The Philadelphia Eagles beat President Donald Trump. They slipped the punch, and he wound up swinging so hard at the air that he fell on his face. It’s a useful lesson, a timeless one even.
When you’re up against a crotch-kicker and an eye-gouger, what do you do? NFL owners confronted that question and decided the best strategy was to try to placate, and they got leg-whipped for it. It was entirely their own fault, for deciding that a president who called their players “sons of bitches” somehow would play by their rules. The Eagles were smarter. They understood that an eye-gouger counts on an adversary who will come in close.