The last time the Eagles picked in the early 20s range of the NFL draft was two years ago, when the team broke a 22-year streak of not selecting a defensive back in the first round. The player they selected was Toledo defensive back Quinyon Mitchell, who was recently named a first-team NFL All-Pro.
After a disappointing end to their Super Bowl title defense, the Eagles head into the offseason with uncertainty at a few positions, but most of their core is intact.
Could they add younger pieces to an offensive line that struggled? Add some youth to a tight end room that might be without Dallas Goedert next year? Or will the Eagles add to the secondary?
With the Eagles locked into the No. 23 pick in the 2026 NFL draft, barring a trade, here are six players they could target:
Kadyn Proctor, OT, Alabama
Entering the 2025 college football season, Proctor, Alabama’s starting left tackle, had high grades from the NFL, but his uneven performances across 2025 have left his projection uncertain. Still, his athleticism at 6-foot-7, 366 pounds is hard to ignore, especially if teams project him as an interior player.
Proctor has powerful striking power upon contact and is an aggressive run blocker who can create displacement in one-on-one and double-team blocks. He has flashed the ability to stop defenders in their tracks when he gets his hands on them in pass protection.
Elite game tape from #Alabama LT Kadyn Proctor against Tennessee. Dominant as a run blocker and has some quality finishes as a pass protector against a really good pass rush.
The offensive tackle’s blocking technique is inconsistent, he plays with too high of a pad level at times, and he can too easily give up his outside shoulder on passing downs. Pairing Proctor with offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland could help the Alabama product become a more consistent player who could fit at either guard or tackle with his skill set along the Eagles’ O-line.
Kenyon Sadiq, TE, Oregon
One of the more popular names you will hear for the Eagles during draft season is Sadiq, who is an incredible athlete at the tight end position who relishes doing the dirty work as a blocker in the run game.
At 6-3, 245 pounds, Sadiq is unlikely to play as an attached tight end and will be coveted more for his receiving prowess. The Oregon standout, who finished the season with a team-high eight receiving scores, thrives working the seam and finding soft spots in zone coverage. His value in the red zone is noteworthy, with his ability to win vertically against secondary players and athleticism to catch passes in congested areas. According to Pro Football Focus, Sadiq caught 5 of 9 contested catch attempts.
#Oregon TE Kenyon Sadiq's value as a blocker, working the seams, and red zone value are all super valuable to the Oregon offense and are skill sets that should translate at the NFL level. Incredible athlete that consistently showcases the ability to catch the ball among chaos. pic.twitter.com/DGN6UzQrYX
The tight end prospect needs to clean up his drops (six in 2025), become a more complete route runner, and is more of an insert and cutoff blocker rather than a player who will be asked to block defensive linemen one-on-one. But Sadiq would be a dynamic addition to the Eagles, who haven’t drafted a tight end in Round 1 since they took Keith Jackson at No. 13 overall in 1988.
Caleb Lomu, OT, Utah
Sticking with the theme of offensive linemen, Lomu, a redshirt sophomore, is a skilled pass protector with quick, nimble feet, recovery ability, and a player who can refit his hands when they’re knocked off by pass rushers. At 6-6, 308 pounds, Lomu has the athleticism to move in pass protection and live out on an island against speed and power rushers.
#Utah LT Caleb Lomu hit Texas Tech edge David Bailey with a quick snatch trap. Thought he looked solid, had a few losses but held his own against TTU's talented pass rush duo. pic.twitter.com/R3Rc4mutKf
Per PFF, Lomu has allowed just eight quarterback pressures and zero sacks across 383 pass blocking snaps. The Utah tackle’s play strength needs to improve, evidenced by his inconsistency maintaining run blocks and generating movement at the line of scrimmage.
Lomu, though, could be the future for the Eagles at tackle, especially with Lane Johnson’s injury troubles this year. The prospect doesn’t have guard flexibility, but gives the Eagles a contingency plan for the 35-year-old Johnson’s inevitable retirement, whenever that occurs.
Monroe Freeling, OT, Georgia
One name that is starting to get buzz within the draft community is Freeling, the Georgia left tackle who finished the season playing at a high level in the team’s biggest game, a playoff loss to Ole Miss. The 6-7, 315-pound lineman moves well blocking in space, does a nice job framing up his blocks in the run game, and rarely gets beat in pass protection.
#UGA LT Monroe Freeling moves incredibly well in space, does a nice job framing up his blocks in the run game, and rarely gets beat in pass protection. Has only allowed 9 pressures and 2 sacks in 423 pass blocking snaps.
Freeling is fairly inexperienced relative to the other players on the list, having made just 17 starts in college, and has a tendency to lunge forward on blocks at times, but he would be a high-upside player who has a chance to be Johnson’s heir in a few years.
Olaivavega Ioane, OG, Penn State
There aren’t many interior offensive linemen worthy of a first-round pick, but Penn State left guard Ioane, a two-year starter, would be an ideal fit if the Eagles are looking to upgrade their interior.
Ioane consistently creates running lanes with his physicality and torque at 6-4, 336 pounds, and has knock-back power in pass protection to keep interior pass rushers at bay.
#PSU LG Vega Ioane was a big reason behind their big day running the football against Michigan State on Saturday. Consistently creating running lanes with his physicality and torque, and showed off the ability to decleat players in space as well pic.twitter.com/UZj47gxPyx
Despite the Nittany Lions’ disappointing season, Ioane was a bright spot, allowing just four pressures and zero sacks across 311 pass blocking snaps, according to PFF. He’s not an elite athlete, but has some movement ability in space. With the struggles in the interior from Eagles guards Landon Dickerson and Tyler Steen, Ioane could be an upgrade.
Avieon Terrell, DB, Clemson
If the Eagles decide to pair another early-round corner opposite Mitchell and keep Cooper DeJean in the slot, Terrell, the younger brother of Falcons corner A.J. Terrell, would be an ideal prospect to bring in. The Clemson defensive back didn’t have quite the same amount of ball production as his first two seasons, but was sticky in man coverage situations and forced five fumbles in 2025.
#Clemson DB Avieon Terrell does a nice job midpointing the out and corner routes to the field side and nearly comes away with the interception. Sticky in man coverage, route recognition and instincts are impressive in zone coverage looks. https://t.co/cJQ4uZzQNypic.twitter.com/iO9txXvgQO
Terrell is a smaller defensive back (5-11, 180 pounds) who struggles when matched up against bigger wideouts and tight ends. But he’s competitive at the catch point, has good zone-coverage instincts to close on routes developing in front of him, and has some nickel versatility to his game.
In nearly five decades of directing puzzle competitions, New York Times crossword editor and NPR puzzle master Will Shortz has encountered a cheater only once, at a Sudoku championship in Philadelphia.
Luckily, Shortz doesn’t hold it against us. That came across loud and clear when he recently announced he’s moving the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament from Connecticut down to Philly next year.
“Philadelphia has a cultured audience,” Shortz said when we spoke this week. “It’s just a great city to have a major literary event at.”
The first time I heard of the ACPT was while watchingWordplay, a 2006 documentary about crossword puzzles featuring Shortz; the latter half of the movie is set at his annual tournament. I loved the movie when it came out and on a rewatch 20 years later, it’s still as quirky and delightful as ever.
In the film, the late puzzle constructor Merl Reagle, who crafted crosswords for the Times, The Inquirer, and other papers across the country, calls the ACPT an “orgy of puzzling,” which is a fantastic phrase that I’m guessing he never got into a puzzle and one that’s probably responsible for the film’s perplexing PG rating.
The play-by-play
Shortz — who designed his own major in enigmatology (the study of puzzles) at Indiana University — founded the ACPT at the Marriott in Stamford, Conn., in 1978 when he was just 25.
“There had not been a crossword tournament in the country since the 1930s, so we were starting fresh,” he said.
The first tournament attracted 149 contestants. This year, there are 926 competitors, with a long wait list, and after 48 years at the Stamford Marriott (aside from a few years the tournament was held in Brooklyn), the ACPT has just outgrown the space. The tournament will be held there for the last time in April.
Shortz and his team looked for new venues around the Northeast and settled on the Liberty Ballroom at the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown, where they can accommodate up to 1,250 contestants.
The tournament will be held there from April 30 to May 2 next year.
“I’m hoping with 1,250 seats we won’t have to turn anyone away next year,” Shortz told me. “My goal is for everyone to come who wants to.”
The ACPT is held over three days and consists of eight rounds of puzzles. All contestants compete in the first seven rounds, which, much to this Luddite’s delight, are still done with pencil and paper.
“I want everyone to compete equally,” Shortz said. “Some people are very fast with their fingers so I wouldn’t want the tournament to depend on your computer literacy.”
Contestants are scored based on accuracy and completion time. There are multiple divisions, with an eighth round of playoffs held for the top three divisions.
From left: Frequent top finishers Tyler Hinman, David Plotkin, and Dan Feyer compete live on stage during a championship round of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Play-by-play announcers even call the games, so competitors must wear noise-canceling headphones.
The A and B division playoffs are held on stage, with top three contestants working on giant crossword puzzle white boards before a live audience (and you thought completing a Saturday Times puzzle by yourself was intimidating!). Play-by-play announcers even call the games, so competitors must wear noise-canceling headphones.
The division A winner gets a $7,500 prize and crossword glory for a year. The last two tournaments were won by Paolo Pasco, a 24-year-old crossword puzzle constructor and seven-time Jeopardy! winner who’s competing in the quiz show’s Tournament of Champions this month.
Aside from the competitive games, there are also informal word games, a puzzle market, and a contestant talent show.
Paolo Pasco, (left), winner of the 2025 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, with tournament director Will Shortz, (center), and puzzle constructor Ryan McCarty.
‘No judgments’
Shortz has never missed a tournament, except for when it was canceled in 2020 due to COVID. Even after suffering a stroke in 2024, he showed up to the tournament, just two months later.
“I was in a subacute rehab center and everyone was advising me not to leave the center, but there was no way I was going to miss the tournament,” he told me. “When I came in a wheelchair, everyone stood up and applauded and that brought tears to my eyes.”
Donald Christensen, who has attended the ACPT since the 1980s and serves as the event photographer, said the contestants are “a microcosm of society.”
“When you attend one of the tournaments, you are among a group of about 1,000 people who make no judgments about you or your abilities, and who are often very willing to share their secrets to successful solving with anyone who is interested,“ he said via email.
Contestants work on solving puzzles at the Stamford Marriott during the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.
I enjoy crossword puzzles, but I’m absolutely terrible at them, so much so that I question my college majors (nonfiction writing and communications), my career, and whether I actually speak the English language. But there’s even room for someone like me at the tournament — a noncompetitor option, where you can play but your solutions aren’t scored. Spectator-only tickets are available for the Sunday playoffs, too.
Contestants aren’t allowed outside help, but they’re not required to hand over their cellphones either. Shortz said referees would see any cheating and looking something up on a phone would just slow down a good contestant.
“It’s not a group that would cheat anyway,” Shortz said.
The Sudoku swindler
And that brings me back to the stupefying Sudoku scandal of 2009. For three years beginning in 2007, The Inquirer sponsored the National Sudoku Championship at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, with Shortz serving as host (The Inquirer and Shortz also partnered to host the World Sudoku Championship here in 2010).
Will Shortz explains the rules of the 2010 World Sudoku Championship, which was held in Philadelphia and sponsored by The Inquirer.
During the 2009 competition, a before-unknown player, Eugene Varshavsky of Lawrenceville, N.J., qualified for the finals in lightning time. But when he got on stage with his hoodie up for the championship round, he froze.
“It was a challenging puzzle but not crazy hard and he was utterly unable to finish it,” Shortz said. “It was kind of embarrassing for someone who’d solved the previous puzzle quickly.”
Still, Varshavsky was awarded third place, which came with a $3,000 prize. But puzzlers raised suspicions and the money was frozen while officials conducted an investigation.
Varshavsky was asked to come to The Inquirer to complete additional puzzles to prove his ability.
“We gave him the round-three puzzle he whipped through in the competition, which he was now unable to do,” Shortz recalled.
He was subsequently stripped of his title and the prize money. Shortz said officials believed he was getting help through an earpiece during the competition, though that was never proven. Coincidentally, a man by the same name was suspected of cheating in 2006 at the World Open chess championship in Philadelphia.
United by words
Philadelphia’s puzzle history isn’t all sordid though. We were home to the oldest known Times crossword puzzle contributor, the late Bernice Gordon, who constructed puzzles for decades and was the first centenarian to have a puzzle published in the Times.
And in 2021, Soleil Saint-Cyr, 17, of Moorestown, became the youngest woman to have a puzzle published in the Times.
Cruciverbalist Soleil Saint-Cyr poses at her Moorestown home in 2021.
With all of the talk around AI today, I asked Shortz if humans are still better at crafting crossword puzzles than computers.
“Of course, computers can create crosswords now, but it takes a human mind to create a brilliant crossword,” he said. “Only humans can still come up for a clever idea for a new theme and only a human can write a good, original crossword clue.”
Perhaps there is no better place for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament than right here in Philadelphia, where words birthed our country into existence. We’re still writing the story of our nation and trying to figure out if this puzzle can be solved, but as in Shortz’s tournament, people are still united by words and creating small moments of order amid the chaos.
“We’re faced with so many challenges every day in life and we just muddle through and do the best we can and we don’t know if we have the best solution,” Shortz said. “But when you solve a crossword puzzle … it gives you a tremendous feeling of accomplishment. You put the world in order.”
For more information on the ACPT and how to add your name to the 2027 contact list, visit crosswordtournament.com.
It’s awards season, and not just for those in showbiz. The Eagles fell short of a Super Bowl repeat, but they’re still eligible for the next best thing — The Inquirer’s 2025 EEOYAAOS (Eagles end-of-year awards and other superlatives).
The name is a work-in-progress and subject to change next season. All jokes aside, while the year ended in disappointment for the team, there were bright spots that can serve as sources of encouragement for seasons to come. Here are the winners of this season’s superlatives, unilaterally selected by yours truly:
Quinyon Mitchell, left, and Cooper DeJean both became All-Pros in 2025.
Most Valuable Player
Let’s start this exercise off strong by breaking the rules (that don’t exist). There are two most valuable players on this year’s team, and they’re both on defense: Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean.
Not-so-coincidentally, both second-year cornerbacks were selected to their first All-Pro team and Pro Bowl this year.
In a short period of time, Mitchell and DeJean have become cornerstones of Vic Fangio’s defense. Mitchell, 24, took on more responsibility within the scheme in his second season. Before the Week 9 bye, the 2024 No. 22 overall pick out of Toledo was often tasked with shadowing the opposing team’s top receiver.
According to Next Gen Stats, going into Week 8, Mitchell had at least 10 man coverage matchups against Tampa Bay’s Emeka Egbuka (16 matchups), the Rams’ Davante Adams (15), Denver’s Courtland Sutton (15), and Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson (11). He conceded 43 receiving yards on four receptions against Sutton, but he held each of the other three receivers to 12 or fewer yards.
After the bye, Mitchell primarily aligned in the boundary, the short side of the field that typically garners less safety help. He had more passes defensed (9) than receptions allowed (6) across 29 targets and 233 coverage snaps in the boundary, per Next Gen Stats. His 20.7% completion percentage allowed in that alignment was three times lower than the season-long league average from that spot (65.5%).
DeJean was just as dominant from the slot, an important position in Fangio’s defense that is required to defend the run and pass. He finished the season with a 57.4% completion percentage and 5.9 yards per target from the slot. Both metrics rank below the league averages of 69.5% and 6.8, respectively.
They had their struggles (and successes) in the wild-card loss to the San Francisco 49ers, but their bodies of work throughout the year make them worthy recipients of the award.
If 2025 was his swan song in Philly, Dallas Goedert went out with a bang.
Offensive Player of the Year
This award nearly went to DeVonta Smith, but Dallas Goedert gets the slight edge. The 31-year-old tight end was Jalen Hurts’ most trusted receiver in the red zone, hauling in 10 touchdown passes inside the 20-yard line this season. That performance was particularly meaningful given the Eagles’ declining efficiency on the Tush Push.
Goedert’s 11 receiving touchdowns tied for the most among tight ends in 2025 and set a franchise record at the position. Goedert added two more touchdowns in the wild-card game — one rushing and one receiving — making him the first tight end in NFL history to rush for a touchdown in the playoffs.
This isn’t just about his red-zone performance, though. Goedert caught 73.2% of his targets, the most among the Eagles’ top three receivers (including Smith and A.J. Brown). He also started a career-high 15 games, which was particularly impressive coming off of an injury-riddled 2024 season.
He did not have his best year as a run blocker, although neither did any other player paving the way for Saquon Barkley. Still, it was a career-best year for Goedert in other areas heading into an offseason of uncertainty. He becomes an unrestricted free agent at the start of the new league year.
Jordan Davis was a force along the defensive line for the Eagles in 2025.
Defensive Player of the Year
Few Eagles players ascended as rapidly as Jordan Davis did this season. In his fourth year with the team, the 6-foot-6, 336-pound defensive tackle became the every-down player the Eagles sought when they drafted him No. 13 overall out of Georgia in 2022.
Davis played a career-high 61% of the defensive snaps in 2025, his first season playing more than half of them. Unsurprisingly, he was particularly effective against the run. According to Next Gen Stats, Davis notched a career-best 50 run stops, which are tackles in run defense that result in a negative play for the opposing offense. That total was the second-most among defensive linemen.
He showed some pop as a pass-rusher, too. Davis finished the year with a career-high 4½ sacks. His 22 pressures were a personal best, too, per Next Gen Stats. Davis could be in line for an extension this offseason as he enters the final year of his rookie deal.
Eagles punter Braden Mann has a strong leg and had a strong year.
Special Teams Player of the Year
There’s an argument to be made that Davis and Jalen Carter could share this award given their blocked field goals this season. But the unsung specialist of the season was Braden Mann,the 28-year-old punter. Some might even call him the Mann of the Year.
Mann, who signed with the Eagles in 2023 after spending the first three years of his career with the New York Jets, had the single best season by an Eagles punter in franchise history. He averaged 49.5 gross yards per punt, bringing his Eagles career average to a franchise-best 49.5.
In his Week 8 showing against the New York Giants, Mann averaged 57 net yards (subtracting return yardage) per punt, the most in a single game in franchise history. In a year where the Eagles offense punted a lot, Mann did his best to help out the defense and put opposing offenses in poor field position. He is set to become an unrestricted free agent at the start of the new league year and the Eagles would be wise to bring him back on a new deal.
Jihaad Campbell is off to an encouraging start to his career.
Rookie of the Year
Jihaad Campbell was the Eagles’ top rookie this season. He didn’t have much competition. Safety Drew Mukuba fractured his fibula in Week 12 against the Dallas Cowboys, prematurely ending his up-and-down rookie campaign.
Ty Robinson, Mac McWilliams, Smael Mondon, Drew Kendall, and Cameron Williams hardly played this year. Kyle McCord and Myles Hinton didn’t play this year.
Still, Campbell is a worthy recipient. He fared well as the starting inside linebacker alongside Zack Baun while Nakobe Dean recovered from his torn patellar tendon in his knee to start the season. In Weeks 1-6, Campbell played 94.3% of defensive snaps, then dropped off to 30.7% over the next eight games before Dean’s hamstring injury.
He flashed potential, especially in coverage. Going into Week 13, he had a 63% completion percentage when targeted, which ranked ninth-lowest rate among linebackers in 2025 (minimum of 15 targets) at the time, per Next Gen Stats. Campbell has plenty of room to grow, with more opportunities on the way in 2026, as Dean is a free agent this offseason.
Defensive backs coach Christian Parker’s talents have been recognized around the league.
Assistant Coach of the Year
It’s a big season for the Eagles defensive backs room at the EEOYAAOS. Christian Parker, the Eagles defensive backs coach and passing game coordinator, is earning his flowers as the team’s assistant coach of the year.
The 34-year-old assistant has helped Mitchell and DeJean reach great heights in their first two seasons in the league, especially this season in their All-Pro year. Parker also deserves some credit for the improved play of Adoree’ Jackson as the season progressed. The second outside cornerback spot seemed like a concern coming out of training camp, but the competition eventually stabilized as Jackson grew more comfortable in the defense.
How much longer will Fangio be able to keep Parker around in Philly? Parker is reportedly interviewing with the Dallas Cowboys for their vacant defensive coordinator job.
Jordan Davis celebrated a touchdown after running back a late fourth quarter blocked field goal against the Rams on Sept. 21.
Best play
Few plays brought more juice this season than Davis’ blocked field goal to seal the Eagles’ 33-26 Week 3 win over the Rams. Both Carter and Davis exploited the Rams’ weaknesses in their field goal unit to block a pair of three-point tries in the fourth quarter, but the image of the 6-foot-6, 336-pound Davis returning the loose ball to the end zone as time expired will live on in franchise history.
The play sustained the Eagles’ dominance over the Rams under Nick Sirianni, bringing their head-to-head record to 4-0 over the last three seasons (including the postseason).
Nolan Smith Jr. and the Eagles emphatically assisted Kenny Pickett and the Raiders to becoming the NFL’s worst team in 2025.
Best game
The Eagles offense was a tale of two halves for the majority of the season, making for some uneasy watches. One of the only exceptions was the 31-0 Week 15 win over the Las Vegas Raiders.
In theory, the quality of the opponent should factor into consideration for this award. But the timing of this win is too important to ignore. This resounding victory came on the heels of the Eagles’ three-game losing streak, during which comparisons to the 2023 collapse intensified. The Eagles quelled some doubts by beating up on a bad team, although they ultimately faced the same postseason fate as the 2023 squad.
Fangio’s defense had never been more dominant. They limited the Raiders to 75 yards of offense, a new single-game franchise low for the Eagles and the fewest allowed by any defense during season at the time. Hurts bounced back from committing five turnovers the week prior in the loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. He went 12-for-15 for 175 yards and three touchdowns, earning a near-perfect 154.9 passer rating.
Tank Bigsby averaged nearly six yards per rush even as the Eagles’ rushing offense struggled at times.
Biggest surprise
It took some time, but Tank Bigsby proved to be a solid addition this season. Immediately after Howie Roseman acquired him from the Jacksonville Jaguars in exchange for 2026 fifth- and sixth-round picks, he began the first four weeks of his Eagles career as a kick returner.
He wasn’t the right fit for the role. After a couple of muffed kicks, he was removed from the gig. But on offense, he made the most of his scant carries. He 58 rushes for 344 yards and two touchdowns. While the majority of his touches came against bad defenses (i.e. the Giants, Raiders, and Commanders), his 5.9 yards per carry ranked third in the league among running backs with at least 50 runs.
Bigsby is under contract through 2026, ensuring the Eagles have a solid RB2 option behind Barkley next season.
Jalen Hurts knows his way around a quote.
Best quote
Hurts is known for dropping bits of wisdom in his press conferences. He seems to have sayings for everything, including some of the hottest practices of training camp. After a sweltering practice on July 29, Hurts said, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all,” a quote that has been attributed to a variety of prominent figures including U.S. Army general George S. Patton and Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi.
Perhaps the second-best quote of the season came from Jordan Mailata, regarding another one of Hurts’ aphorisms: “That [stuff] is [freaking] hilarious. Like, how does one think of that?”
Jordan Davis: fun to cover.
Best locker room guy
Davis emerged both on the field and off of it this season. Not only was he dominant as a player in his fourth season, but his infectious personality also uplifted his teammates as he stepped into a leadership role.
No player was more gregarious in the locker room. Transcribing interviews was typically an exercise in trying to decipher quotes from a cacophony of laughter and yelling in the background, which stemmed from Davis. The 26-year-old defensive tackle earned the Eagles local media corps’ stand-up player of the year award, bestowed upon a player for their accessibility and honesty.
Plenty of others deserved the distinction, too. Jackson and Zack Baun landed on my ballot, in addition to Davis. Brown, Barkley, Dean, Brandon Graham, and Britain Covey are always insightful in their discussions with the press.
Best nonhuman source of positivity
Reggie the dog, the Eagles director of joy. Better luck next year, Positivity Rabbit.
Of all the things Betsy Kenney thought she might go viral for, whispering about Wawa wasn’t one of them. But the 38-year-old comedian’s Philly “ASMR” videos have taken off on TikTok and Instagram, turning Kenney — who spent more than a decade pursuing a comedy career in New York City — into an unlikely local celebrity.
If you aren’t familiar with ASMR, which stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, it’s a relaxing sensation triggered by soft sounds or repetitive patterns. People watch ASMR videos of soft tapping, scratching, whispering, or crinkling to unwind. A video of someone getting a scalp massage? Pure bliss. A video of someone with a strong Philly accent asking if you know their cousin while scraping a spoonful of Rita’s water ice? Less so. And therein lies the joke. “People find the Philly accent to be like nails on a chalkboard,” Kenney said. “And I thought it would be funny to combine the two.” The contrast clicked immediately.
Kenney’s videos have racked up millions of views, circulating through group chats and comment sections thick with recognition and debate. They’ve drawn fans far beyond the region and even earned an endorsement from Kylie Kelce, who rated Kenney’s Philly accent an 11. For Kenney, the sudden attention has been somewhat surreal, considering it only arrived after she stopped chasing it.
Betsy Kenney, the woman behind Philly ASMR, in Philadelphia, December 11, 2025.
For years, she had been grinding through the familiar comedy circuit in New York. She took improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade, acted in commercials to stay afloat, and wrote constantly. “I really wanted to do comedy as a living,” Kenney said. “And it turns out it’s really hard.” There were moments of traction. Kenney and her writing partner had a short film debut at the Tribeca Film Festival. They created a web series that was acquired by IFC. They hosted a podcast that found a sizable audience. “That was big,” she said. But none of it added up to stability. Then came COVID, two babies, and a move to Kenney’s hometown of Philadelphia, a return that quietly reshaped how she worked.
Back home, the pressure shifted. Kenney was no longer measuring every idea against an imagined career outcome. She was tired, busy, and short on time, and that looseness made room for something new. In September, she posted her first TikTok: an impression of “Phillies Karen,” aka the lady who stole a baseball from a kid at a Phillies game. It went viral. Before that, she said, she’d always been too self-conscious to post comedy online. Now, with less to prove and less time to overthink, she kept going.
She began posting whenever inspiration struck. Ideas surfaced in the slivers of time she had to herself, like in her car after school drop-off, or before pickup. Some of her best brainstorming happens in the shower, which is why her hair is often still wet in her videos. “I’m not trying to do a soaking wet Kim K thing,” Kenney said. “It’s literally the only time I have.” (Kenney is a full-time parent.)
A few days after “Phillies Karen” took off, she posted her first Philly ASMR video. Then came her impression of Ms. Rachel if she were from Philly. She tried non-Philly bits, too, but they didn’t land the same way. Viewers were clearly responding to the specificity of her hometown voice.
Betsy Kenney, the woman behind Philly ASMR, in Philadelphia, December 11, 2025.
Kenney isn’t the only creator to build a fan base on the back of the Philly accent. There’s also Olivia Herman, whose no-nonsense impression of a Philly mom has attracted over 200,000 followers and a brand deal with Burlington Coat Factory. But where Herman leans into parody, Kenney aims for recognition. The humor doesn’t come from exaggerating the accent, but from treating it as ordinary. That’s no small task considering how difficult the Philly accent is to fake. “It has one of the most complex vowel systems of American English dialects,” said Betsy Sneller, a professor of linguistics at Michigan State University, which makes it difficult to imitate if you didn’t grow up with it.
Kenney did. She was born and raised in Northeast Philadelphia by two parents from the area. “Philly is all I knew,” she said. Sneller said that familiarity is evident in Kenney’s use of Philly-specific phrasing — “it’s so expensive anymore,” “youse” — and regional slang and cultural references like Mom-moms, bo-bos, and the Roosevelt Mall. “There’s such an identifiable feeling of place,” Sneller said. “It feels so specific.”
In fact, Kenney has found that the more specific she is, the more people connect with her work. In the comments section of a video where she asks which parish “Father John ended up at,” viewers pile on with recognition. “Wow, so we all had a Father John then, lol,” wrote one. “We all Father John in eastern PA,” wrote another. Even the Eagles chimed in: “My kinda ASMR.”
Now that she’s back in Philadelphia, the specific details her audience loves are easier to access. Kenney improvises most of her videos, following associations as they surface. So a trip to Franklin Mills might trigger a memory about a childhood birthday, which turns into a video about Stock’s pound cake. Her family is another steady source of material, especially her father, who works in a Philly courtroom as a stenographer and comes over every week with fresh stories. “If I ever need inspiration,” Kenney said, “there it is.”
Back home, surrounded by the people and places that fuel the work, Kenney isn’t in a hurry to turn her TikTok success into something bigger. She isn’t chasing the next step the way she once did in New York. “This is the first time in my comedy career that I’m just having fun,” she said. “And now that I’m back in Philly, and that’s what’s blowing up, I’m just really happy.”
The Eagles don’t just need an offensive coordinator. They need a quarterback whisperer.
They need Josh McCown. Or maybe Cam Turner.
Kevin Patullo wasn’t ready for the OC job in Philly, but then, Bill Walsh and Sid Gillman wouldn’t have won a Super Bowl the way Jalen Hurts played in 2025.
Hurts’ development has stalled. He might even be broken. He’s largely the same quarterback at the end of the 2025 season as he was at the end of 2022. Defenses know that, and they exploit it. As the offensive line deteriorated, and as Saquon Barkley and A.J. Brown started to show their age, more was asked of Hurts, who delivered ever less.
They need an offensive coordinator who can invigorate a veteran quarterback whose career is idling. Both McCown, a former Eagles backup quarterback, and Turner, who has the bluest of NFL bloodlines, have done just that.
Fire starters
The most compelling story of the 2024 season involved Sam Darnold, the No. 3 overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft and a bust with the New York Jets, Carolina Panthers, and San Francisco 49ers, who made the Pro Bowl in his seventh season and led the Minnesota Vikings to a 14-3 record.
The most compelling story early in the 2025 season involved not only Darnold’s continued ascendance, now in Seattle, but also Daniel Jones. He was the No. 6 overall pick in 2019 but turned out to be such a bust with the New York Giants in his first six seasons that they released him.
Jones signed with Indianapolis, where Turner, as quarterbacks coach, had been developing Anthony Richardson, the No. 4 overall pick in 2023, while helping veterans Joe Flacco and Gardner Minshew squeeze out a few more NFL starts. When given an established talent like Jones, though, Turner made hay. Turner convinced head coach Shane Steichen to bench Richardson in favor of Jones, and Turner was right. The Colts were 8-2 and Jones was a dark-horse MVP candidate with a career-high 101.6 passer rating when he broke his leg in Game 11. Jones suffered a torn Achilles tendon two games later.
Colts quarterbacks coach Cam Turner played a big role in Daniel Jones’ resurgence before the quarterback suffered a season-ending injury.
So, amid all the flashy possible candidates — fired Miami Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel, fired Giants head coach Brian Daboll, fired Washington Commanders coordinator Kliff Kingsbury, figurehead 49ers OC Klay Kubiak — you have, in McCown and Turner, two position coaches who played the position, who possess credible pedigrees, and, within the past two years, have salvaged the careers of quarterbacks who were in even worse shape than Hurts.
Granted, they wouldn’t be acting as Hurts’ position coach. However, if head coach Nick Sirianni — also never a QB, and only briefly a QB coach — will assume more of a role in scheme construction and game-planning, which he’s going to help with anyway, McCown or Turner could spend more time with Hurts than would a normal OC.
Granted, they haven’t called plays. But then, neither had Ben Johnson when he became offensive coordinator in Detroit in 2022. He’d never even coached quarterbacks. He still turned out to be excellent at running an offense, both with the Lions through 2024, as well as in 2025, his first season as head coach with the Chicago Bears, who are two wins from making the Super Bowl.
The team desperately needs some QB IQ in the building after the caliber of coaching Hurts received this season. And no, we’re not referring to Patullo.
Scot who?
There was a lot of head-scratching last winter when Sirianni hired career college coach Scot Loeffler as quarterbacks coach. Loeffler’s only season in the NFL was as quarterbacks coach for the Lions in 2008, when Daunte Culpepper, Jon Kitna, and current ESPN analyst Dan Orlovsky combined for an 0-16 record. Loeffler coached on the first 0-16 team in NFL history, a season best remembered for Orlovsky, while facing modest pressure, unwittingly scrambling out of the back of the end zone (the Lions lost by two points).
No matter what happened the rest of the game, this Dan Orlovsky safety would be one of the most memorable bloopers in NFL history.
What made it even worse: the Lions went on to lose by two points…
Unlike Loeffler, McCown and Turner bring significant NFL bona fides.
McCown played for 10 NFL teams over a 16-year career. He only approached being a full-time starter four times, but at his last eight stops, he was credited with making the other quarterbacks better as a sort of extra coach. In 2006, with the Lions, he actually played wide receiver, and caught both passes thrown to him. In 2019, he came out of retirement and served as Carson Wentz’s backup and mentor. Not coincidentally, Wentz’s career cratered after 2020.
Even if he doesn’t get the OC job, McCown always will have a home in Philly. Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie loves him. He offered McCown a coaching job after the 2019 season, which McCown, then 40, declined, hoping to take one more shot as a player. Lurie then signed McCown to the practice squad in 2020 but still let McCown live at home in Texas until the Houston Texans signed McCown onto their active roster in November.
Other than recently redeeming failed quarterbacks, McCown and Turner share little else in their backgrounds.
Depending on how you view things, either Turner is one of the NFL‘s most egregious proliferate examples of nepotism, or he has impeccable NFL coaching DNA.
His uncle, Norv Turner, won two Super Bowls in the early 1990s as Jimmy Johnson’s offensive coordinator in Dallas. His cousin and Norv’s son, Scott Turner, has spent 14 seasons coaching in the NFL, and he’s the Jets’ passing game coordinator now, but that shouldn’t count against Cam.
Independent of his connections, Cam has proved himself worthy of his appointments. He was the assistant QB coach in Arizona in 2020, when Kyler Murray went to his first Pro Bowl, and was the head QB coach in 2021, when Murray went to his second.
Turner also has the benefit of working with Steichen in Indy. Steichen, of course, was the OC when the Eagles made it to the Super Bowl after the 2022 season.
Colts coach Shane Steichen, the former Eagles offensive coordinator, started the 2025 season 8-2 with Daniel Jones as his starter and Cam Turner coaching quarterbacks.
Turner also worked in Arizona under Kingsbury, one of the retread candidates everyone has been sniffing around since Black Monday began claiming victims last week.
“Sniffing around.”
Sounds about right.
The names
With a $128 million offense like the Eagles’, why risk a season on lesser-known candidates like McCown and Turner?
Because being lesser-known doesn’t necessarily equate to lesser ability.
McDaniel is a big name, but the awkward departure of Vic Fangio as his defensive coordinator after their 2023 season together would cause instant friction if McDaniel joined a franchise and moved to a city where Fangio is worshipped. Anyway, McDaniel seems certain to get another head coaching gig during this hiring cycle. If he doesn’t, he’d be foolish to turn down the Lions OC job if offered, since, in this moment, Jared Goff is a better quarterback than Hurts.
Daboll was hired by the Ginats to develop Jones. He did the opposite. Also, his combustible personality is likely to clash with Sirianni’s.
There isn’t a universe in which Ravens offensive coordinator Todd Monken doesn’t accompany John Harbaugh to Harbaugh’s next stop, since Harbaugh’s refusal to fire Monken apparently influenced his firing in Baltimore.
and got fired by the Cowboys as QB coach after 2022, failed as Kellen Moore’s QB coach with the Chargers in 2023, and was the QB coach in Philly during Hurts’ mediocre 2024 season. Not exactly a sterling resumé.
Frank Reich, the OC in 2016-17 under Doug Pederson, is Lurie’s favorite employee ever, and, at 64, he’s unlikely to be poached by any other team if the Eagles thrive with him as coordinator. But Reich was less responsible for Wentz’s development than hard-nosed quarterbacks coach John DeFilippo. As for “Flip” himself, team sources have said in the past that DeFilippo long ago burned any bridge that might ever bring him back to Philadelphia, and there have been plenty of opportunities to do so.
Rams passing game coordinator Nate Scheelhaase has never coached NFL quarterbacks, has one year as a college offensive coordinator, and with all due respect, seems to be this year’s long-shot assistant who gets the Duce Staley Treatment — that is, token interviews for head-coaching jobs with NFL teams trying to fulfill Rooney Rule requirements.
Still, Scheelhaase seems far more qualified than Klay Kubiak. He spent seven of his first eight years out of college coaching high school, and only three of those as a head coach. He joined the Niners in 2021, and he has been offensive coordinator for just one year, but he doesn’t even call plays. Kyle Shanahan does.
Maybe it won’t matter who they hire. Considering how so many podcast pundits and online experts spend their Monday mornings eviscerating folks like Kevin Patullo, game planning, sequencing, adjusting, and play-calling can’t be all that hard. Can it?
John Linehan and Kobe Bryant used to talk. A lot. This would not have been unusual for other AAU teammates, but these two were fierce high school rivals.
Linehan was a scrappy point guard for Chester. Bryant was a relentless shooting guard for Lower Merion. Both were competitive, almost to a fault, and in the days leading up to big games, they’d get chippy.
The week before the 1996 PIAA Class AAAA District 1 title game, for example, the players talked every day on bulky landline phones, with Bryant often calling Linehan at his home in Chester.
“I just said, ‘You know, John, I haven’t won a championship yet, and you have,’” Bryant told The Inquirer in 1996.
Linehan knew what his friend was doing. The future NBA star did the same thing a few weeks later, on March 19, a day before the teams met again in the state semifinal.
“He was trying to get me to trash talk,” Linehan said. “I think he needed a little edge. I didn’t want to give him too much. I was like, ‘Man, you crazy.’”
The late Kobe Bryant, a former Lower Merion basketball star, announcing he will go directly into the NBA draft out of high school.
Lower Merion wasn’t a basketball school when Bryant arrived in the fallof 1992. It paled in comparison to the local powerhouses like Simon Gratz, Coatesville, and Chester.
But Bryant changed that. Even in his freshman year, a season in which the Aces went 4-20, he brought a new standard, working out before class and introducing a level of toughness that was foreign to his teammates.
Bythe mid-1990s, Lower Merion was among the best high school teams in the Philadelphia area. Its players were more confident, celebrating after big shots, and talking loud on the court.
The Aces didn’t play as many games against Coatesville, a rising power led by Rip Hamilton. They couldn’t consistently measure themselves against Gratz, which didn’t participate in the PIAA playoffs untilthe 2004-05 season.
But they could against Chester. And so, a decades-long rivalry was born.
From 1996 through the mid-2010s, Chester and Lower Merion put on some of the greatest high school basketball games in the area. They’d often sell out venues like the Palestra and Villanova’s Pavilion. Some fans would even scalp tickets.
Their communities were almost diametrically opposed. Chester was predominantly Black; Lower Merion was predominantly white. Chester was plaguedby poverty; Lower Merion was considered affluent.
Chester, with its Biddy League, had a legacy of basketball greatness, and a steady pipeline of talent. Lower Merion had nothing comparable. But these differences melted away on the court.
And while the rivalry is not what it once was, it lives on today.
“The pride and the intensity and the history will never fade,” said Lower Merion coach Gregg Downer. “I mean, if we played them tomorrow night, that would be an intense game.”
The Bryant-Linehan era
When Downer was named head coach in 1990, he already was well-aware of Chester’s tradition. He’d played youth basketball growing up in Media and had heard about the stars who’d come out of the Biddy League.
It was obvious that his team would have to go through the Clippers to win any sort of accolade. But it wasn’t until Bryant’s arrival that Downer’s aspirations became a real possibility.
The shooting guard, who was the son of former 76er Joe “Jelly Bean” Bryant, was mature for his age. He’d demand more, mentally and physically, of older teammates. Doug Young, a former Lower Merion forward, remembered seeing Bryant leaving the locker room at 7 o’clock one September morning in 1993.
He’d been at the high school gym since 5 a.m., working out by himself. To the Lower Merion basketball team, this was a “crazy” concept, so Young and his cohorts decided to join him.
In the District 1 championship game against Chester, Kobe Bryant goes to the hoop over the Clippers’ John Linehan.
They arrived the next day at 5:06 a.m. The players knocked on the door. Bryant didn’t answer.
“He wouldn’t open it,” said Young, who graduated in 1995. “You’re either there or you’re not. We were six minutes late.”
His teammates waited outside until 6:30 a.m., when the school opened. They made sure to show up before 5 a.m. from that day on.
Downer was wired the same way. The coach — and his NBA-bound pupil — would push the team in practice. Losses were particularly tough. The players would go through endless sprints and rebounding drills that sent them running to the trash can.
It wasn’t fun. But over time, the method created a newfound tenacity.
“No one walked into high school saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I want to win a state championship,’” Young said. “But [Kobe] knew what that was. He was like, ‘I don’t know any other way. If we’re not going to win a championship, what the heck are we playing for?’”
Chester was always going to be an obstacle, so Downer tried to play into the battle. He’d use analogies for the tough, hard-nosed team, comparing it to an animal stalking its prey.
The coach began to screen movies to underscore this point. Together, in a Lower Merion classroom, Downer’s players watched Jaws and other tales of survival, like The Edge, a 1997 thriller about a plane that crashes in the Alaskan wilderness.
“This bear is stalking them, and the couple is saying, ’What are we going to do about this bear?’” Downer said. “And one of them says, ‘The only thing we can do is kill the bear.’
“And I remember being like, ‘We can do this.’ But the only solution is to — not to be overly graphic — but to kill them.”
(The bear in this analogy was Chester.)
He added: “We tried everything humanly possible to get through to this team.”
The first few games were ugly. In 1995, Lower Merion met the Clippers in the District 1 championship, only to lose by 27 points. But they came back with a renewed focus the following year, in 1995-96, going 25-3 in the regular season to earn a district final rematch against Chester.
The Aces showed up at the arena with “27″ printed on their warmup shirts. Bryant, armed with fresh bulletin board material from Linehan, dropped 34 points against the Clippers en route to a 60-53 Aces win.
The shooting guard scored 39 points later that month — with a broken nose — in a 77-69 state semifinal win over Chester. Lower Merion went on to beat Erie Cathedral Prep, 48-43, to win its first state championship since 1943.
Kobe Bryant celebrates after defeating Chester at the Palestra in 1996 to advance to the state final.
To Linehan, the difference Bryant made was obvious. He joked that he’d “never heard of Lower Merion” before his friend arrived. But once he did, Chester realized it would have to go to great lengths to prepare for the phenom.
Ahead of a big game against Lower Merion in the mid-1990s, the coaching staff reached out to Clippers alumnus Zain Shaw. He played at West Virginia and in Europe and possessed some of the same characteristics as Bryant — a tall frame and an athletic build with strong ballhandling skills.
The Clippers invited Shaw to practice, where he played the role of Bryant (to the best of his ability).
“Kobe was so special, we had to bring in a pro to help us prepare,” said Linehan, who later starred at Providence.
But there was another impact the future Lakers star had, one that had nothing to do with his own prowess. Linehan noticed that Bryant’s Lower Merion teammates started to take on some of his qualities. Suddenly, they were playing brash, confident basketball.
“We didn’t have reason to believe, until Kobe got there, that we belonged on the court with Chester,” Young said. “The fear was real. Teams were afraid of Chester because they’d run you out of the building.
“The idea of Lower Merion being on the court in a meaningful game against [them] was such a crazy thought. But then, you started to believe.”
The buzzer-beater heard ’round Chester
Bryant never got over the rivalry, even after he embarked on his Hall of Fame NBA career in 1996. Sometimes, he’d call the coaching staff before big games against Chester, leaving expletive-laden voicemails to use as motivation.
The Lakers shooting guard also created an incentive structure for his former team.
“You couldn’t get a pair of Nike sneakers unless you qualified for the playoffs,” Young said. “If you don’t earn it, you don’t get it.”
He became especially involved in 2005-06. After a lull in the early 2000s, Chester and Lower Merion found themselves neck-and-neck again. The Aces were led by the duo of Ryan Brooks and Garrett Williamson, and the Clippers boasted a deep roster, headlined by Darrin Govens. All of them eventually played in the Big 5.
(Chester was so stacked that it brought a 1,000-point scorer off the bench in Noel Wilmore.)
Students from the class of 2005 show their support as Chester and Lower Merion play in the state final.
The rivals met in the state championship on March 19, 2005. Despite strong performances from Williamson and Brooks, the Clippers pulled away in the second half thanks to a dominant third quarter from Govens. Chester won, 74-61.
The teams reconvened the following season with their competitive spark fully reignited. They faced each other three times that year. Chester took Round 1, a one-point regular-season victory on Dec. 27.
Round 2 was in the district final on March 3. Before the game, in front of a packed crowd at the Pavilion, Chester sophomore Karon Burton walked up to the layup line.
Lower Merion’s student section caught his ear with a chant about coach Fred Pickett’s stout stature.
The dig didn’t intimidate Burton. If anything, it fueled him. He grew up playing street ball in Chester and always loved trash talk.
Instead of cowering, like the crowd hoped, the sophomore delivered an unforgettable outing. The game went into overtime, and was tied at 80 with only a few seconds remaining.During a timeout, assistant coach Keith Taylor pulled Burton aside.
“He was like, ‘Hey, listen,’” Burton said. “They’re going to double Darrin. If you get that ball, do your thing.’”
Taylor’s words proved prescient. As Lower Merion’s defenders swarmed Govens, the Clippers inbounded the ball to Burton.
He took a pull-up jumper from beyond the arc and drilled it for an 83-80 win. The Chester fans stormed the court. Burton, who later joined Wilmore in the 1,000-point club, said he felt like a celebrity in his hometown.
“It was like watching a buzzer-beater in the NBA,” he said. “I just ran to my teammates, they picked me up. It was a crazy feeling.
“I’m a big Kobe fan, too. Kobe’s my favorite player ever. So when I came and I hit the game-winner on that team …”
Round 3 took place a few weeks later, in a state semifinal rematch at the Palestra on March 22. Bryant called Lower Merion’s coaches before the game.
“I don’t remember specifically what he said, but I’m sure there were a lot of [expletives] dropped,” said Young. “Like, ‘Don’t call me back if you don’t beat those [expletives].’ That was a line we heard from him a couple times.”
This one didn’t go Chester’s way. After trailing the Clippers, 47-37, at the end of the third quarter, the Aces came roaring back in the fourth and put up 33 points to eke out a 70-65 win.
The celebration in the locker room was cathartic. Water sprayed into the air. Players sat atop each other’s shoulders and turned the showers into a slip ‘n slide. Bryant called in, again, as other members of the 1996 team filtered through.
Darrin Govens scored his 1,000th point for Chester against Lower Merion in the state championship in 2005.
This was not how Govens wanted to end his high school career. And a few months later, when he arrived at St. Joseph’s on a basketball scholarship, he saw a familiar foe.
It was Williamson, his new Hawks teammate.
“We were sitting on the opposite side of the bench,” Govens said. “I didn’t want to sit next to him; he didn’t want to sit next to me. We’d kind of avoid each other and just head nod.
“Even in running drills, it was a competition. He looked to the left. I looked to the right. We tried to beat each other in sprints. But then we realized, ‘All right bro, we’re teammates now.’”
‘Hero status’
Chester had always rallied around its high school basketball team. Linehan said it was akin to playing for the Sixers. The teenagers were treated like professional athletes — especially those who had been a part of big wins.
The Clippers’ public address announcer, James Howard, called this “hero status.”
“All of a sudden, your money’s no good,” he said. “Barbers take care of you, make sure your hair looks nice before games. Free food. Little kids look up to you and ask for your autograph. That’s how it is.”
In Chester, there were plenty of heroes to draw from. There was Linehan, but also Jameer Nelson, who met a young Burton in the late 1990s. Nelson, a friend of Burton’s cousin, gave the aspiring basketball player a gift before he left for St. Joe’s: his MVP medal from the Chester summer league.
“He was one of the biggest guys in our city,” Burton said, “so it’s definitely something that I’ll always remember.”
By the early 2010s, when the rivalry was reignited for a third time, Lower Merion had built more of a basketball tradition. Aces guard Justin McFadden said he’d get stopped in Wawa before big games against the Clippers.
Chester celebrates its win over Lower Merion for the state championship in 2012.
“It became a community thing,” he said. “People would be asking, ‘What do you guys think about Chester? Do you think we can get it done?’”
In 2012, the schools met in the state championship for the first time since 2005. Junior forward and future NBA starter Rondae Hollis-Jefferson put up a double-double to lead the Clippers to a resounding 59-33 win over the Aces. It was their second straight title and their 58th straight victory.
A year later, after going 17-0 in the Central League, the Aces met the Clippers in the state final again. Chester had won 78 straight games against in-state opponents. Snapping that streak would be daunting, but Downer had a plethora of motivational tactics at his disposal.
Just as they had in the 1990s, The Aces again spent pockets of the season watching Jaws, The Edge, as well as an addition: Al Pacino’s “Inch by Inch” speech in Any Given Sunday.
“He would have that fired up on YouTube, ready to go,” McFadden said. “Looking back, [your reaction] is a chuckle, but in the moment, it worked. We knew that this was the hill that needed to be climbed.
“And every time they played that speech, we got goose bumps. We were ready to fire.”
Chester got out to an early lead, but Lower Merion rallied behind a 22-point, 11-rebound performance from B.J. Johnson, who later starred at La Salle. The Aces snapped the streak and won their seventh state title with a 63-47 victory.
Lower Merion’s Jaquan Johnson goes to the net as Diamonte Reason guards him in the Chester-Lower Merion state championship game in 2013.
The Clippers then were coached by Larry Yarbray. Pickett, who was diagnosed with cancer in2010, was in declining health. Just before he died in 2014, Downer decided to say goodbye.
He and his former assistant coach Jeremy Treatman drove out to Pickett’s home in Chester. They went to his bedside.
“And we talked,” Downer said. “And we held hands. It was a really touching moment for me. This is a man that carried Chester on his back. That tried to carry Lower Merion on his back. And I knew it was the last time I was going to see Fred.
“We walked out the door, and we told each other that we loved each other. And I never thought he would say that to me, or vice versa. But it was just kind of like, ‘You know what? We’ve had some amazing battles, and there’s a lot of respect there.’”
Keeping the tradition alive
In recent years, the Chester-Lower Merion rivalry has diminished.
There was a brief period when the teams were in different classifications. Both programs have lost players to private schools that can recruit, and the addition of the Philadelphia Catholic League to the PIAA has made the state playoffs more competitive.
One place the Aces and Clippers could meet is in the district tournament, where they reunited in 2024. But they haven’t played each other since. And Howard says the contests don’t have the same feel.
“Both teams have lost D-I talent,” he said. “It’s not as high-flying, above the rim, as it was in the past. But still a great game. Sold out at Lower Merion, and at Chester, same thing.”
The history will always be there, though, and Burton is doing his best to keep it alive. His 8-year-old son, Karon Burton Jr., is playing in the Biddy League. His father is his coach.
Sometimes, they go on YouTube and watch old Clippers games. Junior’s favorite, of course, is the 2006 district final.
Burton believes that his son has a promising future, but isn’t sure of where he’ll go to high school yet. He doesn’t want Karon Jr. to feel obligated to follow his father’s path.
But if it worked out that way, what a story that would be.
“I’d love to be the first father and son to have 1,000 points,” Burton said. “With the same name? That would be crazy.”
2026 Nissan Murano Platinum AWD vs. Volkswagen Atlas SEL Premium R-Line: Midsize SUV comparison.
This week: Nissan Murano
Price: $53,950 as tested
What others are saying: “Highs: Comfortable front seats; short stopping distances. Lows: Rough-shifting transmission, uneven power delivery, stiff ride, unintuitive controls,” says Consumer Reports.
What Nissan is saying: “Energetic elegance.”
Reality: I promise I checked Consumer Reports after I wrote the column.
What’s new: I was excited to have a Murano in my lineup because after all these years of columnizing, I would finally get to review one.
(Googles “Scott Sturgis” “Inquirer” “Murano.”) Well, huh. I drove 2015 and 2018 models.
Memorable, evidently.
This is not the same Murano, naturally. A redesign for 2025 gives the awkward old two-row, midsize SUV an awkward new look, along with a new engine and transmission.
Shifty: Hooray! A Nissan without a CVT! The Murano came with a 9-speed automatic, so I should be this delighted. But read on.
Up to speed: Gone is the V-6 that powered the old model. The 2.0-liter turbocharged engine creates 241 horses, which is not a ton for this size of vehicle. It gets the vehicle to 60 mph in 7.2 seconds, according to Car and Driver.
But the acceleration story has many more chapters. When I first pulled out of my neighborhood, the Murano seemed to alternate between lag and lurch. “OK, it’s cold,” I thought, offering the benefit of the doubt even while it was probably 85 degrees outside. “I’ll give it some time.”
But the unsteadiness continued. Sometimes SUVs and minivans can have an awkward accelerator-foot interface, so I looked into that. But, no, it felt comfortable.
“Aha! Here’s a drive mode selector,” I cried. “I’ll try that.” When I shifted to sport mode, it got sporty all right — in the way that your eighth-grade gym teacher forced you to run laps around the gym at 8 a.m. until you felt like throwing up. It was even rougher than before, although the roughness came at you faster.
“All right, I never do this,” I sighed and shifted into eco. Surprisingly, the power didn’t completely die out. The Murano felt smooth. Sure, it took a lot of foot stomping to get the Murano on highways and such, but the SUV delivered power much better.
On the road: Mode, schmode, driving the Murano was never more than OK. Country roads are blah; highways are a faster blah. There are just so many more enjoyable competitors to get around in.
The lane-keeping system drove me nuts for a few days, and the menus to adjust it are inscrutable. Press one of two little dotted lines on the steering wheel to change them. The screen says “OK Menu,” and there’s a tiny OK button next to a microphone/button, and that seemed to function at somewhat regular intervals. I’d need practice to do it again.
The interior of the 2026 Nissan Murano is elegant, as are many of Nissan’s offerings. Unfortunately its user-friendliness is lacking.
Driver’s Seat: The seat itself is on the plush side, roomy and wide. Nissan has long offered classy interiors even down to the Sentra (sorry, Versa, not you). Silver buttons and trim with nice colored material add to the upscale feel.
But here’s a better place to complain about the transmission controls. Why did some designer think a row of buttons at the front of the console would be a great idea? My phone and other items forever covered them. Also, they’re just not intuitive, so when you’re in a tight spot and have to maneuver forward and back to get out, it requires far more concentration than it should.
Friends and stuff: The rear seat is roomy, comfortable, nicely appointed, and well positioned. Heads, legs, and feet have no shortage of space, even in the middle seat.
Cargo space is 32.9 cubic feet in the back, and 63.5 with the rear seat folded.
In and out: The Murano rides at a height perfect for entry and exit without leg stretches.
Play some tunes: A single large volume knob is available outside the touchscreen. The 12.3-inch screen sounds like a good size, but it’s very short and wide, and a row of icons along the side and HVAC display along the bottom eat into the space.
Sound from the Bose Premium system is OK, about a B+ or so, and leaves me wondering what the not-premium system sounds like.
Keeping warm and cool: Going one better (or worse) than the popular ebony touch pads, which Mr. Driver’s Seat doesn’t love, the Murano offers a cheap-looking black plastic controller pad with temperature, fan speed, and source, and it requires a forceful push to engage your choices.
While you’re fighting with that, a teeny tiny display at the bottom of the touchscreen shows the changes. Let’s all say it in unison: “Eyes on the road!”
Fuel economy: I couldn’t get the trip display to do more than show me how each individual trip went, and the car said the best fuel economy was 22.8 mpg. So, the rest were worse. Let’s call it 20.
Where it’s built: Smyrna, Tenn. Half the parts come from the U.S. and Canada, including the transmission. The engine hails from Japan.
How it’s built: The Murano gets a predicted reliability of 3 out of 5 from Consumer Reports.
In the end: Nissan has a comfortable, roomy, attractive (on the inside) SUV here. If they can tweak the engine and suspension and start over with infotainment and HVAC controls, this could be a winner.
The show’s theme, “Rooted: Origins of American Gardening,” honors the people, places, and traditions that have shaped gardening — and invites visitors to consider where their own gardening stories began.
A rendering of the 2026 Philadelphia Flower show is on display during a press conference at Union Trust on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. The theme of this year’s flower show is called ‘Rooted: Origins of American Gardening’.
“Gardening knowledge does not appear out of nowhere,” said Matt Rader, president of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, which hosts the show annually at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. “It’s shared, adapted, and passed forward. It reflects our culture, memory, ourselves, our experiences.”
On Wednesday, planners revealed first-look renderings of this year’s iteration of the Flower Show, the nation’s largest, and the world’s longest-running horticultural event, which runs Feb. 28 to March 8. At the event held at the historic Union Trust Building in Market East, built on the site of the inaugural Flower Show in 1829, officials honored the city’s role as the birthplace of democracy and America’s first Flower Show. The Horticultural Society will mark its 200th anniversary in 2027.
“It is fitting that we gather here as we prepare for an extraordinary moment in our history in 2026,” said Mayor Cherelle L. Parker. “The Flower Show offers a first impression of our city. It’s creative, it’s inspiring, and it’s deeply rooted in who we are as a people and a place.”
Mayor Cherelle L. Parker speaks at a press conference during an unveiling of the first look at the 2026 Philadelphia Flower Show, ‘Rooted: Origins of American Gardening’ at Union Trust on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026.
This year’s show represents the third in a series of themes exploring gardening over time. Earlier shows celebrated present-day gardening communities and envisioned bolder ones for the future.
“This theme is very much an opportunity to reflect on the origins of American gardening,” said Rader. “‘What is the story that we tell through gardening,’ and ‘how do we want to use it to shape Philadelphia, the country, and the world moving forward?”
The show will debut a reimagined Marketplace shopping destination, located in a new street-level space below the main exhibit halls. It will also feature an expanded Artisan Row, where guests can work alongside nearly 40 vendors and craftspeople to create everything from fresh floral crowns to dried bouquets and terrariums.
Popular attractions and events, like early morning tours, Bloom Bar, and “Fido Fridays,” where four-legged friends find time among the flowers, all return. The Flowers After Hours dance party, scheduled for Saturday, March 7, transforms the show into an enchanted, fairytale forest setting, with guests encouraged to wear “fantasy-inspired attire,” planners said.
With America’s 250th anniversary fast-approaching, planners felt it was the moment to “pause and acknowledge” the roots, traditions, and resilience of American gardening, said Seth Pearsoll, vice president and creative director of the Philadelphia Flower Show.
Those roots shape the show’s entrance garden, a sprawling, misty forest floor creation drawing on the diverse inspirations of American gardens, and featuring mossy stonework, Zen-like sculptural plantings, water displays, and crowned with a towering, twisting root structure.
“That garden sets the tone dramatically,” Pearsoll said. “We wanted it to feel timeless, grounded. We wanted to create a place to allow guests to slow down before moving forward.”
A participant creates pressed flower art following a press conference for the unveiling of a first look at the 2026 Philadelphia Flower Show, ‘Rooted: Origins of American Gardening’ at Union Trust on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026.
This year’s special exhibition, “The American Landscape Showcase,” celebrates the national milestone, also known as the Semiquincentennial, with four gardens highlighting how gardening has shaped communities and evolved over 250 years.
“It reflects the influence of shared knowledge, cultural traditions, and regional practices that continue to shape how we garden today,” he said.
Other gardens will feature exhibits from acclaimed international florists. Each year, thousands of exhibitors compete in more than 900 classes or categories, ranging from horticulture and arrangement to design and photography.
“Whether you come for the artistry, the education, the family experiences, or simply to be surrounded by some of the most gorgeous beauty in the middle of the winter, there’s a place for you here,” Pearsoll said.
Matt Rader, President of the Philadelphia Horticultural Society, speaks at a press conference during an unveiling of the first look at the 2026 Philadelphia Flower Show, ‘Rooted: Origins of American Gardening’ at Union Trust on Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026.
With more than 200,000 guests expected at this year’s milestone show, the event represents the Horticultural Society’s biggest fundraiser, supporting its greening efforts across the city, said Rader.
“This is the home of American horticulture,” he said. “The Flower Show is our invitation to the world to join us here.”
We’ve asked where South Philly starts, and about the Eagles-Steelers divide, but now it's time to answer an even more controversial question: Where does South Jersey end and North Jersey begin?
It’s a toughie, even entire movies have tried to answer this question. Is it just Eagles country vs. Giants country? Or maybe area code based? Turnpike exits? Or just simple geography of towns and counties? We want to hear from you.
story continues after advertisement
Use the sliders below to draw the dividing line. Submit your pick and see how other Inquirer readers voted.
The Rest of New Jersey
Central Jersey
South Jersey
You think South Jersey includes south_city_marker.
If we averaged out the votes from Inquirer readers, South Jersey would include south_city_average.
We’re not done yet, though. Now you’ve told us where South Jersey starts, we have another question for you: If it exists, where does Central Jersey start?
selection_answer
Of those that voted, central_votes believe there is a Central Jersey. The average Inquirer reader placed north_city_average in North Jersey and central_city_avg in Central Jersey.
Thank you for taking our quiz. If you want to weigh in more (like Pork Roll or Taylor Ham) let us know!
Staff Contributors
Design, Development, and Reporting: Garland Fordice
Editing: Sam Morris
Copy Editing: Brian Leighton
Illustration: Julia Duarte
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The Mediterranean-style stucco home in Montgomery County was ringed by maple and oak trees. A tri-level deck with a hot tub and covered porch faced a sylvan pond on an adjacent property.
Inside, the house had oak flooring, Amish-crafted red oak kitchen cabinets, two fireplaces, and a family room with a beamed cathedral ceiling.
The almost 5,000-square-foot home Casey Lyons and her husband, James, purchased in 2021 also had a basement with a sauna, gym, full bath, and a great room opening out into a patio where their two young sons could play.
On the second floor were four bedrooms and three baths and abundant closets fitted with drawers and shelving. Previous owners had installed a sophisticated sound system to play music.
The 1988 structure was dated, though. The kitchen had “peachy” squares of tile for a backsplash, Casey said. The 1½-acre property was attractively landscaped, but the outdoor decks were stained a worn rust color.
The home has a three-level deck in the backyard. It was painted green to play off the surrounding trees.
To give the first-floor living spaces a contemporary look, Casey reached out to interior designer Val Nehez through a mutual friend. Nehez remembers, “Casey asked me, ‘Can you make me love this house?’”
Nehez, owner of Studio IQL, and her senior designer, Ulli Barankay, were up to the challenge.
In the kitchen they kept most of the cabinetry but replaced one wall with white subway tile and open shelves. They installed a white marble island, new globe light fixtures, and curved black faucets. Mustard-colored chairs surround a white table.
“We turned a Lancaster County country kitchen … into a Southern California kitchen,” Nehez said.
With two active boys and a chocolate lab, Casey has to clean the chairs once a month. Still, she said, “I love the color.”
The renovated kitchen features white subway tiles and a marble island.Lyons loves the mustard color of the chairs in her kitchen.
In the center hall, red oak entry doors, adjacent closet doors, and the staircase were painted dark green to match the slate floor.
The dining room decor was inspired by a large abstract painting of white swirls on a green background from James’ family’s art collection. The walls are hunter green, and the “Flock of Light” curved metal chandelier from Design Within Reach complements the swirls in the painting.
Nehez found upholstered chairs for the walnut table, which Casey had custom-made by John Duffy, owner of Stable Tables in Flourtown.
For the formal dining room, Lyons chose a large abstract painting from her husband’s family collection and a “Flock of Light” chandelier.
The dining room’s vintage apothecary cabinet and heavily carved buffet had been in her previous home.
A copper plate and new mantle were added to the living room fireplace to make it more distinctive. The stone fireplace in the family room was whitewashed to blend with the white walls and emphasize the height of the cathedral ceiling. Furnishings include a tan leather sofa in the family room and white chairs, and a green velvet sofa and floral-pattern rug in the living room.
The fireplace stone in the family room was whitewashed to accentuate the tall ceilings.A copper plate and mantel were added to the living room fireplace.
Outside, the decking was painted a moss green to blend with the surrounding foliage. The back wall of the covered porch was covered with glazed green tiles. The porch features a maroon-and-white-striped sectional and blue, beige, and purple lantern-shaped lights. “It’s a beautiful place to sit” and admire the pond and the changing colors of the leaves in late autumn, Casey said.
Some furnishings came from Material Culture, an antique store in Germantown. Other items and lighting came from Minima, a contemporary lighting and furniture store in Old City. Nehez said items were selected to “reflect the owners’ taste.”
She and Barankay chose black porcelain fixtures for the powder room and wallpaper patterned with black and white zebras on a red background. In a happy coincidence, after the powder room remodeling was completed, the designers found a print of two zebras in the families’ art trove, which they hung in the hall nearby.
The view of the nearby pond from the deck outside Lyons’ home.Lyons’ dog, Joe, walks along the three-level deck.
As is their custom, with some exceptions such as the dining room painting, they waited until all the furnishings were in place to hang the art.
Finding the right piece to blend in, Nehez said, is “like finding the perfect pair of earrings after getting dressed.”
Since the remodeling Casey, her sons, and husband “have a space where we can cook, watch, television, and dance,” she said, in a home she now loves.
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