Comes now the draft, the National Football League's version of Ouija boards, tarot cards and fortune tellers pawing through tea leaves. Never do so many sound so certain about something over which they have absolutely no control, which is to say the future. Never do so many think they know so much about the unknowable. Never are so many blatant guesses passed off as sacrosanct fact.
Draft day is socialism at work.
Being worse permits you to move closer to the head of the line to replenish yourself from a talent pool whose depth and quality is always shifting. This year, the Eagles are at the tag end of that line, shifting from one foot to the other, craning to see if the line has started to move yet. That is their penalty for last season's smashing success. The Birds will draft 25th. For a team in that position, the questions and the choices, the doubts and the uncertainties, all have time to multiply and ferment.