I missed this on Wednesday afternoon but was alerted to it by readers. “It” is a Twitter kerfuffle involving Phillies/catch-all writer Kevin Cooney and Eagles writers John McMullen and Mike Kaye.

It is the duty of Crossing Broad to report on all kerfuffles and spats, and this one is pretty lengthy. It was a start-and-stop affair spanning several hours. It was an epic saga, not exactly War and Peace, but longer than One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. 

The topic is Howie Roseman and whether or not he is a top-five general manager in the National Football League. There’s a whole lot to share here, so I’ll just give you all of the tweets I can pull and you can get yourself up to speed:

(at this point there’s some back and forth arguing to prove their respective points, then it picks up again)

This isn’t a very contentious debate, maybe like a 3.7 out of 10 on the arbitrary scale. It’s not like a radio host punching his producer, which would be a 10 out of 10, but there are a couple of personal jabs in that three-way exchange.


Obviously Cooney started it with the response to the JAKIB Media graphic. John and Mike are reactionary, and then the thing intensifies. Kevin ESCALATES the conversation when he pulls out the ultimate insult, which is the line about Spadaro. The gloves come off when you are compared to a non-objective team payroll guy. If Cooney accused me of “auditioning” for Spuds’ job, I’d have him in a headlock within five seconds, and then give him a noogie.*

I’m honestly less interested in the spat and more interested in the topic. Is Howie Roseman a top-five GM? Depends. There are so many facets to the job. On one hand, Howie couldn’t draft his way out of a wet paper bag. There are way too many big misses over the years. But drafting isn’t a science, and plenty of top GMs swing and miss. I think the overarching factor is that Howie keeps the Eagles mostly competitive year-in and year-out. After he was exiled to storage closet B during the Chip years, he re-emerged to build a Super Bowl winner two years later. Then when the Birds were supposedly “dysfunctional” after Doug left, he put together a playoff team with a first-year head coach while eating the largest dead cap hit in NFL history. Now they’re going into the 2022 draft with multiple first-round draft picks.

I think Howie gets too much shit for the Jalen Reagor and Andre Dillard stuff, i.e. his draft performance is weighed disproportionately to other duties of the job. I know fans are frustrated with Howie, especially as the Eagles flatlined in an effort to win a second ring, but you look around the league and could do a lot worse. You always have to put things in perspective. I’ll also say that I don’t think praising a GM is done with some macro-level strategy of currying favor. GMs don’t leak to local beats anyway, or at least not as much as the Schefters of this world, so when you suggest that people are trying to butter up the GM or whatever that they become offended.

Good spat, though. A spirited kerfuffle.

 

*Do Zoomers even know what a noogie is? It’s when you rub your knuckles on someone’s head. Man I feel old.