We’ll Try Not to Let This Stuff Happen Again

Chris Dufresne’s Dec. 31 report on the Colt-Dolphin game was simply a superb piece of sportswriting, and the best work I’ve seen in your paper in a long, long time. Most remarkable was that there was not a single trace of the annoying and witless smart-alecky prose that permeates and ruins just about everything your people produce. I’m sure Dufresne will be sternly reprimanded for that. But it just goes to show it can be done, and when one such piece slips by your editors’ watchful eyes, your sports section is much better for it.

CHRISTOPHER NELSON

Lake Forest

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I couldn’t help but notice the Philadelphia Eagle bashing that took place by your so-called “experts” in the week leading up to their wild-card game with Tampa Bay.

Robyn Norwood ranked them 11th out of the 12 playoff teams, ahead of only the New Orleans Saints, the team that knocked out the defending Super Bowl champions. In T.J. Simers’ predictions that day, he had the Rams in the NFC title game “with the Tampa Bay/Minnesota winner” adding that, “Philadelphia is eliminated by virtue of the fact it stinks--that’s both the team and the city.” The next day, he even wrote that the Buccaneers would end their cold-weather jinx and defeat the Eagles by 10. Nice call, T.J., you sure do know your football.

J.A. Adande then imagined that, “The Eagles have no running backs and no receivers, and thus no chance of winning the Super Bowl.”

We’ll have to see about that one. But at the rate The Times’ picks are backfiring, it’s most apparent that they do have a chance.

GARY FRIEDEN

Pasadena