Post-Draft Blues

Written By: TMC

Posted on May 3, 2007

Toby came downstairs and stepped right over me as I laid there, my face buried in the carpet like I was grazing. I heard ice cubes clatter into a glass, and then he opened the fridge to pour himself a drink. The fridge didn’t close, but his bare feet scraped slowly across the rug. I pictured him walking like a zombie, arms outstretched and eyes vacant, and then I felt a kick in my ribs.

He toppled over me, a knee driving into my kidney and his glass dropping onto the back of my head. It didn’t break, but it hurt like hell. I thought I might be bleeding, but the run-off on my cheeks tasted like orange juice, and I knew I was okay. I turned my head so that my right cheek was pressed against the floor, and I could see Toby, now lying across me so that we looked like a lowercase T.

“I’m laying here,” I said.

“Didn’t see you,” he said, his voice muffled by the carpet. “Did you catch my OJ?”

“Why don’t you look where you’re going?” I said, and tried to smack him on the back. I barely grazed him.

“What a terrible day.”

“You wanna get off me?”

“I will,” he said, but I knew he wouldn’t. He turned his head to look back at me over his shoulder. “What the hell are we supposed to do now?”

“Nothing to do.”

“Guess we could move.”

“Like that’ll help us get over this draft,” I said. I unleashed a showy sigh so that he could feel my disapproval in my breath on his cheek. “It’s too late, man. Everything’s already ruined.”

“How the hell could they draft a quarterback?” He slapped his palm on the floor. “They already have McNabb! Why not take a linebacker?”

“Could we not talk about it?” The Eagles had blown another draft just 6 hours before, and my season was ruined before it had even started. I wished I was dead, if only because it would keep me from having this same conversation for the fifth time today. “Just get offa me and leave me alone.”

“I’m going,” he said. His left leg lifted up, but then fell back down onto my back. “Soon.” I twisted my hips to try to slide him off, but he wouldn’t budge. He outweighs me by at least 75 pounds, and, besides, when you’re miserable and the whole world has turned against you, you feel like your clothes are lined with lead. I remember when they lost the NFC Championship back in ’02, I didn’t move from the couch for 2 full days. I tried, but my arms wouldn’t even move, they were so heavy. People say grief is an abstract thing, but you can feel it in your bones, weighing you down. Toby was too sad to move and I was too sad to move him, and I guess that’s just the way it had to be.

The phone rang, and the machine picked up. “Pick up the phone!” It was Victoria, my girlfriend. “This is ridiculous. You can’t do this every time the Eagles do something stupid. Besides, how do you know if these guys they picked are even any good?” She tapped her fingernails on the receiver. “Fine, don’t answer. Don’t bother calling me back either.”

“She sounds pissed, dude,” Toby said.

“She doesn’t understand.”

“I feel like someone just died.”

“Someone did die,” I said. “I mean, not really, but kind of. The Eagles are dead. They don’t have a chance! Didn’t you hear that guy on ESPN giving them a C for the draft?”

“I guess a C isn’t that bad,” Toby said. Toby had barely graduated from high school.

“Maybe for retards and immigrants, but not for the Eagles. ESPN gave everyone else a B+ or better. Even the Lions!” I said, head butting the floor for emphasis. I hit it a little too hard and my ears rang, but it was a good kind of pain. Penitential. I bashed my head on the floor again, harder this time, heard something clunking off of our bookshelf.

“You just knocked over the McNabb bobblehead, dude,” Toby said. “Think it’s broke.”

I laughed. “Just like real life, right?” I figured I might as well get my Kevin Kolb bobblehead anyway, since the Eagles had bungled the entire McNabb era and ruined the next 5 years with this awful draft. I closed my eyes and wished I could go into a coma until the torture was over, waking up just in time to see the final gun go off in the Eagles’ Super Bowl win. I imagined going to Broad Street for the parade, in full face paint and shoulder pads, six beers deep by sunrise, and ready for the greatest party in the history of Philadelphia. But even in my dreams, no one showed. I was the only one cheering, and, instead of floats and cars full of triumphant Eagles, all I saw were angry cars threatening to run over jaywalkers, a line of crackheads curling around the corner waiting to trade a pint of blood for $20, and hundreds of people all staring at the concrete as they rushed past people they didn’t trust. There would never be a parade. We would never have a damn thing to celebrate and we were stuck living in fear every second in this filthy city while our team refused to save us, and instead kept drafting for the future as if any of us has time to wait for anything beyond tomorrow.

“You know,” Toby said, his voice cutting through my dream. “I was thinking. Maybe it’s stupid to judge the draft the day after it happens instead of waiting a couple years. I mean, the guys haven’t even had an NFL practice yet and—”

“No, you know what’s stupid? The Eagles are stupid. The guys on TV are experts. They study this stuff all year, and they all say the draft sucked, which means the Eagles suck, and now we suck because we waste all our money from our sucky jobs on tickets to watch this team go out and suck every week.”

“But maybe it’s fair to wait ‘till after they play a few actual games—”

“What’s the point? They’re terrible, and you know it,” I said. “All I want is for them, just once, to have a draft that guarantees a Super Bowl. Don’t you want a Super Bowl?”

Toby began to slide off of me, but didn’t make it all the way. “Well, maybe next year.”

I’d heard that one before. The wounds were still too fresh to think about next year. All I wanted from the draft was some hope, and they didn’t even give me that. Instead, they gave me a disaster worse than Katrina and the Holocaust combined, and now there’s nothing left to believe in.

The phone rang again, and I wished I could be anywhere but where I was. Toby and I lay in silence, listening to the messages, and wondering why we cared so much about a team that’s never done a thing for us.

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