Awful again, no interest

Well the Eagles keep piling on to this season of fail, this time losing a prime time game, at home to the 2-8 Carolina Panthers.   At this point I am pretty numb to losing, having it happen 7 times in a row will do that to a football fan.

The porous Eagles defense was just the ticket for Cam Newton to revitalize his season, he ran and threw for a total of 4 TD’s in the win.  The Eagles defense under Todd Bowles has been unbelievably poor.  They flashed a stat that showed that since he took over, the average QB rating against the Eagles is in the mid 140’s. (VERY VERY high)  The D gets no sacks, no interceptions and blows coverage routinely like a cheap hooker.

Bryce Brown stepped in for LeSean McCoy and had a monster game, running for over 170 yards.  Unfortunately he also fell prey to the Eagles biggest problem, turn overs, fumbling the ball twice in the 3rd quarter.

Nick Foles did little to help win or lose the game, throwing for a small amount of yardage with no TD’s or INT’s although the Panthers dropped at least three easy picks.  Evidently Foles has the common problem a lot of young QB’s do, staring down one receiver, making it easy for a safety to anticipate where he is going.

This team is so inept I almost feel bad for Andy at this point.  Yes Andy has the monster share of the blame here since he is the personnel man as well as the coach.  His decisions to throw Juan Castillo in as def coordinator and hitch his wagon to the back of Mike Vick are probably two of his biggest mistakes of the last couple years.  The high priced free agents the Eagles landed the last couple years have been outright busts as well.

One thing the Eagles were always good at was working the free agent system, both knowing when it was time to cut someone loose as well as making wise free agent acquisitions.  That definitely has not been the case recently.

In Andy’s defense, the injuries the Eagles have had this year, particularly to the offensive line have been horrific and disruptive.  Throw on top of that the injuries to Vick, McCoy, Jason Avant and now Desean Jackson, you have something like 75% of the Eagles original starting offense sidelined.

But injuries are part of every NFL season and the good teams have back ups or systems that are able to continue forward and be successful despite them.  In the Eagles case the wheels have totally fallen off.

Now, as the team with the worst record in the NFC, should the Eagles just continue to play Foles and lose their way to the first or second pick in the draft?  It’s fine with me.  I’m ready for a fresh start in 2013, if we are still here.

I utilized my Xbox 360 and the WatchESPN service to catch the game.  It was a far better alternative to the ATDHENET.TV site I used to use to pull in Eagles games not shown on the Sunday Ticket.  The picture was near HD quality although some of the streaming burps were a bit annoying.

However there was one part of the experience which was incredibly annoying, the way commercial breaks are handled.  For some reason when games are streamed on WatchESPN they are not allowed to show commercials.  So instead during every commercial break they just throw up an ESPN logo with an incredibly annoying and repetitive music track.  I literally could not take it anymore by the second quarter and was muting the tv during the breaks, which there were a lot of.  I never thought I would find myself thinking, “I wish they would just show a damn commercial…”

The Eagles game capped a disappointing week in fantasy football.  I wasted a 51 point performance by Tony Romo with horrible showings by Marshawn Lynch and the Texans defense coupled with goose eggs from Vernon Davis, Pierre Thomas and DeSean Jackson.  I now sit at 6-6 after losing three games in a row.

So I have been trying to find ways to help my mom save money on her monthly expenses.  One of those targets are her non-electric utility bills, namely what she pays for internet, tv and phone.  I already pay for her cell phone but unfortunately she gets very poor reception in her condo so she has a land line that is bundled with Century Link DSL service.  The land line includes no free long distance minutes which is very lame.

So I got into an online chat with Century Link customer service posing as mom.  I told them that I was on a fixed income and needed to lower my monthly expenses.  I said I saw a better deal on Comcast and wanted to see what Century Link would do for me.

I have used the reverse strategy on Comcast several times via online chat and it has always been successful.  I currently pay 29.99 for my cable internet, although it is one of their slower packages.

Well the Century Link rep made zero effort to appease me.  Immediately saying there was nothing he could do but he wanted to let me know about their 39.99 Prism TV promotion.  I said “Wow.  I guess I’ll call Comcast.”

I looked at Comcast deals.  It looks like we would be able to get a better deal through them if we bundled internet and tv.   I would then install a Magic Jack so mom would have unlimited long distance calling.

Unfortunately I need mom to actually do the leg work on this since I can’t set up service on her behalf.  I gave her a game plan to follow.