There’s Still No Cure for Stupid
October 12, 2025
Did it occur to anyone (besides me) that the night already being referred to as Black Thursday exposed problems on the Phillies and Eagles that have been ignored by the fans and media for years?
The Phillies ended another lost season in devastating style last week when reliever Orion Kerkering airmailed a throw home that scored the winning run in the deciding game of the NLDS for the Dodgers.
Meanwhile, the Eagles weren’t just losing to the hideous Giants in the Meadowlands; they were finally revealing their own stunning shortcomings one season after another championship parade.
Dodgers 2, Phillies 1.
Giants 34, Eagles 17.
Those are not typos, and they are not punchlines.
Stupid is as stupid does. And both of these teams have been getting away with stupid for far too long.
Rob Thomson may be the best clubhouse manager in Phillies history. His players love him, regardless of which playoff round they fail to win. The way he consoled Kerkering after the fatal error was an act of emotional generosity rarely seen in sports.
But the Phillies came up short for the fourth straight playoff run, with declining results in each of those bids for a championship. And one of the biggest reasons for those failures is the kindhearted man who has blinded even the most demanding fans and media from the simple truth.
As a strategist, Thomson is bad. Really, really bad.
He does it every season, and yet he keeps getting a chance to disappoint us again the following year.
When will the madness end?
I have written ad nauseum about how Thomson blew the division round last year by holding Zack Wheeler to a pitch count in the first game against the Mets. Before that, Thomson managed his way out of the World Series (2022) and the NLCS (2023) with his absurd allegiance to cold hitters and unreliable relievers.
This time around, it was more of the same. The idea that Thomson kept playing Brandon Marsh long past the point where the hairy outfielder was helpful became obvious to everyone but the manager. This just in. Marsh stinks.
There, someone finally said it. You’re welcome.
And then there was Black Thursday, when Thomson threw away his religious commitment to analytics and started acting like a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving dinner.
Twice in the NLDS, Thomson removed his ace starter, Christopher Sanchez, too soon, and the mistake in the final game was apparent from the moment the manager began his slow trod to the mound. It was one out into the seventh inning, the core was 1-1, and Sanchez had thrown 95 pitches.
At that point, Thomson should have issued a public statement: “I am now in full panic mode.” He brought in his closer, Jhoan Duran, in a spot the closer had experienced exactly zero times this season.
It was a foregone conclusion that Duran would handle a moment that was completely foreign to him with less than his usual composure. He quickly walked in the tying run.
Now what? Well, the man called Topper then began throwing darts against the wall, first with reliever Matt Stram, then starter Jesus Luzardo and then the lethal final move to Kerkering, who looked like he had just seen the ghost of Mitch Williams on the mound before he threw a single pitch.
Kerkering pretty much admitted he panicked when he made that terrible throw home, but he was there to blow the season only because Thomson had panicked long before that.
If Rob Thomson comes back for a fifth season next year, I wish all Phillies fans good luck.
I’m going to fold ‘em for a while. I know a losing hand when I see one. The Phillies will never win anything with that man as their manager.
Thomson has made moves for four seasons that are either pre-programmed or just plain dumb. Take your pick. They both lead in the same direction. Nowhere.
And at the risk of upsetting the many Nick Sirianni sycophants in the Philadelphia media, I will double down on my assertions before the season that the hiring of the head coach’s best buddy, Kevin Patullo, to be the offensive coordinator was doomed before the first play-call.
Somehow, the Eagles totally forgot what happened in 2023 – two seasons ago – when the bosses allowed Sirianni to promote Brian Johnson to the OC spot despite a glaring lack of experience. Johnson was so bad, the Eagles panicked and handed the offense over to an even worse choice, Matt Patricia, in the final month of a season in freefall.
The ensuing collapse ruined 2023 and put Sirianni’s job in jeopardy. He survived for one reason. Owner Jeff Lurie and GM Howie Roseman hired a proven offensive coordinator, Kellen Moore, to take over, and they gave him total authority over Jalen Hurts, A.J. Brown and the other stars on that unit.
When Moore left for a head-coaching job in New Orleans after the parade, Sirianni and his front-office pals fell into the same trap they had crawled out of the previous season. They hired Patullo. Look, I am no genius – far from it – and I could see how stupid that decision was. (In fact, my dog Bentley could see it, too.)
The only credential Patullo had for the job was that he was Sirianni’s bobo. If he proved to be incompetent – duh – guess who would have to figure out how to fix the offense this time. Yup. Nick Sirianni – the same Nick Sirianni who gave up play-calling after seven games of his rookie season because even he could see he sucked at it.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
I stayed up after the Giants debacle expecting some clarity from Sirianni about how a team that bad could throttle a team that good. Of course, I was merely proving I’m not too bright, either. As usual, the coach had nothing illuminating to say. He never does, does he?
Look, I was in the media for 50 years. I interviewed literally thousands of sports figures both as a journalist and as a radio host. Nick Sirianni is not just in the bottom half in terms of intellect. He’s in the bottom half of the bottom half.
If he has a sharp and savvy mind, he was adept at hiding it from me for the three years I interviewed him after every game. What I heard was a guy with imposter syndrome, trying not to say anything too ridiculous after his first news conference as head coach had turned into a national disaster.
I won’t say Sirianni is stupid – he did win a Super Bowl, after all – but I will say, with total conviction, that his decision to hire Patullo as his OC was ridiculous.
If you don’t believe me, how about hearing from 13-year pro Lane Johnson, one of the most impactful offensive linemen in NFL history, two-time champion and a man who has never suffered fools.
“We get very predictable sometimes,” Johnson said after the Giants debacle. “You can game-plan all you want, but we got to make adjustments. . . . We are not efficient in any phase.”
Translation: The coaching is killing our offense right now.
It is painfully obvious to anyone willing to see the reality of both franchises in 2025. They have lots of brawn but a shocking lack of brains.
Rob Thomson needs to retire. He’s been talking about it for years. It’s time. He never should have been a big-league manager. Some people are just best working in the shadows.
And Patullo needs to head into that same darkness. By now Sirianni and his bosses know the experiment blew up in their faces again. The coordinator can’t coordinate. Now what?
Unless the same people who had no answers two years ago suddenly experience a divine intervention, this season is heading in the same direction as 2023, squandering a prime season in the careers of Hurts, Brown and all of the other stars.
My best advice at times like this is the same as it has always been, despite the new, more forgiving media environment these days even here in Philadelphia.
Hold accountable the people responsible for Black Thursday.
Show the door to Rob Thomson and Kevin Patullo and their many enablers.
Demand from the media that they stop acting like extensions of the teams’ PR departments and do their damn jobs.
And put away the confetti for a while. Holding out hope for the Eagles (or Sixers or Flyers) is, well, just plain stupid.