It’s Love at Third Sight for Tanner McKee
August 11, 2025
It suddenly occurred to me that I am more than an idiot. I’m also a hypocrite. How else to explain why, a few days after lambasting preseason football, there I was early in the third quarter last Thursday night jumping out of my chair after a gorgeous TD pass by Eagles backup quarterback Tanner McKee?
OK, so let me begin by admitting my mistake on this blog last week. Not all preseason games are wastes of time. Every once in a while, a player comes along who makes the midsummer event into something special.
In this case, the player is in his third tour of duty in these exhibition games, but I can’t say I have much of a memory of his first two training camps. All I can say is, what I saw Thursday night was exhilarating.
The 6-6, sixth-round draft pick from Stanford can play.
I mean, really, really play.
McKee is a quarterback with presence on the field and an arm that dazzles with its precision, as reflected in his 20 for 25 (252 yards) performance against the Cincinnati starters. McKee did this without his best targets – A. J. Brown and DeVonta Smith– though their replacements, Darius Cooper and Johnny Wilson, were also amazing.
My old pal at WIP and now an excellent analyst on CBS and for Eagles preseason games, Ross Tucker, said it best at one point when he announced that “my phone is blowing up” over McKee’s efforts in the first half and one series in the third quarter.
Now, before we all lose our minds, let me make it clear that, for once in my life, I am not endorsing a quarterback controversy. No, no, no. Jalen Hurts will be the Eagles franchise quarterback for the next decade. He is a champion.
But if something unfortunate happens to Hurts during one of those improbable runs down the sideline, I will panic less knowing that McKee is the best Eagles backup since – should I say it? – Nick Foles.
By the time McKee had left the game, I was feeling a lot better about the 2025 season, and beyond. How does GM Howie Roseman find big talents like McKee, Cooper and Wilson in an NFL that scours the world for special players more meticulously than ever before? I have no clue. I’m just happy that Howie is performing his magic act for the Eagles.
Oh, please don’t get me wrong. Not everything was a cause for joy in the preseason opener. The defense was clearly displaying a serious lack of depth because it lost five starters in the off-season, plus it was facing Cincy’s top offense for the first quarter or so. Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio will have to a major challenge trying to match last year’s juggernaut.
Still, for a first preseason game, it’s hard to imagine more fun than the opener brought to me and many other fans. It was a really entertaining three hours.
So, yes, maybe I was wrong about preseason football, at least for one night.
And I doubt it will be just one night. After all, McKee is scheduled to play in the other two preseason games this summer.
I don’t know about you, but I’m already counting the days.
Rob Thomson Is Very Annoying
Is Rob Thomson the biggest wimp who has ever coached or managed a Philadelphia pro sports team?
When the analytics-obsessed skipper announced last week that he was pushing Zack Wheeler back a few days in the rotation because of a stiff throwing shoulder, Thomson appeared to be in dire need of a Xanax.
Damn, he should never have let Wheeler finish that game back on July 6. The ace completed a one-hitter over Cincinnati that day, requiring 108 pitches.
Gasp. 108 pitches? It’s a shock that Wheeler didn’t require emergency medical care.
After Wheeler struggled in his recent start on Aug. 2, the manager said: “I think the complete game affected his command. . . . . It bothers me. It really does. It scares me, it concerns me. But when a guy’s got a low pitch count, he wants it, so it’s hard to take it away. But I know there’s some effects on the body and the arm, fatigue.”
That sound you just heard is Dallas Green doing a 180 in his grave.
Need I remind anyone that Thomson was in a stunningly similar situation in the first game of the playoffs last season, when he pulled Wheeler after seven one-hit innings (111 pitches) against the Mets, who then broke through against Jeff Hoffman and went on to win the game and the series.
Less than one year later, Thomson is more frightened than ever. We saw it again Sunday in Texas, when the manager pulled Wheeler after five innings and 83 pitches. Thomson got away with it that time, but will he if he coddles Wheeler again in the playoffs?
I keep coming back to the same question with this irritating baseball lifer we have managing the Phillies. He was there to see for himself when pitchers threw 150 pitches or more without serious medical consequences. (For example, Steve Carlton, who pitched for 22 years.)
Why does Thomson think great pitchers like Wheeler are so much more delicate than their predecessors?
Could it be because soft managers like Thomson have trained them to throw fewer pitches, regardless of the importance of the game?
If a manager thinks anything over 100 pitches is cause for alarm, is he planting the idea of danger in the mind of the guy throwing the ball?
No one else is willing to say it, so I will.
Rob Thomson is a wuss.
Cue the Bells and Whistles
Baseball needs more bells and whistles like the spectacular entrance of new Phils closer Jhoan Duran before the ninth inning at Citizens Bank Park.
Last week, I did a podcast with an 18-year-old aspiring talk-show host, Ryan Knight, and I was shocked by how many young Phillies fans called in to talk about the Phillies. A generation ago, I predicted baseball was going to die soon because young people didn’t care about it.
Well, there’s another bad prediction by me, I guess.
One of the things the young fans were most excited about, believe it or not, coincided with my much older sensibility – the way Duran emerges from the bullpen, lights flashing, bells clanging, surrounded by fire on all of the screens, along with the climactic appearance of a tarantula tiptoeing through the conflagration.
The fans then add to the electric atmosphere by shining their cellphones, like they do at concerts.
Of course, Duran makes the whole spectacle even more thrilling by firing the ball 103 mph or so. Wow. That’s show business.
Commissioner Rob Manfred can stuff his Home Run Derbies and zombie runners and all of the other junk he has tried in a lame effort to update the game. What Duran is doing – both in Minnesota and now here – is a great way to hype the fans. And it doesn’t actually change in any way the game itself.
Bravo to the Twins and Phillies for taking a routine moment and making it so much more exciting.
Maybe there’s hope for baseball after all.