Author: alaskaadmin

Philadelphia general manager Howie Roseman has repeated countless times — recently with an ironic smirk — that “A.J. Brown is an Eagle.” He has said it so often at press conferences that, sometimes, he’ll say it before anyone has time to ask a question about the disgruntled star receiver. The question is whether Brown will get traded. And at this point, everyone knows what Roseman’s answer really means: A.J. Brown won’t be an Eagle for long. All reports indicate he’s going to be a New England Patriot in a deal that sends a 2028 first-round pick to Philadelphia. (That deal will come after June 1 so the Eagles can split his dead-cap charge over two years.) The one thing the Eagles have wisely avoided is trying to replace Brown in a one-for-one situation. This is where the Tennessee Titans went wrong, attempting to draft and develop Treylon Burks into their next Brown. And, well, that did not go well. Roseman clearly wants to replace Brown in the aggregate. (“The what?” Think about the famous Moneyball scene.) Preparations are already underway. In the draft, the Eagles picked two pass-catchers in the top 54 picks. These two selections have provided clues about Philly’s new offensive vision. So let’s get to the first one: Makai Lemon. The Eagles traded up in Round 1 to No. 20 to make sure they landed the USC All-American receiver. Roseman said they thought Lemon would be off the board much earlier, which was why the Eagles had increased urgency to snag him. “There’s a lot to like about him,” Roseman said after the first round. “Has the ability to separate in man coverage. He can play in the slot. He can play outside. Physical player. Really good with the ball in his hands. Really good hands. Good in zone coverage — has really good instincts.” Lemon has every tool to be one of the best slot receivers in the NFL. His natural comparison is Detroit Lions All-Pro Amon-Ra St. Brown, who upends the idea that a slot receiver can’t be the No. 1 option. Given the total absence of top-flight receivers (and the fact that Roseman liked Lemon enough to trade up for him), Lemon will likely get 100 targets next year. On Day 2 of the draft, the Eagles took Vanderbilt All-American Eli Stowers at 54th overall. The slender-framed tight end was one of the best athletes in the draft and should have a massive impact on the passing game. And even though the Eagles still have veteran Dallas Goedert, I’d expect that the two tight ends will enter a timeshare immediately. Roseman shopped Goedert on the trade market earlier this offseason. And on draft night, he made his feelings for Stowers clear. The GM, right before telling Stowers that he’d be the team’s second-round pick, asked the youngster if he could name any of the tight ends that Roseman had previously taken in Round 2. “We’ve got a pretty good history of selecting tight ends in the second round. Can you name any of them?” Roseman said in a video posted on Vanderbilt’s socials. “We’ve got the one we’ve got right here [Goedert]. We got Zach Ertz in the second round. How about we pick you right here and add you to that legacy?” Given Goedert’s size (6-foot-5, 255 pounds), he will still prove useful in a pass-catcher group that’s largely devoid of bulk. Devonta Smith, the team’s soon-to-be promoted WR1, is dubbed the “Slim Reaper” for a reason, after all. Lemon is 190 pounds. Stowers is 240 pounds. It’s not a big group. Saquon Barkley, who had a down year compared to his historic 2024 performance, will (hopefully for Philly) get back to being Saquon. And his physicality should help. What’s more, the team’s backup, Tank Bigsby, runs with intensity to match his nickname. So there’s your aggregate sum. Some returning pieces. Some new pieces. Plenty of compelling skill sets. But there’s no doubt: It’s an incomplete picture. How will new OC Sean Mannion build this offense? How will he make it better than the sum of its parts? (Can he?) The beauty is that the Eagles have Jalen Hurts, who is one of the more versatile quarterbacks in the NFL. It seems the public is down on Hurts, particularly after an ESPN exposé that highlighted his intense leadership style and strong-willed opinions. But when you look at his record, Hurts remains a QB who has a 69.5 winning percentage, ninth best all time. And Hurts has done that despite having a new OC in every single season of his career. Every one! That’s success unlike anything in recent memory — not to mention he has a Super Bowl ring. Stylistically, he’ll adapt. He always does. Mannion came from the Green Bay Packers, with Matt LaFleur at the helm. But Mannion has been coaching only since 2024. He was a longtime backup quarterback who spent two years under Rams coach Sean McVay, three-ish seasons under Mike Zimmer (with the Vikings), and one year under Kevin O’Connell. That’s a lot of different offshoots of the Shanahan scheme. Interestingly enough, we’ve been seeing most of those coaches prioritize size and tight end bulk. Teams are going toward the trendy schematic wrinkle of two- and three-tight end sets. In turn, teams are getting bigger and more physical. That was what the Eagles were when they made a run two years ago. But they’re straying from that style when you look at their personnel. They look more like the Seahawks under Klint Kubiak or the Rams from 2023, when they combined star receivers Cooper Kupp and rookie Puka Nacua. That’s roughly what I anticipate from Philly — a powerful run game and a play-action passing game. That will help Hurts feel more comfortable in a high-volume passing attack, because his pass-catchers can dominate horizontally. And Brown can head to New England where he and Drake Maye can do whatever it is that Josh McDaniels would like to do next. Even with uncertainty and drama swirling, Philly looks ready to take on the challenge of replacing one of the league’s best receivers.​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports

For anyone who saw it live or saw the highlight, it’s pretty hard not to forget the Connor Zilisch fall from the car in Victory Lane following his win at Watkins Glen. Zilisch, who lost his footing as the window net was on the window sill, was briefly knocked out and he broke his collarbone, keeping him out of the Cup race the next day. He jokes about it now — he told me just last Saturday that, “Hopefully this time around, I can win and not fall of my car in Victory Lane” – and that any celebrations will be different. “I feel like I’ve learned my lesson there,” Zilisch said. “If I do that again, we’ve got big issues.” There have been some other notable injuries in Victory Lane. Brad Keselowski once cut his hand when a champagne bottle broke. FOX Sports analyst Kevin Harvick said he never had an accident in victory lane and had one plea in the Zilisch aftermath: “I would tell everybody to not worry about that one fall. Keep celebrating. Don’t get bland on us and boring.” We asked several Cup drivers earlier this year that in light of Zilisch’s return to Watkins Glen, if they have ever hurt themselves in a victory celebration. Here are some of the answers: AJ Allmendinger: “The Celsius can spike [jumping] off the side of the car, I’m not going to lie, I’m getting old, really old, so it hurts when I land. But I haven’t come that close to injuring myself, just making myself more sore than I need to be.” Christopher Bell: “It’s actually pretty incredible that it doesn’t happen more times. You watch people stand on the cars and they look wobbly. And I’m sure I look wobbly, too, but I’ve never fallen off. But I promise you, I’ve done my last standing on the door.” Ryan Blaney: “There was a couple of moments where I got on the roof of the car and just had to get my footing fast.” Alex Bowman: “With my lack of coordination, I’m surprised that I haven’t. It should have happened to me already. I guess I don’t win enough to get the odds going far enough to slip and fall. But I’m not very coordinated, so I’m surprised that I haven’t.” Chase Briscoe: “I’ve not injured myself but I have fallen off the car before — my first sprint car win, I fell right off. I was standing on the roll bars because it was a non-winged sprint car, and I went to fist pump, and my foot slipped and I fell and landed right on my tailbone. I was bruised up.” Kyle Busch: “I’ve fortunately been pretty lucky that I’ve never had an issue like that. I feel like I slipped one time before I got all the way up — my foot slipped off the door, so my hand was still on the roof, so I caught myself. You’ve got to be really careful because those door tops aren’t very wide.” Cole Custer: I’ve done similar to what Connor did. I fell off the car at Kentucky after an Xfinity race that I won and at Homestead, I fell on the roof of the thing. Honestly, we were all thinking of Connor a lot during that moment. It was a nasty fall. It’s one of those things you do have to pay attention a little bit. Austin Dillon: “It does get slippery. You just have to be a little bit of an athlete when you’re getting out of the car sometimes. You never want that to happen. My closest thing would have been the scorpion I did at Nashville when I tried to slide on the grass, and I think it knocked the breath out of me. I threw up in the truck afterwards. No one saw it because I covered the in-car camera with the checkered flag.” Ty Gibbs: “I haven’t, but I probably been really way closer than I think. I did fall on my back after Atlanta. I jumped out of the car, and I fell, like, flat on my ass. But I just played it off. I just sat there for a second with my helmet on.” Todd Gilliland: “I’ve never been close personally, but being friends with Connor, that was definitely very scary to watch. I think the whole industry, it makes you really think about, getting out and kind of where your window net is. And even the rest of the year, I think everybody was watching everybody get out of the car a little bit closer. Carson Hocevar: “I’ve gotten close to that, I was at a late model race, and my foot did exactly what his did — it slid in the door, and I halfway fell, and I was facing outward, and I did the exact same thing as him. I just didn’t fall. But my foot did fall down. I slipped on the window net and everything. So when I saw that, I realized how close I probably was to knocking myself out pretty good. But it only made him faster, I felt like, once he came back.” Kyle Larson: “Even when I’ve won USAC midget races or sprint races. I don’t do the cage stand. I just stand up in my seat because I don’t want to lose my balance — because you’d be falling from a lot higher than he did.” Tyler Reddick: “I think on one hot summer day, I may have enjoyed one too many beverages in Victory Lane and turned as pale a ghost. But that’s about it. I probably just did some damage to my liver.” Zane Smith: “I have about done that in the truck series a few times, actually. I think it was at COTA once our truck caught on fire (from tire rubber), I didn’t go into, like, a panic, but it just caught my attention, and I turned awkwardly and almost fell. So thankfully I didn’t.” Ricky Stenhouse Jr.: “I have not come close to injuring myself in a victory celebration. … When I did climb the fence at the [Daytona] 500, it was starting to go over. I didn’t almost fall, but I looked down and the way the track is angled. I’d like to see how high I actually was in the air. It was pretty high.” Daniel Suarez: “When you win a race, there is so much adrenaline, and there is so much energy that at that moment, you think that you’re Superman. That’s why you see drivers climbing fences, climbing cars, climbing all these different things. And we think that we’re invincible. And the reality is that we’re still human and actually a little bit tired. I have never had a close call, but I’m actually quite surprised that doesn’t happen more often, because we do a lot of crazy things after we win races.” Bubba Wallace: “If you look at Indy, it took me a second because I stood on the slope part of the roof and I kept stumbling backwards. But I think I have just one more percent of athleticism in my body than Connor’s, and I was able to hold myself. So we’re good.”​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports

The best thing about the push-to-pass controversy in Long Beach is that the rules have changed and drivers won’t have to wonder if they should try to break the rules. Because that’s what it really came down to — whether a driver had to try to break the spirit of the rule while also avoiding violating the rule. Push-to-pass gives a driver an extra 50 horsepower. Drivers get 150-200 seconds of it for a road-course or street-course race. The rule has been that it is supposed to be disabled on their vehicles on all restarts (except if the restart comes with two laps or one lap left in the race) and then enabled once a driver gets to the alternate start-finish line after the restart (so typically almost a full lap). INDYCAR software enables and disables the system. At St. Petersburg in 2024, the Penske cars had it enabled on restarts. INDYCAR found that Team Penske had manipulated the system, allowing push-to-pass to be enabled on restarts and both Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin used it to a competitive advantage. Newgarden, who had won the race, and McLaughlin were disqualified. At that time, there was the question about why drivers would push the button for the boost if they knew it shouldn’t have been enabled? And in a wider view, do drivers push the button just to see if it works? Well, we got at least some of that answer this week. At Long Beach, an INDYCAR software malfunctioned and did not disable the push-to-pass for the lone restart in the race. Of the 25 drivers, 12 used it. Considering the rules didn’t prohibit pushing the button, it is hard to blame those drivers. What’s the harm in pushing it to see if it works, to see if there was a malfunction in the INDYCAR system or INDYCAR simply activated it earlier than it should have been activated? Now there is harm. The rules have changed. Previously the rule stated: “[Restarts] will have the Push to Pass system disabled and will be enabled for a given Car once that Car reaches the alternate Start/Finish line.” INDYCAR re-wrote the rulebook to add this: “It is the sole responsibility of the Competitors to ensure that Push to Pass is not utilized during any period where prohibited. Any successful utilization of the Push to Pass during such periods, regardless of INDYCAR signal status, is prohibited and subject to penalty.” Pretty clear. Push the button when you’re not supposed to and if it works, you will be penalized. If this had been in the rulebook since the beginning, there would have been clear indication of if the drivers themselves intentionally broke a rule or not. Is this vindication for the Penske drivers? A little in the sense that if anyone thought that no driver pushed the button just to see if it would work, that was proved otherwise. But Penske still had a system that overrode the INDYCAR software designed to disable the system, so those penalties were certainly just. There is no exoneration. Should the drivers who did use it and Long Beach have faced penalties? No. INDYCAR made the right call, as it was the league’s software error that enabled the system. INDYCAR should be glad that there was only one driver who actually made a pass using it, so there weren’t a bunch of questionable results. INDYCAR also did the right thing in releasing the names of drivers and how long they used it. That now keeps anyone from wondering who used it and who didn’t. It is interesting that both Alex Palou (who used it) and Will Power (who didn’t use it) both said that there should be no penalties a week prior to the list being released. Palou would obviously say he wouldn’t want penalties, but Power had no reason to not give his true feelings considering no Andretti Global driver used the system. Whether the fact that drivers can now use the system on all restarts is a good thing will be determined by the quality of the racing. It certainly doesn’t hurt to try, especially because it makes the rule much more simple and drivers don’t have to worry about violating push-to-pass on every restart. Sometimes life is messy, and this has been a messy path. Hopefully, the mess is behind INDYCAR on this one.​Latest Sports News from FOX Sports