Am I a Baskett Case?

Every now and again, we’re lucky enough in this town to see a guy come out of total obscurity to become a key contributor to one of the local teams. There was….wait…what was that guy’s name?....Who am I kidding? We’re never lucky enough to have that guy like Antonio Gates who comes from out of no where to become an a star player position. And no, I don’t count Vince Papale. (I will see his movie opening night though. It looks great and hopefully portrays this city positively.)

Since I’m not getting on board with Buckhalter’s come back attempt until he does something in the regular season and not getting excited about Bunkley’s hold out, Pinky’s inevitable struggles coming back from his torn Achilles, or the pipe dream of the Birds picking up Jerry Porter via a trade, the most interesting story to come out of Eagles’ camp for me has been the emergence of rookie free agent, Hank Baskett.

Normally, rookie free agent’s don’t excite me. I laugh at how much the Birds have relied on guys like Fraley, Greg Lewis, Sam Rayburn, Josh Parry, and Quintin Mikell over the years instead of having productive draft picks filling those slots. As I told my buddy Nicodemo the other day, undrafted rookie free agents are usually undrafted for a reason: they don’t have the skills to play in the NFL.

However, when the Birds traded Billy McMullen – a 3rd round draft bust – to the Vikings for Baskett, I raised an eyebrow. Seriously, who in the NFL trades a veteran for an undrafted free agent? I’ve never heard of such of thing. Then, I checked out Baskett’s measurables (6’4”, 220 lbs, runs a 4.49 40, productive receiver in college with 67 receptions for 1,071 yds. and 9 TD’s during his senior year, a former high jump champion, and a 4.0 GPA at New Mexico) and viewed his video highlights on PE.com, which were pretty impressive. At that point, the cynical side of me took over and I started wondering why the hell did this guy not get drafted? Did he run an illegal alien smuggling business down on the New Mexico border? Does he have a health issue or a drug problem? Everything I read showed me that this guy was on the “up and up”.

Now, to my surprise, Baskett has been betting some run with the first team in the first week of camp. I’m reading about Baskett teaming up with McNabb on touchdown passes. Eagles’ team proganda master, Dave Spadaro reports that “Hank Baskett has been terrific. He is a big body who has a good feel for the offense. Most important, he has made big plays.” Plus, the kid has been in Philly for about five minutes and already he gets it. Look at this quote:

"You've got to do what you've got to do. If I want to be here in the fall, if I want to stay here ... whatever I have to do to catch that ball, I'm going to do it. . . . It's kind of cool when the fans get behind you because Philadelphia is such a fan-based town. They want to see people come out here working. For them to be cheering for you is definitely a good thing.”

(I think someone in the Phils’ organization should show those complaining dogs these quotes.)

Ok, I understand that when this guy is cut in three weeks, I’ll look like a complete moron, but I’m going to be positive about my Eagles for once and hold out hope that Hank will make the “Baskett catch” a regular feature of the Birds offense and team up with Reggie Brown to give the Birds the formidable pass catching duo that we’ve been clamoring for the last decade.