Cross-Self-Promotion

The NFC East preview package I wrote for nfl.com is now online. Of course, now I get to enjoy the helpless feeling of watching events invalidate what I wrote--though I'm not sure if the absence of any reference to Correl Buckhalter in my Eagles preview was just serendipitous on my part, considering the season-ending injury Buck suffered in last Friday night's exhibition win over Baltimore, or the product of seamless skilled editing from the team at nfl.com.

A more serious worry is the "Fischer curse." Now, it's not exactly up there with the SI Cover Jinx, but after the 2003 New York Giants responded to my anointing them the Beasts of the East with a trainwreck 4-12 season, I'm all but wrapping myself in aluminum foil and dancing in a thunderstorm: I picked the Eagles to win the division.

I also proposed writing a regular weekly column for nfl.com, which we tentatively called "Fisch on Friday" (thinking, I guess, we could thus appeal to pre-Vatican II Catholics of the Mel Gibson mode). I never heard back from my contact over there, which is roughly equivalent to a screaming "NO!" Maybe I'll post the sample column, which I thought was pretty decent, on here. In the meantime, I do recommend nfl.com's Tuesday Morning Quarterback, written by New Republic editor and Brookings Fellow Gregg Easterbrook. Any writer who can bounce back and forth between gridiron strategy and trivia, sci-fi exposition, ancient history, unapologetic babe-watching and current events is okay with me, even if he didn't like Kill Bill. (And clearly, I don't think he's an anti-Semite; the only anti-Semite I'd ever recommend on this blog is T.S. Eliot.)