Crossing Broad
It’s a tradition unlike any other. An Eagles quarterback has a couple of bad games and miserable “fans” come out of the woodwork to say they always knew this quarterback was shit. They knew it years ago and were the first ones to say it. Now everybody is going to hear about how they were right because they’re so smart.
Usually these fans are boomers who have been “watching football for years,” but not always. The content creator era has inflicted the young ones with similarly laughable malaise. You get the sense that people would be fine with the Eagles losing if it means their opinions are validated. And when the Eagles win, say, a Super Bowl, you don’t hear much from them.
We asked ChatGPT to take a crack at their story:
The Prophet of Doom (Who Is Always Wrong)
Every morning at 7:14 a.m. sharp, Leonard “Lenny” McKinnon—lifelong Eagles fan, part-time accountant, full-time pessimist—burst out of his rowhome clutching a lukewarm Wawa coffee and a conviction that had taken over his entire personality: Jalen Hurts has always been bad, and Lenny knew it before anyone.
This newfound crusade emerged after two rough games—two, not three, not a season’s worth, just two—during which Hurts threw a handful of interceptions and made several decisions Lenny described as “career-defining catastrophes” but everyone else described as “normal quarterback slumps.”
Lenny saw it differently.
To him, Hurts’ minor stretch of bad play was conclusive proof that he had been right for years. He marched around Philadelphia like a prophet bearing terrible news no one asked for.
At the grocery store:
“Excuse me ma’am,” he said to a woman comparing cereal prices. “Have you accepted that Jalen Hurts was never a good quarterback?”
At the dentist’s office:
While reclined in the chair with metal tools in his mouth, he attempted to tell the hygienist, “You know, he can’t throw—never could.” It came out mostly as gargling, but the message was unmistakably obnoxious.
At work:
His boss stopped him after he stapled a packet of financial reports directly to the break-room bulletin board.
“Lenny, why?”
“I needed people to know Hurts’ completion percentage the last two weeks,” he replied, as if this explained everything.
The odd thing was that Lenny’s football analysis had one defining quirk: he evaluated Jalen Hurts only as a passer. Hurts could rush for 150 yards and three touchdowns, carry defenders on his back like a mythic ox, and teleport the ball across the goal line for all Lenny cared—but if a single pass fluttered, Lenny took it as evidence of a decade-long conspiracy to hide Hurts’ “true, terrible nature.”
Never mind the playoff runs.
Never mind the MVP-caliber season.
Never mind the fact that “dual-threat” actually means something in the modern NFL.
No.
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