The 1968 Eagles: I wish tomorrow never came.

The Philadelphia Eagles are a bizarre team. They are almost always consistently good or horrifically bad. There is almost no middle-ground. They are currently in the best period of their history with 2 Super Bowls in the last decade. However, a conversation with Zach reminded me of my favourite bad Philly team of all time, the 1968 Eagles. Buckle in, there’s a lot. If you want the cliff notes version, I will give that to you right now: - The Eagles were horrendously bad despite having future hall of famer Mike Ditka and pro bowl running back Tom Woodeshick. - Their offense was 2nd worst and their defense was bottom 3 - Despite being the worst team in the NFL, they missed out on drafting 1st overall to the AFL’s Buffalo Bills who drafted star running back OJ Simpson. That^ is the general perspective. I’d argue this team is way funnier when you look at them on a deeper level. The head coach and de facto general manager of this team was a man named Joe Kuharic. Kuharic had been hired in 1964. He was initially given a 5 year contract only for the owner to turn it into a lifetime (15-year) contract shortly after. FYI, Kuharic had exactly 1 winning season in his previous 6 years as an NFL head coach and never had a winning-season at Notre fucking Dame before returning to the NFL. Imagine if the Cardinals had given Kliff Kingsbury a 15-year contract, but Kliff never coached Mahomes and was never Manziel’s OC. This move was obviously extremely unpopular. Kuharic himself is hilarious, but for bad reasons. Kuharic had a very strange way of phrasing how/why things happened. According to at least one sportswriter, Kuharic once said “that horse was from a different fire department” when explaining how his team bounced back from a halftime deficit. NFL films also has a clip of him saying “Well the gears in that guy’s mind didn’t mesh well I’ll tell ya” before drinking from a bowl of soup with a ladle. Unsurprisingly, Kuharic’s continued presence on the sideline infuriated the Philly faithful. The fact that he was under contract for so long stung even more when the Eagles became the first team in the Super Bowl era to lose their first 11 games. They were also the first team to do it since they themselves did it in 1936. However, this losing streak triggered a thought. In the college world, USC star OJ Simpson was killing defenses on the ground and would win the Heisman. So Eagles fan began to embrace the losing. As long as they lost all the games, they’d get OJ Simpson. The Eagles would play the Lions on Thanksgiving in a game that became known as the Muddy Miracle as the Eagles finally won their first game of the season. The very next week, the Eagles played the Saints and put up a season-high 29 points to win their 2nd in a row. In the span of 2 weeks, the Eagles have cost themselves the chance to draft OJ Simpson. Naturally, Philadelphia was furious and it all culminated in easily the most infamous incident from this season. In the final week of the season, the Eagles played the Bud Grant-Vikings in Franklin Field (Philly’s home stadium). There were many pissed off Philly fans in the bitter cold. At halftime, Eagles brass had the brilliant idea of having Santa prance around. They didn’t hire a mall Santa so they just grabbed a random drunk young guy dressed up as Santa and threw him onto the field. Philadelphia proceeded to boo and pelt snowballs at the Santa. The booing was so loud that the Santa in question remembered being genuinely scared. The Eagles lost and the worst season in Philly sports history ended on an incident that has stained their reputation forever. The Eagles had other issues, like injuries, but this team was doomed from the start and the way it devolved into a circus will never not be funny to me. By the way, Philadelphia would get the 3rd overall pick in the draft for this season. In that draft, the Bills took OJ 1st overall and the Falcons took tackle George Kunz 2nd overall. OJ became a hall of fame football player and a hall of shame person while Kunz was a 7-time pro bowler in 9 seasons. The Eagles took Leroy Keyes, who lasted just 4 seasons. With the very next pick, the Steelers selected Mean Joe Greene.