The Eagles ALWAYS win...

[DH]

Great article from the Courier Post...

BETHLEHEM, Pa. - Brian Westbrook practiced Monday, back in camp after a one-week holdout. Which means the Eagles won. Again.
The Eagles always win. They never budge, they never flinch. Players who come up against them (as long as they are not the franchise quarterback) will be crushed. Like an eggshell. This is the NFL, where contracts are not guaranteed and the players have no leverage. This is the world in which owner Jeffrey Lurie and his Eagles live, and Lurie runs an organization that is better at it than most.

"It's more about: Do you honor contracts or don't you?" Lurie said Monday in his annual State of the Eagles talk with the press corps. "In the NFL, the team is a distribution point. Every team spends the same amount of money; people forget that. You're really just portioning the pie however you can to maximize your roster. So, if one player asks for much more than his market value, or wants more, he's really asking the other players to give it up. He's not asking it from the team.

"You're not in a position of judging how much to spend. It's who you give it to."

Now, obviously the Eagles have broken contracts before. They do it when it suits their purposes. So the conventional wisdom is that this system flows only one way - toward the team. Lurie said the players are actually the ones who benefit.

"If you can create a sport where every single market has an equal chance to win, you are going to have a very popular game," Lurie said. "If you don't have a sport that's littered with guaranteed contracts, it opens up for young players and for the motivation every single year to be intense.

"Fans love that. That's what football is all about."

The very thing that agent Drew Rosenhaus has been publicly griping about - that NFL players don't get guaranteed contracts; maybe you heard - is the thing that makes the NFL great. And it's good for the players, too.

"There's no question about it," Lurie said. "The reason the players get a much larger percentage of the revenue in football is because there are no guaranteed contracts. We could easily make a deal with the players for guaranteed contracts and you would have a much lower percentage of the revenue going to the players. That's not in the interest of 99 percent of the players because their benefits, pensions and salaries are all tied to the growing cap.

"Revenues are based on how popular the sport is. The way to start decreasing the popularity is to make it where certain big markets have advantages, where players are guaranteed contracts and teams are stuck in a dilemma where you can't improve your team.

"This system is the best possible system for 99 percent of the players."

Maybe the players agree with this; maybe they don't (they don't). But Lurie doesn't mind when players buck the system. He said Monday he didn't understand Owens' stance, not a bit, but didn't flinch when Owens publicly squawked.

"Predictably, you're going to have contract issues," Lurie said. "I'm delighted we don't have talent-based issues - finding a pass-rushing defensive end, finding a franchise quarterback. Those are the things you worry about. Contract issues, that goes with the territory."

The Eagles are just so impossibly good at this. They're smart, they're confident (bordering on arrogant) and they make good decisions. Every year they've lost some good, popular players, and every year they've weathered discontent in the locker room over how much some guys get paid and carried on without missing a beat.

And every year, there is wailing that this time it will cost them. And every year Lurie and team president Joe Banner come off looking like the smartest guys in the room, as the Eagles just keep going.

Nothing seems to bother them. Nothing slows them down. Lurie, after all, makes sure his players have the best. The Eagles are a first-class team; they make sure their players have what they need to play on Sunday.

The rest is business. The Eagles are just better at it than most, and players who try to test their resolve will lose - and Lurie will tell them it's the best thing for them.

"It takes a lot of discipline, a lot of difficult decisions along the way, but when you have a blueprint and a plan to be ultra-competitive, you try to take advantage in any way you can in the system we operate under," Lurie said. "The number one goal is to win a Super Bowl. That goal is number one, two, three, four and five. It's going to be a tough battle. But we have exactly what we want to win that battle."

[Rome]

Do you ever get the impression that Lurie would make an excellent pimp?

[QB Eagles]

Do you ever get the impression that Lurie would make an excellent pimp?

"Would"?

[Wingspan]

Do you ever get the impression that Lurie would make an excellent pimp?

he looked like one in the mid 90's

[Seabiscuit36]

No that was the Jeans. 

[mussa]

"Is Jeffery Lurie gonna have to smack a bitch?"

[Sgt PSN]

I'm Jeff Lurie bitch!

[ice grillin you]

christina>jeffery

[DH]

Tammy>Christina 

[MURP]

lets hope they continue to "always win."   

[Feva]

Do you ever get the impression that Lurie would make an excellent pimp?

he looked like one in the mid 90's

That moustache was the ish!