Eagles Fans Demonstrate How To Get Humbled By Opposing Coaches

I want you to imagine you are a Philadelphia Eagles fan. I know it can be difficult to formulate a theory of mind for them, but if it can be done for a bat, it can be done for a Philadelphian. OK, ready? Go.

You are a Philadelphia Eagles fan. You suddenly have a constant craving for large sandwiches. Your head is now filled with detailed biographical knowledge of several local meteorologists. Every proper noun in this story is familiar. "Pond Lehocky" means something to you. The shouted phrase "FORMAN MILLS" plays randomly in your head at all hours. You are drunk. Drunker than normal, because it is game day. You have probably been tailgating, which is so important to you that you have reinvented collective bargaining from first principles in order to protect your right to drink next to the stadium as oppose to one lot farther out.

You are drunk and feeling good. Your Eagles have been leading since the first drive of the second quarter. They are up 20-10 on the Rams. But not all is well. Jalen Hurts completes just two passes in the second half. They run an unsuccessful Tush Push. They unadvisedly go for it on fourth down with about eight minutes left, and fail, then allow Los Angeles to score touchdowns on two quick drives. The Eagles lose.

We have done this exercise, of putting ourselves in the head of Eagles fans, so that we can picture just how dyspeptic this would have made them leading up to their confrontation with Rams coaches. Imagine how chesty they must have gotten when the Birds were up. Imagine the things the fans in the cheap seats must have been saying, and gesturing, and insinuating to the L.A. coaches in the box behind them; we must envision the exact details because they have not been recorded, but assuredly the respective flexibility of various coaches' mothers was brought up, in grating accents. Imagine how quickly the mood would have curdled when the Rams took the lead on a Kyren Williams touchdown run with 1:10 left.

This exercise is valuable because it gives us a hypothetical though almost surely accurate backstory and context to the below videos, of the interaction between Eagles fans and Rams coaches after that go-ahead TD.

This is not to excuse anyone's behavior. But it's hard to criticize the Rams coaches for wanting to dunk on the crowd after it had no doubt spent all afternoon talking shit. And it's hard to criticize the Eagles fans, in the same way it's hard to criticize a predator for taking down the adorable baby prey animal in a nature documentary; it's just their nature, unpleasant as it is. I have lived in Philadelphia. I have even worked security at Eagles games. Throwing stuff is an instinctual threat and/or courtship display for them, not even a conscious action.

So, now you have the essential context to judge whether anyone involved in this video acted inappropriately, and whether various omnidirectional middle fingers were well-earned. "No one likes us, we don't care" is a popular Philadelphia sports chant (and the late Dan McQuade's least favorite). Now that you have been inside their heads, you know the second half is a dirty lie. They care more than anything.