Lurie Article from the Boston Globe

[rjs246]

The Panthers:
They run the ball.
They play good defense.
They have reliable special teams.
They have a QB who got way too farging lit for his birthday and single handedly gave the game away despite controlling the ball for most of the game.

very happy to have been wrong on this one...

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

Jake Delhomme proved last night that giving a shtein is highly overrated.  He is one of the most competitive guys around at the QB position, but that doesn't always make up for being a fairly average QB at best.

[ice grillin you]

im not disagreeing i dont know how competitive jake delhomme is but what makes him or why do you say hes more competitive than anyone else

[Diomedes]

he doesn't yuck it up when he fargs up?

[ice grillin you]

makes sense

[PoopyfaceMcGee]

Yes, he throws tantrums when he messes up.  That's about it.

[rjs246]

he doesn't yuck it up when he fargs up?

On point.

[stalker]

What the hell makes you think the Cardinals will win at Carolina?

Because I am a farging genius. You must all be in awe of my GIANT BRAIN.

[reese125]

we are well aware of what you said there kid killer

cant stand that shtein

[stalker]

The Panthers were built to win in the post season.

Sounds like faulty construction moron.

[rjs246]

The Panthers were built to win in the post season.

Sounds like faulty construction moron.

Did you miss the part where I already said I was wrong? Did you just log in tonight to jerk off all over yourself for being a blind screaming homer?

[stalker]

Just because you took a mea culpa is no reason we can't torture you, fag.

[rjs246]

So you did log on just to jerk off all over yourself. That's cool.

[PhillyPhreak54]

Lurie happy with Reid, McNabb
The Eagles owner sees no changes next year, but has dreams of a Super Bowl victory.

By Ashley Fox

Inquirer Staff Writer
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - Maybe it would've been this way anyway, even if the Eagles had continued to slide from 5-5-1 and missed the playoffs for the third time in four years. But now that the team is into its fifth NFC championship game in the last eight years, Jeffrey Lurie is certain of two things:

Andy Reid will be back as coach of the Eagles in 2009, and Donovan McNabb will be his quarterback.

Reiterating what he told the Boston Globe a week ago, Lurie said after the Eagles' 23-11 win over the New York Giants yesterday that he wants Reid and McNabb both to return for what would be their 11th seasons in Philadelphia. He wouldn't elaborate, other than to praise both Reid and McNabb for overcoming a rough start to the season to reach the NFC title game against the Arizona Cardinals.

"Whatever I said, I stand by," Lurie said. "I don't want to change anything, or elaborate, or answer any questions about it. It came out."

Lurie also wouldn't get into whether he's inclined to renegotiate McNabb's contract, which effectively runs through 2010. McNabb has hinted that he would like a new contract to give him stability within the organization so that he doesn't have to go through another season when his role is questioned.

"I don't even want to go there," Lurie said.

But Lurie was obviously thrilled with the Eagles' win over their NFC East rival and with being one game away from the Super Bowl. Since Lurie bought the team in 1994, the Eagles have been to four previous NFC title games - this will be the fifth - winning one in 2004 but losing in the Super Bowl to New England.

"This is our fifth trip to the championship game in eight years, and that's hard to pull off," Lurie said. "But, there's no celebrating, because we want to beat Arizona and have a chance to win the Super Bowl."

Lurie acknowledged that after the Eagles lost at Baltimore, 36-7, he thought the team was "in danger of not even making the playoffs," and he thought, "this is a pretty good football team." But he never got close to firing Reid, or even moving him onto the proverbial hot coach's seat.

"I think he's a very good coach, and I always felt that," Lurie said. "I don't think Philadelphia is any different than any other city in the country. When you're struggling, the coach and the quarterback are always the targets in the NFL. There's no secret there.

"But, I have to say, he's such a good leader. He's so resilient. He's not perfect, nobody is, and you can argue with play calls. . . . I have a lot of confidence in his ability. It's a lot of behind-the-scenes leadership. It's not how he addresses the press, or how he functions that way. That's not what's really the measure of the man. The measure of the man is what he's doing with the people he's working with, and he's been terrific for a long time."

Lurie also had praise for McNabb.

"He's been great," Lurie said. "There's so much on his shoulders, and he's just one of these athletes that finds a way to persevere and succeed."

[PhillyPhreak54]

For Lurie, a most painful loss

By Bob Brookover

Inquirer Staff Writer
All things considered, Jeffrey Lurie would rather not be in Philadelphia today.

He would prefer to be heading to Tampa for a Keystone State Super Bowl against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Instead, he confessed, he needed Ambien sleeping pills last week to help him forget about the pain of losing the NFC championship game to the Arizona Cardinals. In a 30-minute conversation with The Inquirer, Lurie spoke of that loss, the ups and downs of the 2008 season and his coach, Andy Reid.

He declined to discuss future roster moves because he said the team is still preparing its off-season plans.

QUESTION: What was Sunday like for you?

JEFFREY LURIE: Extremely painful. Obviously, you're very excited to be in the NFC championship game again with the thought of winning it and moving on to the Super Bowl and the ultimate goal of winning the Super Bowl and then it ends with a very, very heartbreaking loss after a great comeback. Obviously, the first half of that game we were not playing Eagles football and we made an incredible comeback in a tough environment, then we gave up one drive and lost the game. Personally, it was just extremely painful.

If you love what you're doing so much and you love your team so much and you love the sport so much and you can taste the opportunity to win the championship and it's taken away from you . . . by a solid performance from the Arizona Cardinals, and not our best game, it's just incredibly disappointing. It's good for Ambien because I need to take one every night to fall asleep.

Q: So you haven't been able to get that game out of your mind all week?

LURIE: Unfortunately, beating the Giants was a wonderful playoff game and it lasted about 12 hours. When you lose a playoff game, whether it's New Orleans two years ago, when you knew you were going to be able to beat Chicago the next week - that's how I felt - I've been playing that New Orleans game over for the last two years. I'll probably play it less now because I'll play this one. People say, 'If it's that painful, that's not good.' But it is good because if you're really obsessed and, outside of your family and friends, it's your primary passion, the things you love, you feel hurt when you can't have it. If it were not hurtful, all the great moments would be less great.

Q: Was there anybody in particular you felt for the most?

LURIE: There were a few people. You think of certain things and certain players. Obviously, you think of the great veteran players who have been playing in all these championship games and the Super Bowl. I think of my 98-year-old aunt Esther, who is the first to call after every game. She lives in Florida, so she was all ready to go to the Super Bowl. She's an amazing lady. It's my dad's sister.

"When you own the team, you sort of have to be the strong one and you can't really show your pain. You go into the locker room and you hug the players and you tell them you're going to be right back next year. You tell them to feel it, but we're getting back there just the way we've always done after a championship loss. That's the attitude. We have an excellent young defense. I have to be the positive strong one and that's the way I am even though it kills you inside. That's what you do instead of breaking down and being the one who shows the suffering.

Q: You've lost four conference championship games. Does each one become more difficult?

LURIE: Each one is painful. I would say this one is tied with the Tampa Bay one as the two most painful.

Q: Because you felt you should have won both of those games?

LURIE: And we had dominated both teams. We had dominated Tampa Bay and we had dominated Arizona. Donovan [McNabb] was healthy. The Carolina game I didn't think we had a great chance. I thought we had a decent chance. We were in the championship game and it was at home, but we were so banged up, but I didn't feel great about our chances in that game. It was less disappointing to me.

Q: Wasn't McNabb healthier in this game than the Tampa Bay game?

LURIE: He led us back in a phenomenal way in an incredibly loud domed stadium in this game. He showed a lot to me. The offense, really after a poor performance in the first half, delivered in the second half.

Q: How would you describe the season?

LURIE: By NFL standards, it's obviously a very successful season. By our standards, it's not. That's the thing that I feel. I feel when I got up there in August and spoke very honestly about what my expectations were for the team in training camp, I felt with my heart that we had a chance to challenge for the Super Bowl. I thought we had a real good team and if we could have some good luck with health that we'd have a real chance to challenge for the Super Bowl. The season matched what I felt, so in that regard it was as good as I expected.

I think one of the reasons we've had some of the success we've had is that everybody sets the expectations extremely high. ... Nobody talks about making the playoffs or being pretty good. The culture has really been imprinted that it's successful if we win the Super Bowl and not successful if we don't. It was an exhilarating season that in the end was unsuccessful. I'd guess you have to say that it had a lot more dramatic highs and lows than most seasons.

Q: What was going through your mind during that stretch when you tied Cincinnati and lost big at Baltimore?

LURIE: You think that's your team. You don't say to yourself, 'Boy, this is just a bad stretch.' You live that team at that moment in time. You say to yourself, 'This is not a good football team at this moment. This is a poor performance.' You don't have a perspective on it at that moment. I'm saying to myself, 'Are we really this bad?' Until you prove otherwise, which we did Thanksgiving night, we were that bad.

Q: What were your conversations with Andy Reid like at that particular point in the season?

LURIE: It was more like, 'What is really going on here? How can this team be as good as we think it can be and have a performance like this and like this?' The answer wasn't so simple.

Q: In the past when times were difficult, Reid always assured you that things would get better. Did he say anything like that this time?

LURIE: He said, 'This is poor and we've got to figure out why and we will figure out why.' But it wasn't like he had the answers by saying, 'Jeff, we're going to throw more on first down, blitz more on first down on defense.' It wasn't anything like that. We just weren't a team in sync.

Q: Was there ever a time when you wondered if the team was still responding to the head coach?

LURIE: Um, not really, but if it continued like the Baltimore-Cincinnati games, it would have started to happen a little bit. It was too short of a period for me to start thinking that way at all, but it's only human to say, 'What is really going on here?' But I've also been an NFL fan long enough to notice that teams just go into a funk for a couple of weeks. You see it with very good teams, so I didn't know if that was what was going on or if that was us and it was going to evolve into a 7-9 or 6-10 team going nowhere. During that period, you're living what you've got.

Q: Some people will wonder if Jon Gruden is the guy to get the Eagles over the top the way he did with Tony Dungy's team in Tampa Bay. What would you tell those people?

LURIE: I think in the NFL, whether it's an Andy Reid or a Bill Cowher, if you have a coach who is good enough to go to NFC championship games and a Super Bowl, that's what you need to win a Super Bowl. What you don't want is a coach who rarely gets to an NFC championship game and you assume that he can win a Super Bowl.

Q: So you believe if you keep getting to the doorstep that eventually you'll walk in the door?

LURIE: There's no question about it. It should have happened right now, but it didn't. All the ingredients are there in terms of the coaching ability and the leadership quality, but you still have to make it happen.

Q: Do you worry about Reid knocking on your door and telling you he's had enough?

LURIE: It's a tough job. I've never worried about it, but at some point I probably will, because it really is such a high-profile and stressful job. I think he's had so much success, minus a championship, that it's rewarded by the feeling of his peers in the NFL, the players and the people here and across the country. He's so highly regarded in so many ways that hopefully it shields him from feeling it's too much stress.

If it ever happens, you move on and you try to pick another excellent coach. They're out there. It's not something I spend a lot of time worrying about. No one is going to coach forever.