Two games into their six-game homestand, the 76ers took time for a community event at their practice facility, where they brought in in 40 local kids from Breakthrough of Greater Philadelphia.
The Sixers often attend community charity events individually or in small groups. Saturday’s event, in honor of Martin Luther King day and Mentorship Month, was a rare full team event, something the players said helped them decompress after Friday’s loss.
“It’s cool to see the entire team here, entire staff, that’s a really cool scenario,” Sixers guard Tyrese Maxey said. “I’ve never done this since I’ve been here.”
The team split into small groups with the students and competed in a series of different games, including a basketball obstacle relay course, knockout, a math station, and a rock, paper, scissors challenge featuring a few hula hoops, which many of the Sixers chose to bypass.
Through each of the four stations, the teams worked to earn points, which ultimately led to a win for star rookie VJ Edgecombe’s team.
Sixers big man Dominick Barlow enjoyed the down time with the students and his teammates.
“[I love] just being around the guys, I like these events,” Barlow said. “Obviously, when we’re around like the youth and the community, we get to show them that they mean a lot to us, and we try to give that back to them.”
Breakthrough of Greater Philadelphia is a non-profit that helps put students from underserved parts of the Philadelphia area on the path for top high schools and colleges, and helps educate and inspire the next generation of teachers through a teacher-in-residence program.
The organization was a Sixers Youth Foundation grantee and served 211 total students across grades five through 12 in 2024-25.
“Seeing the smile on some of these kids faces, obviously, some guys on the team are their favorite players, like Tyrese, VJ,” Trendon Watford said. “It’s just good to see the smile on their faces, and take a little time out of our day to make their day.”
The 76ers nearly pulled off their first win over the Cavaliers this year, after Wednesday’s blowout loss. But in the final moments, the Sixers just couldn’t close it out.
After Wednesday’s loss, Nick Nurse changed his strategy entering Friday’s game, electing to match Cleveland’s two-big lineup of Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen with his smaller lineup instead of trying to equal their size.
“The choices are, go big and try to match their size or make them match yours,” Nurse said. “For the most part, I think the guys we had in there were the guys we wanted in there.”
Quentin Grimes and Kelly Oubre Jr. both got a lot of run off the bench, while Jabari Walker got just four minutes, and Andre Drummond and Jared McCain didn’t play at all. Grimes scored 14 points with seven rebounds and four assists, and Oubre scored 12 points and grabbed two offensive rebounds.
Nurse also turned to Trendon Watford for two key stretches in the second and third quarters. Watford scored just four points on two shots, but grabbed two offensive rebounds, and the Sixers were plus-five with him on the floor.
“We had just a little bit of a rough patch in the second with execution and ball handling, and decided to go with him for that,” Nurse said. “I liked them having to play our smaller lineup [more] than I did our bigger lineup.”
McCain, the Sixers’ 2024 first-round pick, has mostly played limited minutes since returning from a meniscus tear and a torn UCL in his thumb. But Friday, McCain had his first DNP since November. Before his season-ending injury last year, McCain was named Rookie of the Month and showed promise, but even with Nurse open to a smaller, guard-heavy lineup, he didn’t factor into the game.
Maxey struggles
After putting up just 14 points on 5-for-16 shooting in Wednesday’s blowout loss to Cleveland, Tyrese Maxey didn’t fare much better on Friday. Maxey shot 9-for-23 from the field and 2 of 8 from three-point range, ultimately scoring 22 points in the loss.
Maxey said that the back-to-back set’s two games felt a bit like a playoff series, with both teams making adjustments after Wednesday’s “Game 1,” turning Friday into something like a Game 2.
Most of the Sixers’ defensive adjustments worked, especially on Cavs star Donovan Mitchell, who shot 4-for-13 from the field after a 35-point game on Wednesday. But Maxey couldn’t find a way to break free offensively.
“They do a good job on all my ball screens, they put a lot of attention on me,” Maxey said. “A lot of times, even when I come off a ball screen with Joel and Jarrett Allen’s guarding him, I’m just stringing them out, he stays on me, and I’m throwing it back to Joel. And then, I missed some good looks tonight.”
The Cavaliers threw a lot of bodies at Sixers guard Tyrese Maxey to confuse him on offense.
Nurse agreed that Maxey wasn’t as accurate as usual, especially from three-point range.
“They got some great size,” Nurse said. “They did a pretty good job of putting two on him a lot. He didn’t get a whole lot, I thought, at the basket.”
But despite Maxey’s struggles, the Sixers were able to keep the game competitive until the final moments, getting the ball to the weak side and giving more opportunity to the Sixers’ other stars, like Joel Embiid, who had a team-high 33 points.
Defense
The Sixers focused their game plan heavily around Mitchell on Friday, especially with Cavs guard Darius Garland out with a foot injury he suffered on Wednesday.
Unlike in the previous matchup, they kept Mitchell in check. Jaylon Tyson ended up doing the most damage, scoring 39 points on 13-for-17 shooting, including making 7-of-9 three-point attempts. But despite the ultimate result, the Sixers made progress defensively, Sixers forward Paul George said.
“We held Donovan to a rougher night, Mobley to a rougher night,” George said. “We didn’t predict Tyson would go for 40, but that’s basketball. It was his night tonight …But when you go into a game and we follow the game plan to make it as tough as possible for Donovan, I thought we executed that.”
Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell was held to only 13 points in Friday’s Sixers loss.
That defense also led to more offense. The Sixers had 11 steals, and scored 32 points off of 18 Cavaliers turnovers, with 21 of those points coming in the first half.
But the final, game-losing possession, with Evan Mobley getting the ball from Tyson for an easy dunk in the paint, was an example of where the Sixers still need to grow defensively.
“There’s still steps,” George said. “There’s a long way. I still think we’ve got to get to where we’re not giving up so many layups and baskets at the rim. I thought we did fairly good.”
Unrivaled has sold out its upcoming Philly takeover event at Xfinity Mobile Arena, a Comcast Spectacor official confirmed to The Inquirer on Thursday.
The 3-on-3 women’s basketball league, which launched last year in Miami, is taking its season on the road in Year 2. The first Unrivaled event outside suburban Miami will be Jan. 30 in Philadelphia.
Xfinity Mobile Arena, which has a capacity of 21,000 and is owned by Comcast Spectacor, will be by far the biggest venue Unrivaled has played in. The league’s usual venue in Medley, Fla., Sephora Arena, was built just for Unrivaled and holds just 1,000 seats.
Philly is Unrivaled. One night only. In the City of Basketball.
The event, which features a doubleheader between four of Unrivaled’s eight teams, Breeze vs. Phantom and Rose vs. Lunar Owls, is set to bring young stars like Paige Bueckers (Breeze) and Cameron Brink (Breeze), along with Philly natives Natasha Cloud (Phantom) and Kahleah Copper (Rose), to South Philly.
The doubleheader comes on the heels of the WNBA’s announcement in June 2025 that Philadelphia will be home to an expansion franchise, with play set to begin in 2030.
If you missed out on purchasing, tickets are available for resale on platforms like StubHub and Ticketmaster, starting at $111.15 for the upper deck as of Thursday afternoon.
The biggest crowd pop at Xfinity Mobile Arena during Monday’s Pride Night was for Christian Dvorak’s breakaway goal, the Flyers’ only goal of the game.
But the second-biggest was for “All the Things She Said,” a song that, only two months ago, was just another early 2000s club hit — until Heated Rivalry turned it into a phenomenon.
Heated Rivalry, the hit Crave original series that quickly became an international sensation during its six-episode run on HBO Max, is an adaptation of a novel by the same name, written by Rachel Reid. It’s the love story of two fictional hockey superstars, Canadian Shane Hollander and Russian Ilya Rozanov, who were the top two picks in the same draft.
The show has become one of HBO Max’s top series in the two months since its first episode aired, jumping from 30 million streaming minutes in its opening week to 324 million streaming minutes by its sixth. Casey Bloys, HBO Max’s CEO, described the show as a “word-of-mouth sensation” to the New York Times.
“There are so many ways to get hooked on hockey and, in the NHL’s 108-year history, this might be the most unique driver for creating new fans. See you all at the rink,” an NHL spokesperson said in a statement to the Hollywood Reporter.
A small cottage industry of hockey podcasts analyzing the show has emerged, with What Chaos! and Empty Netters earning hundreds of thousands of views on episodes about the show, including interviews with the cast and creators.
But has the show — which wouldn’t exactly win awards for an accurate on-ice depiction of the game — led to real growth in hockey fandom?
According to StubHub, it has. The ticketing site said last week that it saw a 40% increase in interest in hockey tickets during the show’s run and there’s no shortage of fans online who claim they found the game through Heated Rivalry, which has already been renewed for a second season.
The LGBTQ+ community has had a challenging relationship with the NHL over the last several years, following former Flyer Ivan Provorov’s decision to opt out of wearing a specialty jersey on Flyers’ Pride Night in 2023, which led to a brief ban on optional Pride tape and a ban on wearing any specialty jerseys on the ice.
The Flyers hosted their annual Pride Night on Monday.
But other former Flyers, like Scott Laughton, were extremely involved in Pride initiatives, something Philly natives Trish Grow and Autumn McCloskey, both lifelong Flyers fans, said helped them feel like the Flyers community was inclusive. The explosion of the show helped draw in more of their friends.
“I have people who would never come near a hockey rink texting me like, ‘You’ve watched this, right?’” Grow said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, honey, do you want to come to a game? You can see them do the stretches, but you’ve got to learn the rules.’”
One of their friends took them up on their offer, and, after reading the book and watching the show, attended his first-ever hockey game for Pride Night.
He wasn’t the only one. Dale Lyster, who is from Coatesville and came to the game wearing a Rozanov jersey, said he’d attended a few games over the years, but after hearing friends talk about Heated Rivalry on social media, he decided to tune in and quickly fell in love with the show — and then with hockey.
“I’ve always liked it, but I’ve never really been into it,” Lyster said. “Now, seeing more representation in the hockey world, it opened my eyes more.”
Newlyweds Kary and Kate Van Collins of Fairmount feel similarly. Their last hockey game was Flyers Pride Night a year ago, and Heated Rivalry renewed their interest in the sport. Kary made them custom Hollander and Rozanov sweatshirts to wear to the game.
“I am a queer, neurodivergent, half-Asian person, so I really saw myself in the character of Shane Hollander,” Kary said. “I think it’s just very needed right now, especially in the political climate, to have these positive stories surrounding queer love.”
Added Kate: “It’s also reassuring that queer people belong in sports. I think a lot of people in the community maybe don’t feel welcome in the sports scene, so maybe it’s a door that’s open so people feel more welcome.”
The show’s viral success has even caught its stars off guard. Connor Storrie, who plays Rozanov, said Tuesday on Late Night with Seth Meyers that one of the biggest surprises was the show’s reach, and how it hasn’t just been gay men who have enjoyed it.
“You think of male romance, you think it’s for gay men,” he told Meyers. “But there’s been all walks of life, predominantly women, who enjoy it.”
Groups are even popping up to help bring fans together. Shannon Herbst of Mount Laurel has loved hockey and been a Flyers season ticket-holder for years, so she knew Heated Rivalry would be right up her alley.
“There’s actually a group of us through Threads that got together that are from Philly and South Jersey, and there’s so many people on there that really want to get into hockey, specifically the Flyers, and really want to learn more about the game from the show,” Herbst said.
Hudson Williams (left) and Connor Storrie star as hockey players who fall in love in “Heated Rivalry.”
Heated Rivalry also has reached the world of professional athletes. Hudson Williams, who plays Hollander, told Andy Cohen on his radio show that multiple closeted athletes have reached out to him and to Reid since the show’s premiere to share how the show has impacted them. No NHL player has ever come out as gay, although NHL draft pick Luke Prokop, who came out in 2021, currently is playing in the American Hockey League with the Edmonton Oilers’ organization.
That might not change any time soon, but fans felt that the success of Heated Rivalry was a first step for improving inclusion in the sport for players and for fans.
“It’s definitely opened the door,” Herbst said. “Obviously, there’s still more work that needs to be done, but I think it really planted that seed and made more people comfortable with having that conversation within the NHL and the sport itself.”
After one season as Eagles offensive coordinator, Kevin Patullo’s play-calling career is officially over in Philadelphia.
Patullo was the favored target for disgruntled Eagles fans throughout the season, but especially after the team’s wild-card round loss to San Francisco. His home was vandalized in November, a local golf simulator facility let fans hit golf balls at a photo of his face, and of course, he’s been getting flack from fans on social media all season long.
So it was no surprise that the announcement that the Eagles would find a new offensive coordinator for next season was met with cheers from most of the fans.
The Schefter tweet announcing Patullo gone has done wonders for my mental health.
While most fans are celebrating the decision, it appears that Patullo might not be gone entirely.
Further clarification here from a source:
Kevin Patullo will no longer be the #Eagles OC, but that doesn’t mean he has been fired. He could remain on staff as I mentioned was a possibility on my podcast yesterday.
As far as former players, Ike Reese said on 94 WIP that he thought Patullo was being made a scapegoat for the team’s failures this season.
“Let’s be honest — Kevin Patullo is a first-year offensive coordinator,” Reese said. “He was supposed to take the 29th-ranked passing offense and turn it into what, exactly?”
Emmanuel Acho, on the other hand, praised the move, and said Patullo’s failure should be the end of coach Nick Sirianni’s attempts to hire from within.
Now don’t allow Nick Sirianni to promote from within.
Go out and find the best for Jalen Hurts and the Eagles, not the most convenient. https://t.co/TfGnintdq3
Even LeSean McCoy, who said earlier this week that he believed some of the problems on offense were due to Jalen Hurts, was thankful to see the team move on.
The Flyers are the fourth-youngest team in the NHL, with an average age of just under 27. Just 11 of the Flyers’ 23 roster players have played in the NHL playoffs. Of those 11, only six have played more than six postseason games.
The Eastern Conference and Metropolitan Division standings are extremely tight. The Flyers currently sit third in the division with 52 points in 44 games. The last-place Columbus Blue Jackets are just seven points back, with 45 points, which is why it’s key for the Flyers not to let their three-game losing streak snowball further on their upcoming road trip.
The back-to-back against Buffalo and Pittsburgh pits them against two teams that are right on their heels in the fight for a playoff spot. Coach Rick Tocchet said Tuesday after an optional practice that he thinks guys are “squeezing their sticks a little bit,” and it’s contributing to their lack of success on the power play and over the last three games.
“Early on, [Tampa Bay’s] first goal [in the Lightning’s 5-1 win on Monday] … there’s four or five mistakes,” he said. “You can’t have four or five mistakes on a shift, and it’s in the net, then you’re behind the eight ball, then guys squeeze the stick, and then they get frustrated.”
Tocchet pointed to the success of players like Tampa Bay superstar Nikita Kucherov, who cuts to the middle of the ice on the power play instead of sticking along the boards, as someone he wants players like Matvei Michkov and Trevor Zegras to emulate.
But right now, the Flyers are not making the right reads, and it’s preventing them from loosening up and being aggressive. Tocchet mentioned Brandon Hagel’s power-play goal in Monday’s loss as an example of something he wants to see more from the Flyers, instead of deferring to find the perfect one-timer opportunity with the man advantage.
“He tried to cross ice pass, doesn’t connect, the puck comes right back up, he sees an opening to shoot it, scores a goal,” Tocchet said. “We get it, we see an opening, but for some reason, we have a tough time pulling that trigger.”
Travis Sanheim credited the Flyers’ lack of power play success to poor communication, leading to players being out of sync on their reads away from the puck.
The Flyers’ power play is tied for second worst in the NHL this season, converting on just 15.3% of opportunities.
Rick Tocchet mentioned Nikita Kucherov as someone Matvei Michkov and Trevor Zegras should emulate when it comes to getting to the middle of the ice.
“The stuff that I get frustrated with is how [do] you not retain it,” Tocchet said. “We have to think of a way for players to retain some of the information we give them, because we’re not giving them a lot. Maybe early in the season we did, which wasn’t bad, but now we’re going to have to really dummy it down a little bit.”
As one of the more experienced players in the locker room, Sanheim is trying to lead by example as the Flyers enter this pivotal stretch, to keep everyone on the same page and moving in the right direction.
“Games are going to continue to get harder as we go along here,” Sanheim said. “It doesn’t get any easier. The race gets tighter, it already is tight, and just understanding that every play matters, and every battle matters, and it’s just a lot harder to win hockey games. You have to do the hard things to be successful in this league, and you have to do it on a consistent basis.”
Rasmus Ristolainen, Bobby Brink, Adam Ginning, Nic Deslauriers, and Sam Ersson took the ice for the optional skate on Tuesday. … Brink and Jamie Drysdale are both a “possibility” to play on the road trip, Tocchet said. After practice, the Flyers loaned Ginning back to Lehigh Valley in a move that might hint that Drysdale is good to go on Wednesday. … The Colorado Avalanche’s ECHL affiliate will move from Utah to Trenton, and be renamed the Trenton Ironhawks, starting in the 2026-27 season.
On Tuesday, the final episode of HBO’s in-season Hard Knocks show following the NFC East will debut, which will encompass the Eagles’ season-ending loss to the San Francisco 49ers in the wild-card round.
The season didn’t end the way that Eagles producer Shannon Furman may have hoped, but the final episode is a 50-minute look inside the Birds’ final game.
Furman is the mastermind behind the Eagles’ segments of the show. Because the in-season Hard Knocks is released on the Tuesday the following week, Furman said it’s important for the film crew to come in with a plan each week on which players to spotlight.
Unlike the training camp edition, this year’s in-season Hard Knocks covered the entire division, leaving the Eagles with approximately 12 minutes to fill on the show every week, edited down from several dozen hours of footage per week.
“It’s so tough with the Eagles, because there’s so many guys and there are so many choices,” Furman said. “It ends up happening, like, ‘Who has an event this week? Who’s doing something?’ Week 1, it was like, ‘Let’s follow the quarterback,’ and then we had heard everybody saying Jordan Davis was a big personality.”
The team filming the footage sent it in batches to the editing team in Mount Laurel each day leading up to Tuesday’s release date, flagging segments it particularly liked or thought would be good to include. Sometimes, like after the Monday Night Football loss to the Chargers in November, the filming crew submitted the last of the footage after midnight, less than 24 hours before the episode aired.
There’s so much footage that often gets cut for time or is reused later. Furman said the Hard Knocks team shot a lot of footage of Davis for the first episode, which was released on Dec. 2, that got cut because of time restraints. But she loved the segment so much that they eventually worked him into a later episode.
Hard Knocks also mics up players during games, and the game footage caps the episode. Furman quickly learned that some players were much better mic’d up than in an interview setting, like DeVonta Smith.
“He’s a quiet guy off the field, and then he gets on the field and he turns into a completely different person,” Furman said. “Everybody is a little bit different. Some people stay completely the same. Some people get more quiet when they’re on the field than they are when they’re off, so you just get to see all different sides of people.”
Furman hoped that the show provided a new look into the team beyond what spreads on social media. She was struck most by the passion the players had for coach Nick Sirianni, and how much they respected and related to him personally.
“As a person who grew up in Philadelphia, learning about Nick, he is Philadelphia,” Furman said. “Everyone should love this guy, because he is the definition of our city, the fiery, where maybe it comes across as arrogance at times, but at the same time you still love him. It’s like a lovable arrogance. He’s perfect for this city.”
Up until the final failed fourth-down attempt, the Eagles still believed they were winning Sunday’s NFC wild-card game against the San Francisco 49ers.
But after Jalen Hurts’ pass fell incomplete, it all hit linebacker Nakobe Dean. It may have been his final game in an Eagles uniform.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen the next couple months, next couple weeks,” Dean, a pending unrestricted free agent said. “I don’t know if I’m going to play with the guys that I’ve been playing with for four years or had a good relationship with, or the guys that I went school with. I’m going through all the emotions.”
The Birds had much higher expectations for themselves this season than a 23-19 loss in the wild-card round. Eagles players looked shell-shocked in the locker room, knowing they will never all be together again.
Jordan Davis choked up in the locker room talking about how much Dean, his teammate since their days back at Georgia, meant to him.
“We love to have his face and his leadership and his poise, his effort and just everything about him, the way he plays the game,” Davis said. “But it’s just the NFL. I’m not here to make decisions. I’m more here to play and move forward, but it’s unfortunate that it’s just the nature of the beast. It’s the league, be here today and gone tomorrow. But I love that man like a brother. Like a brother.”
Dean said he took one last photo of his locker, unsure if he’d ever return to it. The Birds drafted linebacker Jihaad Campbell in the first round last spring to potentially serve as Dean’s replacement.
But Dean wasn’t the only player who may have worn midnight green for the final time.
Jordan Mailata said postgame that he couldn’t even look at Dallas Goedert, his teammate of eight years, without wanting to cry. Goedert signed a one-year contract extension to return to Philadelphia last offseason, but after catching a career-high 60 passes and 11 touchdowns, he might be out of the Eagles’ price range.
“I had a moment with Dallas, and I wasn’t crying until I saw him,” Mailata said. “We’ve been together for eight years, and we just played a lot of ball together, a lot of time in the locker room, and so that one was hard for me. I don’t know what’s going to happen next year, I hope we bring him back, but he was one face that immediately after the game, I had to stay away from him, because I’d just cry.”
Goedert caught four passes for 33 yards and one touchdown, and added another touchdown on the ground in the loss. He downplayed whether this game was more emotional than past losses as he approaches what might be the end of his tenure with the team that drafted him.
“Saying goodbye to this team, it’ll never be the same team again, it’s always tough,” Goedert said. “You just grow as a family, and I got a lot of love for the brothers on this team, you know, and it’s just a somber state.”
The playoffs are finally here. The Eagles officially kick off their quest to repeat as Super Bowl champions on Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field against the San Francisco 49ers.
Here’s everything you need to know ahead of their wild-card matchup.
How to watch Eagles vs. Niners
Eagles vs. Niners will kick off on Fox at 4:30 p.m. ET. Kevin Burkhardt and Tom Brady will call the game from the booth, and Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi will be on the sidelines.
If you’d rather listen to Merrill Reese and Mike Quick call the game, the radio broadcast can be found on 94.1 WIP, and if you’re not heading to the Linc, but want to watch the game with your fellow Birds fans, here are a few spots to check out.
There will be six games played over the next three days. Here’s the full playoff schedule for the wild-card round …
NFC
(4) Rams vs. (5) Panthers | Saturday, 4:30 p.m., Fox
(7) Packers vs. (2) Bears | Saturday, 8 p.m., Prime Video
(6) Niners vs. (3) Eagles | Sunday, 4:30 p.m., Fox
Bye: (1) Seahawks
AFC
(6) Bills vs. (3) Jaguars | Sunday, 1 p.m., CBS
(7) Chargers vs. (2) Patriots | Sunday, 8:15 p.m., NBC
(5) Texans vs. (4) Steelers | Monday, 8:15 p.m., ESPN
Bye: (1) Broncos
Who could the Eagles face in the divisional round?
First, the Birds need to take care of business on Sunday, but if they do, they could face one of three potential remaining NFC teams: the Los Angeles Rams, the Carolina Panthers, or the Chicago Bears. They could not, however, face the Seattle Seahawks or Green Bay Packers.
The lowest advancing seed will play the top-seeded Seahawks in Seattle. And because the Panthers and Rams — the No. 4 and No. 5 seeds, respectively — play one another, a team with a lower seed than the Eagles is guaranteed to advance. The Packers (or Niners, if they beat the Eagles) could also be in that spot.
If the Packers beat the Bears, Green Bay would be the lowest remaining seed and would face Seattle. The Eagles would then play the winner of the Panthers-Ram game, and would get to host that team in the divisional round. However, if the Bears win, the Eagles would travel to Chicago for the divisional round, with the Panthers-Rams winner heading to Seattle.
Because the Eagles-Niners game is the final NFC wild-card matchup, the winner won’t have to wait to find out its opponent.
The Eagles could get offensive tackle Lane Johnson, left, back for Sunday’s wild-card game.
Final injury report
It sounds like the Eagles won’t know until Sunday whether or not right tackle Lane Johnson, who has been out since Week 11 with a Lisfranc (foot) injury, will make his return to the offensive line. Johnson, interior lineman Brett Toth (concussion), and outside linebacker Azeez Ojulari (hamstring) are all listed as questionable for the Birds’ wild-card game. Ojulari was the only of the three who practiced fully on Friday. Johnson and Toth were limited all week.
On the flip side, the Eagles will be getting several banged-up players back in time for the playoffs. Defensive tackle Jalen Carter (hip), linebacker Nakobe Dean (hamstring), edge rusher Jaelan Phillips (ankle), tight end Dallas Goedert (knee), and safety Marcus Epps (concussion) were all full participants in Friday’s practice and are expected to play.
Meanwhile the 49ers have quite a few injuries, including to several starters. Veteran tackle Trent Williams, linebackers Dee Winters and Luke Gifford — after the team put LB Tatum Bethune on IR earlier this week — and cornerback Renardo Green are among those listed on the injury report for Sunday’s game. The following players are all questionable:
WR Jacob Cowing (hamstring)
LB Luke Gifford (quadricep)
CB Renardo Green (ankle)
WR Ricky Pearsall (knee, ankle)
DL Keion White (groin, hamstring)
T Trent Williams (hamstring)
LB Dee Winters (ankle)
Eagles-Niners odds
The Birds are a 5.5-point favorite at DraftKings and a 4.5-point favorite at FanDuel as of Friday afternoon. The over/under on both sites is set at 44.5.
As for the Super Bowl, the Seahawks are the betting favorite to win it all. At FanDuel, the Eagles have the fourth-best odds, at +800, behind Seattle, the Rams, and the Broncos. At DraftKings, the Eagles have the fifth-best odds, at +950, also behind the Patriots.
Kevin Patullo is in his first year as the Eagles offensive coordinator.
Storylines to watch
What is the state of the Eagles’ offense? With Johnson potentially set to make his first start since Nov. 16 against the Detroit Lions, the banged-up offensive line could get a big boost.
In the starting offense’s final game of the year in Buffalo, they played one of their best first halves and worst second halves of the year. Which version will show up at the Linc on Sunday? And what will that mean for the future of offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo?
More storylines to watch:
Saquon Barkley is extra excited for this weekend’s showdown with Niners running back Christian McCaffrey, whom he calls “one of the best to ever do it.”
Jeff McLane: “There’s a push when it comes to the Eagles’ underperforming offense vs. the 49ers’ subpar defense; but I give the edge to a great Eagles defense over a very good, but not great 49ers offense.” | Eagles 23, Niners 17.
Jeff Neiburg: “It hasn’t been an encouraging season from the Eagles’ offense, to put it mildly, but the 49ers are down multiple linebackers and don’t have an abundance of talent in the secondary. If the Eagles don’t beat themselves, which you can’t rule out, they should be able to establish a running game that gets the offense back on track.” | Eagles 24, Niners 20.
Olivia Reiner: “Maybe the Eagles can finish what the Seahawks started last week and continue to punish the 49ers on the ground. Maybe Jalen Hurts and the passing attack can exploit the 49ers’ thin inside linebacker corps with passes over the middle of the field. Neither have been characteristic of the offense this season, though. Or, maybe, the defense will stifle Shanahan’s offense while Nick Sirianni, Kevin Patullo, and the Eagles offense do just enough to get by. It wouldn’t be the first time.” | Eagles 24, Niners 20.
Matt Breen: “The Niners had a great finish to the season before their dud against the Seahawks, but they just seem too banged up to hang with the Eagles.” | Eagles 24, Niners 13.
The national media is divided over this one, but there’s a definitely lean toward the home team. Here’s a look at how they are predicting Sunday’s game …
Nick Sirianni opted to rest his starters in Week 18 despite a chance to get the No. 2 seed in the NFC.
What we’re saying about the Eagles
Our columnists had plenty to say about the Eagles this week, including Mike Sielski, who believes their toughest opponent is not any team in the bracket, but themselves.
“From Eagles fans to the players themselves, there has seemed to be an ever-present blanket of expectations weighing on them. It’s as if the only thing that would make anyone happy and relieved at any moment this season would be another Super Bowl victory — a benchmark so lofty that it virtually guarantees people will be worried at best and miserable at worst unless the Eagles win every game 49-0.”
Here’s more from our columnists …
David Murphy: “The pertinent question for Kevin Patullo and the Eagles now is what the offense will look like moving forward. This is a weird time of year. Sunday’s wild-card game against the 49ers could be the start of a month of football that leaves us memory-holing our four months of angst. Or, it could be the start of the offseason, and a litany of questions that sound way closer to January 2024 than January 2025.”
Marcus Hayes: “It was Zack Baun. The best linebacker in football over the last two seasons. The man tasked Sunday with covering and tackling Christian McCaffrey, the best offensive player in football, and George Kittle, the league’s best tight end. In a city that still worships linebackers like Chuck Bednarik, Seth Joyner, and Bill Bergey, Baun somehow remains largely anonymous.”
Mike Sielski: “There’s more than one way to be an excellent head coach, even if one of those ways gets a little more attention, a little more scrutiny, a little more credit these days. The film can tell you how good a coach Kyle Shanahan is. What Nick Sirianni does well sometimes isn’t so easy to see. Come Sunday, may the best savant win.”
San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan is a big Vic Fangio fan.
What the Niners are saying
Kyle Shanahan is one of Vic Fangio’s biggest fans. Shanahan is such a big fan, that he’s tried to hire Fangio in San Francisco “all the times that there’s been an opportunity.”
“I mean, Vic schematically, he has always been the best to me,” Shanahan said. “As good as anyone there is. Has a very sound scheme that he doesn’t need to change up very much. It just naturally changes with how he does his coverages, how he does his fronts, the personnel groupings he does. He’s very good at getting a bead on what you’re trying to do and making you adjust.”
Sunday should be an extremely hostile environment for the Niners. Tight end George Kittle recalled a few of his craziest stories on Thursday.
“I just thoroughly enjoy it because it’s so unique every single time,” Kittle said. “I’ll never forget my rookie season, the year they won the Super Bowl, it was my first time playing in the Linc. There were like four 10-year-old kids holding a seven-foot tall papier-mâché middle finger that had a rotating thing on it that made the middle finger come up. That was the coolest thing, I’ll never forget it. That was my rookie year and I was like this is excellent.”
Kittle isn’t the only member of the 49ers offense looking forward to playing in the Linc. Kyle Juszczyk is also ready to take on Eagles fans.
“It’s more difficult [going into a hostile environment] but the payoff is better,” Juszczyk told reporters. “There’s nothing like that feeling of going into a hostile territory and getting a win. Yeah, it’s a little bit more difficult, but it’ll be worth it in the end.”
Donna Kelce made her reality television debut on Peacock’s The Traitors, with Thursday’s premiere including the first three episodes of the fourth season.
“People think I’m this sweet little old lady,” Kelce said to start the first episode. “They’re not going to know what’s coming.”
If you’ve never seen the show, which features reality stars, actors, comedians, and other celebrities, here’s our write-up of the rules and background. And here’s a recap of each episode from Week 1 …
On the way to Alan Cumming’s famous Scottish castle, Survivor’s Rob Cesternino asked Kelce what her two sons, Travis and Jason, thought of her being on the show.
“They’re so excited,” Kelce said. “They’re huge fans. Jason is the one that got me involved. We just literally, one weekend, during playoffs, we binged it. It was great.”
Immediately, her fellow contestants were worried about the potential for “murdering” — or eliminating — Kelce, “America’s mom.”
“No one’s going to murder her. The Swifties will kill you,” The Real Housewives of New York City’s Dorinda Medley said.
The show’s first twist was to name a secret Traitor, a position that comes with a certain set of extra powers. In the first episode, Cumming asked each contestant to come up and take a look inside a box with their name on it. One box had a card in it, and the person who got that box was the secret Traitor, identified in plain sight, kept secret from the other Traitors. The secret Traitor then wrote a shortlist of people from which the other three Traitors could choose a murder victim. That secret Traitor was Kelce — but you don’t find that out until the third episode.
Episode 2
During the first challenge, the contestants had to collect coffins to add money to the prize pot and determine who earned a shield, or immunity, and who was eligible for murder.
Contestants on one of the boats debated whether to put a coffin in Kelce’s casket and put her up for murder. Most of the Faithfuls, or non-Traitors, didn’t want to, but Traitor Candiace Dillard Bassett urged the group to do so. “I think it would shake this castle if we murdered Donna,” Dillard Bassett said.
“I know I’m going to see you tomorrow, because nobody would do that,” Big Brother’s Tiffany Mitchell said.
However, Kelce was not on the secret Traitor’s shortlist and was not murder-eligible — because she wrote the list. One person who was on it? Traitor Rob Rausch, who immediately put his sights on finding out who the secret Traitor was.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Kelce quickly drew suspicion from others across the castle due to her behavior.
“Only someone who feels safe doesn’t feel like they need to make connections,” Mitchell said.
Donna Kelce made her reality TV debut Thursday night on Peacock’s “The Traitors.”
This is a bit unfair. Most of the contestants have some previous knowledge of one another or even active friendships from previous shows. Kelce is not a reality star and only knew Ron Funches, who she said worked with Travis on a show before. Of course she was quiet!
“Looking around the breakfast table, I have so many suspicions, but also I am fangirling right now. It is so amazing to be in a situation with all these celebrities. I’m so happy to be here. Any extra day in the castle is bonus,” Kelce said.
Ultimately, the first murder victim was Big Brother‘s Ian Terry — he didn’t even make it to the first breakfast.
After the challenge, Kelce roused up more suspicion from Monét X Change after she didn’t have a person to name as a potential Traitor. She suspected The Real Housewives of Atlanta‘s Porsha Williams with Funches earlier. Kelce said she wanted to keep her strategy close to the chest, but on a show like this with so many big personalities, that just draws suspicion.
At the first Roundtable, where contestants vote to eliminate another player, Survivor’s Natalie Anderson tossed Kelce’ name out first, and Donna defended herself by saying she’s alone so of course she’s more quiet. Ron laid out the case for Williams, but Dillard Bassett, who knew her from Housewives, defended her, and threw the heat back on Kelce, saying she’d make a great Traitor. Kelce replied that Dillard Bassett would also make a great Traitor, because she’s put together and articulate.
Actor Michael Rapaport got so worked up about a shield issue from earlier, that he used “we” when referring to the previous night’s murder. His use of “we” immediately turned the conversation to him being a potential Traitor. Most of the table seemed pretty confident he was not actually a Traitor, but they found him so annoying and distracting — Anderson called him a “bad Faithful” — that they considered voting for him anyway, which would absolutely have been the right call in this situation for the viewers at home, who would no longer have to listen to him speak.
Episode 3
Kelce narrowly survived the first Roundtable, with Williams receiving the most votes and being eliminated. But Williams confirmed that she was a Faithful in the truth circle, so Kelce was not out of the woods.
She clearly learned from her mistakes, because she said in a confessional she needed to put herself out there more, and made an effort to talk to everyone afterward and at breakfast and share her ideas.
It was too little too late though, because immediately after the next murder in the morning before the challenge — this time it was Cesternino — the contestants went back to the Roundtable. And with minimal new evidence to draw from, Kelce was the obvious candidate. Kelce tried to pin the evidence back on Rapaport, who everyone already didn’t like, by saying that “92% of the time” the Traitors try to go for shields, to provide a convenient excuse for why they haven’t been murdered.
Michael Rapaport is one of the contestants on “The Traitors.”
But ultimately, Kelce was doomed from the end of the last Roundtable, received the most votes, and was sent home midway through the third episode.
“I know that I’m the sacrificial lamb, and I know that I had a blast meeting every single one of you,” Kelce said in the circle of truth. “On that note, I think I’m going to go, but you got yourself a Traitor!”
Honestly, she was set up to fail. The secret Traitor was an interesting idea to mix up the game, but the other Traitors were annoyed by the concept of a secret Traitor who had control over their decisions, and Rausch actively wanted to identify and eliminate that person. Dillard Bassett and Rausch were both very vocal at the Roundtable against Kelce, but if they’d all four been Traitors together from the start, there likely would have been more teamwork.
