Making much ado about nothing

The Philadelphia Eagles were able to sneak by the Carolina Panthers on Sunday by the score of 22 to 16. It is true that their passing game has really struggled the last two games. The Eagles could have easily lost this game. In the last 50 seconds a wide receiver for Carolina dropped the ball on the one yard line that would at least tie the game at 22 and Carolina would probably have gone ahead by one point. They have only had a total of 224 passing yards over the last two weeks and that will definitely not get it done in the playoffs. 

The Philadelphia media has manufactured a controversy between A.J. Brown and Jalen Hurts. If the team wants to continue their winning streak this week against the Pittsburgh Steelers they have to forget about the whole thing. I will also be cheering for the Buffalo Bills to beat the Detroit Lions this week so the Eagles will still have a chance for the number one seed in the NFC playoffs.

In other surprising football news, Bill Belichick has decided to coach at North Carolina, which is the first time he’s coached in college in 40+ years. I would have thought his goal at 72 years old was to take one more job in the NFL so he could become the winningest coach ever.  He only needs12 wins to pass Don Shula with 325. He had a great run with the New England Patriots. We’ll see what happens in the future.

The college football playoff bracket is set with 12 teams. I’m surprised they went directly from 4 teams to 12. I thought they would have tried 8 teams to see how that would work. I will definitely pay more attention now with the bigger playoff field because I can’t stand the bowl system that developed over the years. Most of the games are money grabbing exhibitions period.

I expect the number one seed, Oregon, to make it to the semifinal round. Their offense is pretty powerful. I'm looking forward to the game between Notre Dame and Indiana who both call the Hoosier State home. I’ll be rooting for Penn State as well and I’m curious how Boise State will perform on their blue turf field. 

The baseball winter meetings took place in Dallas. There were rumors that the Phillies were going to replace  third baseman Alex Bohm with Alex Bregman of the Houston Astros. I don't think that is going to happen. The Phillies only made one move over this week. They signed a relief pitcher from the Toronto Blue Jays, Jordan Romano, under a one year contract to add depth to their bullpen.

There were some moves that do affect the National League East Division, including the biggest one so far when, unfortunately for the Phillies fans, Juan Soto signed with the New York Mets for the ridiculous sum of $765 million over the next 15 years. He has a buyout after right five years. It is true he is a very good hitter, but the main reason he got that much money is because he is only 26. He was only 19 when he came up to the big leagues. Since the Yankees were not able to keep Soto, they spent a lot of money on former Braves pitcher Max Fried. That is good for the Phillies because now Max is out of our division.