in the morning with his wife, Jason did ask Stout early on for his thoughts on why an offense that was so, so good in 2024 when the Eagles rolled to their second Super Bowl win in eight years, was so, so bad last year.

The Eagles averaged five points 56 yards and four first downs less per game last year than during their Super Bowl run. They scored more than 21 points in just two of their last 10 games and went out with a whimper, losing in the wildcard round of the playoffs to the San Francisco 49ers, 23-19.

Stout’s opaque response to Jason’s what-went-wrong question: “Any time things don’t go well, it’s execution. It’s calling the right play at the right time. [It’s] not running bad plays into bad defenses. It ain’t that hard.’’

Read between the lines and he was basically blaming the offensive struggles on the quarterback and the offensive coordinator, which is pretty much what everybody else has been doing.

I like Stout. He is one of the best offensive line coaches on the planet. But I’m going to call bullshit on him here.

Jalen Hurts and Kevin Patullo definitely deserve their share of blame for what happened last year. Hurts’ obsession with not throwing interceptions clearly affected his decision-making and caused him to hold on to the ball way too much. And Patullo was in over his head in his one year as the Eagles’ offensive coordinator.

But the biggest problem with the Eagles offense in 2025 wasn’t Hurts or Patullo. It was the unit that Stoutland was in charge of. It was the offensive line.

Kelce knows that better than anybody. But he’s not going to criticize his former linemates, and he definitely wasn’t going to challenge Stoutland, who helped make him a six-time All Pro.

“His line just didn’t block well,’’ said Brian Baldinger, the longtime NFL Network analyst, creator of the popular Baldy’s Breakdowns on X and a former NFL offensive lineman himself. “They just weren’t as good up front last year.

“Say what you want about Patullo, but he was limited in what he could do because they weren’t moving bodies up front and displacing people and blocking the second level good.’’

The Eagles nosedived from second in the league in rushing (179.3 yards per game) two years ago to 18^th (116.9) last year. Saquon Barkley’s rush average dropped from 5.8 per carry in ’24 when he led the league in rushing with 2,005 yards to 4.1. Forty percent of his carries last year gained two yards or less.

The Eagles finished near the bottom of the league in average gain on first down, which led to an inordinate amount of second- and third-and-longs.

“They didn’t cut off the back side and they weren’t good on the front side,’’ Baldinger said. “Stout has earned the right to say whatever he wants to say. But I just didn’t think they played well up front. And that limited everything they could do.’’

Yes, the Eagles faced a lot of stacked boxes last season after Barkley’s extraordinary success in ’24. But there was a lot more going on with the offensive line’s struggles than that.

Injuries obviously were a factor. All Pro right tackle Lane Johnson suffered a Lisfranc fracture to his foot and missed seven regular-season games and the playoff loss to the 49ers. Left guard Landon Dickerson and center Cam Jurgens battled season-long injuries. Dickerson missed only two games and Jurgens three, but both were shells of their healthy selves.

“Landon got hurt in the preseason and was never the same last year,’’ Baldinger said. “He played on one leg the whole year. He didn’t have any power. He couldn’t move. He didn’t look anything like what he used to look like.

“And the center wasn’t healthy. I actually thought the guy that replaced him when he was out (Brett Toth) played better than him. And we all know how valuable Lane is to that unit.’’

We certainly do. Since the Eagles drafted Johnson with the fourth overall pick in the 2013 draft, they are 120-62-1 in games that he’s played, and 15-27 in games without him. They have averaged 26.3 points and 369 yards per game when he’s been in the lineup, and 22.1 and 336.3 when he’s been out.

But injuries or not, the entire line just didn’t play nearly as well last year. Mekhi Becton had a career year for the Eagles at right guard in 2024. His replacement, Tyler Steen, played OK, but wasn’t the people-mover that Becton was.

“Steen is a good player, but Becton gave them an all-world season in 2024,’’ Baldinger said. “He made a big difference. Mekhi just moves people. He didn’t do anything with the Chargers last year, and he didn’t do anything with the Jets before he got to Philly. But for that one year, he was a dominant player.’’

Becton was a major disappointment with the Chargers last season after signing a two-year, $20 million deal with them. They released him in March.

“They fired the OC (Greg Roman) and the offensive line coach (Mike Devlin) after the season,’’ Baldinger said. “That was in large part because Mekhi was such a bust last year.

“But in 2024, he was a difference-maker. Lane loved having a big right guard next to him that can get movement started and then he can come and use his athletic ability to clean up.’’

Johnson isn’t a people-mover. He’s an athletic former quarterback and tight end who beats people with is athletic ability.

“Lane can’t do what Penei Sewell and some of these other [big, physical] tackles do,’’ Baldinger said. “He’s just a great athlete and a great protector.

“If he’s playing with a right guard like Becton who can get movement at the point of attack, Lane can finish it up real good. But Steen’s really not that guy.’’

Left tackle Jordan Mailata’s sub-par season last year also went under the radar. Both his run-blocking and pass-blocking weren’t nearly as good as they were in 2024.

“That left side had been dominant in moving people,’’ Baldinger said. “They didn’t do that last year. If I had seen Jordan just burying people last year, I would’ve put it in my breakdowns. I don’t think I did one breakdown on Jordan. And if it was Dickerson and Mailata taking some defensive end and knocking him to the other side of the formation, I’d have put that out there. But that just didn’t happen last year.’’

Which brings us to this year.

Johnson has recovered from the Lisfranc injury, but he turns 36 this month. While he still was playing at an elite level last year before he got hurt, there are legitimate concerns about whether he can remain healthy for a full season.

“When Lane is healthy there is nobody better,’’ said Baldinger, who is a close friend of Johnson’s. “There’s been no dropoff in his ability. It’s just how many games will he miss this season, whether it’s the neck or some other [body] area.

“I know he’s working his butt off down in Oklahoma right now to get back to All-Pro form. He wants one more All-Pro season. And he’s doing everything he can.

“But if he gets a stinger or he gets another ankle thing, he had the double hernia when they went to the Super Bowl in ’22. He fights through these things. He tried to fight through the Lisfranc last year.

“I don’t mean this in a negative way, but Lane’s a pumped-up 335. He needs to do everything right to keep that weight. He’s very, very strong. But his natural body weight, he’s probably going to be 275 the year after he retires.

“Does that put stress on the joints, does that lead to some of the things he’s had injury-wise? I don’t know. Like I said, he does everything right. And he never stops working. But I don’t know that you can feel confident about penciling him in for 16-17 games at this point.’’

The Eagles re-signed seven-year veteran Fred Johnson, who replaced Lane at right tackle last season after he got hurt. Johnson is adequate at best. Pro Football Focus ranked 53^rd among offensive tackles last year.

Dickerson, who battled knee and ankle injuries last year, briefly considered retirement before deciding to come back. He and Jurgens, who fought through back and knee injuries, traveled to Medellin, Columbia earlier in the offseason to undergo stem cell therapy. The purpose of stem cell therapy is to rejuvenate joints and help grow cartilage tissue.

Baldinger, who has had stem cell therapy himself, said the procedure can work, though there’s no guarantee it will.

Jurgens is a similar type of center to his predecessor, Kelce. Athletic, Can move. Can get to the second level and pick up linebackers. But he struggles trying to move people at the point of attack.

“If he’s going up against the bigger defensive tackles in the league he really struggles,’’ Baldinger said. “Kelce wasn’t a big guy either, but was always great because he had such great lower body strength and he was never hurt. He could just use his leverage to move those [bigger] guys. Jurgens struggles in that department.’’

The 6-6, 320-pound Steen is a smart, athletic player who is very good on his feet. He is steady, seldom blows assignments and hasn’t really been hurt. But he’s not the physical kind of right guard that Brandon Brooks or Mekhi Becton were. He’s not going to push anybody 10 yards downfield.

“If you’re asking them to go win the rushing title again like they did in ’24 [with Becton], “I don’t think [Steen] is the guy to help you do that,’’ Baldinger said.

The Eagles selected two big offensive linemen in the draft, taking 6-9, 346-pound tackle Markel Bell in the third round and 6-5, 334-pound Micah Morris in the sixth round. Maybe one or both of them will end up being rookie factors. Unlikely, but not impossible.

Stoutland, who was loved by his players, has been replaced by Chris Kuper, who played eight seasons in the league (with Denver) and has coached for the last nine years. Kuper will be implementing a new blocking scheme. They’ll be switching from a mid-zone blocking scheme to wide-zone.

“He’s going to do things differently from Stout,’’ Baldinger said. “And they need to be open to it. We’ll see how quickly they can adapt. They are an athletic group. They do move and run well. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be good.

“They should be fine in that type of [wide-zone] blocking. I’m pretty familiar with it. There are certain points that you’ve got to hit, and there are some real fundamentals to executing in that run game. But when it goes well like it did in Seattle last year and like it did in a lot of other places, it can be a lot of fun.’’

But as dominant as he was as a football player, he might’ve been an even better wrestler. Lewis was an undefeated state champ at 189 pounds his senior year at Kathleen High School in Lakeland, Fla., toying with every opponent he faced.

“The skills that I had, the skills that I still carry to this day on how to take another human being and just dominate them, people talk about football, but the sport that defined my life was on the wrestling mat,’’ Lewis told NFL Films producer Ken Rodgers in the 2023 ESPN 30 for 30 documentary Bullies of Baltimore.

Many of the things that helped make Lewis a great football player were learned and perfected on the wrestling mat. The same has been true for countless other NFL players who also wrestled at the high school or college level.

Bill Polian wrestled and played football as an undergrad at NYU. While the Hall of Fame general manager readily describes himself as a “lousy’’ wrestler, competing in the sport helped him see how a wrestling background can be beneficial to a football player, particularly offensive and defensive linemen and linebackers.

“What I learned about wrestling was, No. 1, you’ve got to be awfully tough to go nine minutes on the mat,’’ he said. “You just have to have incredible physical toughness to go out there and compete and practice like that every day.

“The other thing I learned was that even if you’re not good, and I wasn’t, you learn how to use leverage. You learn how important your hands are. So-called heavy hands are a wrestler’s best friend because you’re constantly using your hands to try to control your opponent.

“The best wrestlers at the collegiate level are actually quick-twitch athletes. Because the escape moves you’ve got to use when you’re on the bottom and somebody’s riding you are really athletic. I mean, you’ve got to be both athletic and you have to be exceptionally quick-twitched. Because you’ve got to make that move right now and reverse the guy. All of those skills are important on the football field.’’

Polian spent 30 years in the NFL, including three very successful GM stints with the Buffalo Bills, Carolina Panthers and Indianapolis Colts. Every year, he instructed his scouts to make sure they noted on their reports if a prospect had wrestled in high school or college because “we’ll know he’s tough and we’ll know he’s athletic.’’

Polian drafted or signed dozens of players over the years with wrestling backgrounds, including Hall of Fame linebacker Sam Mills. Mills, who helped Polian’s expansion Carolina Panthers make it to the NFC Championship Game in 1996 in just their second year of existence, and is the subject of my new book, Just Give Me A Chance To Fail (Navigator Books), which will be released on July 28 and is now available for pre-order on Amazon, was a two-time district champ and a state finalist in 1977 at Long Branch (NJ) High School.

Mills, who died of cancer in 2005, was just 5-foot-9, but credited wrestling with a lot of his football success.

“Wrestling is a thinking man’s sport,’’ he once told me. “You have to understand how to do it. You have to learn how to use your body leverage, which also is the key to playing linebacker.

“In wrestling, you have to look at your opponent’s eyes to know where he wants to go, just like you have to look at the quarterback’s eyes as a linebacker to know where he’s going with the football. And wrestling puts an unbelievable desire in you. I was always having to make weight.’’

Click to order a copy of my new book on the incredible life of Sam Mills, "Just Give Me A Chance to Fail.'' I'll be signing copies of the book with Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio, who wrote the foreword to the book, next Saturday, September 5, at the Great American Pub in Conshohocken from 6 to 8 PM.

Stephen Neal didn’t play a down of college football. He only wrestled at Cal-Bakersfield and was a two-time NCAA champ. Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots saw an offensive lineman in him and signed him as an undrafted free agent in 2001. He played 11 seasons and started 81 games for them and was a part of three Super Bowl championship teams.

He credits all of his NFL success to what he learned on the wrestling mat.

“Leverage in wrestling is super important,’’ Neal said. “Where your hands are. Where your body is. In wrestling, you have to get [your opponent’s shoulder blades] at a 45-degree angle to start counting their fall [pin]. If your hands aren’t right and they’re at 60 degrees, you don’t get any points.

“When you’re taking somebody down, you have to change levels, you have to penetrate, you have to have your body elongated so you can knock your opponent down to the ground.’’

Defensive tackle Mike Golic played in the NFL for nine years. He wrestled for four years in high school and was a third-place finisher in the Ohio state wrestling tournament his senior year. Went to Notre Dame where, besides playing football, he also wrestled, and had a 24-4-1 record for the Fighting Irish.

“From the initial snap of the ball, linemen, once they get into each other, you know immediately who has the leverage,’’ Golic said. “And if you don’t have it, you have to get it back. Wrestling is a way where you learn, if I don’t have leverage here, how am I going to get it back and put it in my favor? That’s one of the biggest things that wrestling helps you with in football.’’

But he is seriously considering sitting out this summer’s ceremony.

“I may not go,’’ he said. “I swore after I got in that I would never miss [an induction]. But I’m really contemplating [not going] out of respect for the guys that aren’t there. And out of respect for the [coaching] position.’’

The “guys that aren’t there’’ that Vermeil is referring to are fellow coaches Bill Belichick and Mike Holmgren. Belichick was a finalist this year in his first year of eligibility. Holmgren was a finalist in 2025.

Neither got in.

Like a lot of other people, Vermeil said he was “shocked and disappointed’’ that neither Belichick nor Holmgren got the necessary 80 percent approval from the Hall’s 50-member selection committee.

“Shit, I feel guilty,’’ he said. “Because here I am in the Hall of Fame because of different [voting] mechanics that were used when I got in, and the finest couple of football coaches in the history of the league aren’t in. It makes me think: What the hell am I doing in here if they can’t get in?

“It really riles me up. Not much pisses me off anymore at my age (he’s a still-vibrant 89). But that really bothered me.’’

Since 2004, just eight coaches, including Vermeil, have been voted into the Hall of Fame. Only three made it in between 2004 and 2019 when coaches were lumped together with modern-era players.

In 2020, the Hall decided to break out coaches and contributors into separate categories and have the selectors vote on them separately. The result: five coaches made it in in the next four years. The expanded 2020 “centennial’’ class included two coaches – Bill Cowher and Jimmy Johnson. Tom Flores was voted in in 2021, Vermeil in 2022 and Don Coryell in 2023. Buddy Parker, who won two NFL titles with the Detroit Lions in the early 50s, was the 2024 nominee, but failed to get the necessary 80 percent of the selector’s votes.

After a few Hall of Fame players, most notably Deion Sanders, whined that the voting rules had made it too easy to get into their exclusive club, the Hall tweaked the voting system in 2025.

“They suggested it was demeaning to them and what they did to get in,’’ Vermeil said. “I don’t believe that’s true. But there were a dominating few that felt that way and influenced the change of thinking with respect to the voting.’’

The changes included lumping the coach, contributor, and three senior nominees into a single group. Rather than vote on them separately, each of the 50 selectors could choose just three of the five, with only those receiving at least 80 percent of the vote getting in.

The new setup pretty much guaranteed a split vote that would make it difficult for any of the nominees to get the necessary 80 percent. Which is exactly what has happened the last two years.

The only member of the five-person coach/contributor/senior group to get in last year was former Green Bay Packers wide receiver Sterling Sharpe. This year, the lone inductee is former San Francisco 49ers running back Roger Craig. Both were senior players.

Holmgren’s omission in 2025 drew warranted criticism. He was a deserving candidate. His 161 career wins in 17 seasons are the 21^st most in history. His 24 postseason wins are tied for the fifth most all-time, behind only Andy Reid, Belichick, Don Shula and Tom Landry. He went to three Super Bowls, won one.

But the Belichick snub made both the Hall and its selectors, of which I’ve been one since 2002, look bad. I mean, we’re talking about a coach who has taken his team to nine Super Bowls and won six of them. His 31 playoff wins are the most of all time. He’s third in all-time wins (302) behind only Don Shula (328) and George Halas (318). This should have been a no-brainer, and it wasn’t.

Why? Well, clearly the new voting system was the biggest culprit. If the coaching nominee had been in a separate category as was the case in 2022 when Vermeil got in, there’s no way Belichick wouldn’t have gotten the necessary 40 “yes’’ votes from the 50 selectors.

While the Hall of Fame vote is done by secret ballot, a few of the selectors who did not vote for Belichick have publicly explained their reasoning. Kansas City Star columnist Vahe Gregorian said he voted for all three senior candidates – Craig, Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Ken Anderson and Pittsburgh Steelers defensive end L.C. Greenwood – because he felt there is a backlog of veteran players who need to get in. He assumed Belichick would get the sufficient number of votes for induction without his and wanted to try to help the senior players.

Mike Chappel, a long-time Indianapolis Colts beat writer who writes for Fox59.com, said he didn’t vote for Belichick because of Spygate, the 2007 scandal in which Belichick and the Patriots were caught and punished for illegally recording the New York Jets’ defensive signals from the sideline. It was suspected that Belichick had been doing it for several years. The league fined Belichick $500,000 and the Patriots $250,000. The Patriots also had to forfeit a first-round draft pick.

“There’s no erasing the stain of Spygate from his bio,’’ Chappell wrote in explaining why he didn’t vote for Belichick.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but Vermeil feels it’s absurd to keep Belichick out of the Hall of Fame because of Spygate. He said there hasn’t been a coach in the league who didn’t try to find out what the other team was doing.

“I can remember coaches on the sideline signaling with white towels whether it was going to be a run or pass,’’ he said. “Waving the towel with your right arm meant run. Waving it with your left arm meant pass.’’

What some consider cheating, others consider gaining an edge or outsmarting their opponent. When George Allen was coaching the Washington Redskins, there was a hotel next to the Dallas Cowboys’ practice field. Before the Redskins would play their division rival, Allen would send someone to Dallas and have them get a room overlooking the practice field and spy on the Cowboys’ practices.

Everyone in the league knew Allen was doing it. In 2002, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

“I worked for George,’’ said Vermeil, who Allen made the NFL’s first special teams coach with the LA Rams back in 1969. “He was an innovator.’’

Apparently, one man’s innovator is another man’s cheater.

Vermeil has been a long-time advocate for getting more coaches into the Hall of Fame. After he was inducted in 2022, he vowed to lobby for other deserving coaches.

He doesn’t think the coaching position is given the respect it deserves. “It isn’t given the respect that a starting quarterback is,’’ he said. “First off, I don’t believe coaches should be in the same category with contributors and senior players. There were 10 coaches fired this year. There weren’t 10 most valuable contributors fired this year. Let’s acknowledge the value of a great football coach in the National Football League.’’

After Holmgren didn’t get in in 2025, Vermeil spoke with Hall of Fame president Jim Porter about the new voting rules and their negative impact on coaches.

“Jim Porter’s heart is in the right place as far as the Pro Football Hall of Fame,’’ Vermeil said. “I mean, I really feel he’s done a helluva job overall since he took over [in October of 2021].

“But it was embarrassing to Mike when he didn’t get in. Everybody assumed he was going to get in and then he doesn’t because of these new rules. I felt it was not only disrespectful to Mike, but to the head coaching position within the league.

“Jim told me they were going to try it one more year (in 2026). They did and it’s even clearer now after Bill didn’t get in that it doesn’t work. I don’t think it would take an Einstein to figure out a better way to do it.

“Belichick [not getting in] put an exclamation point on the whole process. Now, I think they’ll come up with a better system. I have confidence in Jim Porter because I know where his heart is. I’ve talked to him a number of times. I don’t think they can afford to have this happen again.’’

The list of coaches with legitimate Hall of Fame credentials that don’t have a bronze bust in Canton is long and getting longer. Besides Belichick and Holmgren, there is Tom Coughlin and Mike Shanahan and Dan Reeves and Marty Schottenheimer and Chuck Knox. Three-time Super Bowl winner Andy Reid soon will be joining that group, as will Mike Tomlin and Pete Carroll and Sean Payton.

Despite all of his success, Vermeil always has had a bit of a coaching inferiority complex, and the fact that he’s in the Hall of Fame while others, like Holmgren and Belichick, are being turned away, has exacerbated it.

“Right now, I’m embarrassed to be in [the Hall of Fame],’’ Vermeil said. “The reason I got in was because I took losing, losing, losing teams and made them successful. That moved me into a separate category compared to guys who might have had better won-loss percentages than me. I won 73 percent of my games in my third year [with a team] and just 35 percent in my first two years. I made teams better.

“I came up through high school coaching. I couldn’t wait until Sunday to watch Tom Landry’s teams play, Don Shula’s teams, Bud Grant’s, all these guys. Then, all of a sudden, I was coaching in junior college and college. When I got in the same league with them, I never felt comfortable. I didn’t like to go to the owner’s meetings because it made me nervous to be around these quality guys. I’d be thinking, What the hell am I doing here?

“I have such tremendous respect for what it takes to do what they done.’’

I have recently joined the Substack community of authors and just wanted to introduce myself to anyone who isn’t familiar with me or my work.

My specialty, for lack of a better word, is professional football, which is what I’ll primarily be writing and talking about on Substack. There might be an occasional story on living with an aortic anyeurism or the futility of training our puppy or my love for British detective shows. But it will mostly be about football.

I spent the better part of 40 years covering the National Football League for the Philadelphia Daily News & Inquirer before taking a buyout four years ago.

For the last two years, I’ve been writing a book that will be out in late July. It is titled Just Give Me A Chance To Fail. Published by Philadelphia-based Navigator Books, it is the inspiring story of Hall of Fame linebacker Sam Mills. I hope you like it.

I’ll be posting my first story on Substack later this week. I spoke with Hall of Fame coach Dick Vermeil and got his candid thoughts on Bill Belichick getting snubbed by the Hall’s selectors in January and what he – and I -- believe led to it.

Vermeil, who was voted into the Hall in 2022, said he was “shocked and disappointed’’ that Belichick failed to get in a year after another outstanding coach, Mike Holmgren, also fell short.

“Not much pisses me off anymore at my age,’’ said the 89-year-old Vermeil. “But that really bothered me.’’

So much so that Vermeil, who has attended every Hall of Fame induction ceremony since he made it in 2022, is thinking of boycotting this summer’s ceremony as a show of respect for Belichick and Holmgren.

In the next few weeks, I’ll also have a couple of columns on the upcoming NFL draft, including one on how, despite all of the advances in scouting and technology, NFL teams still are managing to make as many draft mistakes as they made 40 years ago.

I also hope to do a few podcasts on Substack, as well as an occasional Q&A with readers/listeners.

For now, everything I put on Substack will be free of charge. That probably won’t change for a while. I just want you get reacquainted with me as we get closer to the publication of my book this summer.

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