cover image Broken Wing, Broken Promise: A Season Inside the Philadelphia Eagles

Broken Wing, Broken Promise: A Season Inside the Philadelphia Eagles

Phil Anastasia. Camino Books, $18 (223pp) ISBN 978-0-940159-20-4

The 1992 season was regarded as a now-or-never year by the Philadelphia Eagles, principally because so many of their stars, who had led the football team to fine records in the previous four seasons, were aging. On June 25 one of them, defensive tackle Jerome Brown, was killed in an automobile crash and the team resolved both to dedicate the season to him and to play in the Super Bowl. But injuries, defections and particularly uneven play (superior performance against the top competition, inferior against the worst) led to failure. The Eagles made the playoffs, but lost the second game--a lackluster end to the year. Anastasia, who has covered the team for the Camden, N.J., Courier-Post for a decade, tells the story using every cliche known to sportswriters (``a heroic goal-line stand,'' ``a punishing ground game'') and many repetitious passages should have been edited out. But he is good at depicting the mob psychology of hometown fans--and sometimes even of hometown media. Photos not seen by PW . (Oct.)