Well that was some of the worst professional football I've ever seen. In the ultra-meaningless yearly fourth preseason game between the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Jets, the Jets won 6-0, and frankly, it was somehow less exciting than the score would indicate. As always, we have 10 awards.
1) The 'Who?' Award: The guys who played in this game
- MORE ON THE EAGLES
- Final observations: Jets 6, Eagles 0
- Four players who impressed in Eagles' preseason finale vs. Jets
- The good, bad and ugly from the first half of Eagles vs. Jets
- After being cut himself, Eagles coach Doug Pederson knows how tough this week can be
Here are the guys who started on offense for the Eagles:
QB: Clayton Thorson
RB: Wendell Smallwood
WR: Mack Hollins
WR: Greg Ward
WR: Marken Michel
TE: Josh Perkins
LT: Matt Pryor
LG: Sua Opeta
C: Nate Herbig
RG: Keegan Render
RT: Brett Toth
And on defense:
DE: Daeshon Hall
DT: Treyvon Hester
DT: Hassan Ridgeway
DE: Josh Sweat
LB: Alex Singleton
LB: T.J. Edwards
LB: Chris Worley
CB: Josh Hawkins
S: Deiondre Hall
S: Tre Elston
CB: Jeremiah McKinnon
More than half of those guys won't be on the team in two days.
2) The 'Preseason MVP' Award: Daeshon Hall
Hall finished the preseason with 10 tackles, 4 sacks, and 3 forced fumbles. His latest big play:
Hall will be the Eagles' fourth DE this season, you know, barring a trade for Jadeveon Clowney.
3) The 'Butterfingers' Award: Wendell Smallwood
In the first quarter of a game in which he was trying to perhaps impress other teams around the league, Smallwood fumbled. Not good.
Out of curiosity, I looked to see how many fumbles Smallwood has lost over his career, and to my surprise, he has only lost one, in 2016 against the Cowboys. (Technically, on the stat sheet he also lost one against the Buccaneers last year, but that was in an end-of-game desperation lateral situation.)
And thus concludes the "useless Wendell Smallwood information" section of this game recap.
4) The 'Cringe Emoji' Award: Clayton Thorson
At various points throughout training camp and the preseason, we've seen "OMG WHAT IS THAT" Thorson, and "Hey, he looks like a passable NFL quarterback" Thorson. Thursday night was more definitely the former. Thorson finished 12 of 26 for 84 yards, 0 TD, a pick, and a QB rating of 38.0. The pick was bad, but you could have picked a half-dozen or so throws that were arguably worse.
If there's a silver lining here, it's that if the Eagles want to bring Thorson back to the practice squad, it's unlikely some other team is going to claim him if they watch his preseason tape.
He was still better than Cody Kessler though.
5) The 'Other Kickers Around the League Are Awful' Award: Taylor Bertolet, Kaare Vedvic, Eddy Pineiro, and probably some others
Bertolet, the Jets' kicker after Chandler Catanzaro retired a couple weeks ago, missed three field goals. He's not alone. After trading a fifth-round pick to the Ravens for Kaare Vedvik, the Vikings have watched Vedvid miss all three of his field goal attempts this preseason.
And then there was this, from Bears kicker Eddy Pineiro:
Be thankful for Jake Elliott.
6) The 'Article Filler' Award: Cameron Johnston
I'm already out of things to write about this game, so here's video of Cameron Johnston doing a dropkick:
Thanks Cameron.
7) The 'Article Filler II' Award: The Jets player, who, during the pre-game player intros, tried to plant a huge Jets flag like a spear at the 50-yard line, and it bounced right off of the turf.
Yes, that happened. It was a sign of things to come.
8) The 'Thank You' Award: The Jets, for calling kneel-downs near the end of the game
Technically, the Jets shouldn't have tried to run out the clock mathematically at the end of the game, as the Eagles had enough timeouts to stop the clock.
9) The 'Thank You Too' Award: Doug Pederson for not using his timeouts
Me, when Pederson waived off the opportunity to stop the clock:
10) The 'Thank God' Award: All of us
The preseason is over. Rejoice.
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