Eagles give HUUUUUGH a job

[shorebird]

Start feeding her some meat and potatos.

If someone is able to volunteer to feed her some potatos, I'm willing to help her out with the other part.

She looks ready, like a cat in heat on the coffee table leg.

[Reidme]

The decision to keep Douglas around may be a little more than just a gesture of goodwill. It means they can pay him a salary, keep him in town, and he can use the facilities, attend meetings, and not cost a dime towards the salary cap or the roster limits. Then just maybe, if we were to need defensive line help at some point in the season, walah, an experienced vet, who is on the same page as the rest of the team. Call me skeptical, but if it is the way I see it, its a good move.

Hugh was on with Eskin the other day, and said he apologized to TO for sticking his nose in his business, and got no reply. He said its like dealing with a 2 year old ... then said he didn't want to comment ..... He also was supposedly interviewing for a part time gig on WiP.

[MURP]

if Hugh keeps in self in shape then I agree Reidmen.

[Eagles 3x]

Eagles Team Ambassador. Now thats a job I would like. Just a few questions.
Do you have to go to spring training? If you do, can I skip it and hold out for more money? What about preseason? Can I just show up on opening day and do my amassador thing then? You do get to help yourself to the locker room buffet, right?
Sincerely, Cory Simon

[MURP]

Hugh Douglas: Always an Eagle, but happily retired

He is good. Honest. No regrets. No bitterness. No real what-ifs.

After 10 seasons with three teams, including two stints with the Eagles, Hugh Douglas isn't playing football anymore, and he's fine with it. More than fine. Six weeks removed from the day-to-day grind of the game, the 34-year-old said it's all good.

No more pulling on the shoulder pads. No more Monday morning aches. No more playing in pain. Now, Douglas operates as the Eagles' community ambassador, a title he colorfully has renamed "bad-ass-ador."

"I'm good. I'm good," Douglas said last week while at the Eagles' training facility in South Philly. "As far as hearing the crowd, I'm always going to hear the crowd. But as far as wanting to play? Nah. I don't want to play anymore. I'm good."

As Jerry Rice and Michael Jordan and Jack Nicklaus can attest, retirement is one of the harshest realities a professional athlete faces. Calling it a career often is easier said than done.

But for Douglas, one of the fiercest defensive ends in the league a few seasons ago, deciding not to play was relatively easy. He didn't want to hang on just for the sake of a few more plays and a few more dollars. He didn't need that.

While it may seem as though Douglas' career ended abruptly on Sept. 3, when he was one of the Eagles' final cuts before the regular-season opener at Atlanta, Douglas was prepared. He said he had been getting ready for life after football since tearing his rotator cuff in the 2004 season opener against the New York Giants.

After that injury, Douglas had a decision to make: Suck it up and play with the painful injury, or have season-ending surgery and shelve any dreams of playing in the Super Bowl.

Douglas decided to gut it out. And he knew by doing so that last year likely would be it.

"If I would have gotten it fixed, I probably would have still been playing," Douglas said. "But I didn't, so, oh, well. I made a sacrifice to play. It was, 'You might get a chance to play in the Super Bowl, but if you have surgery, you'll never get to play.' So, it was, 'OK, what are you going to do?' So I made a choice. I think I made a pretty good decision. We didn't win, but...

"It was worth it. I'm not bitter. I think I had a pretty good career. That's it. Now it's time to move on. Besides, I was starting to feel that it was time to do something else, work different avenues."

And that is what Douglas, who by his account played two snaps against the Patriots in the Super Bowl, is doing. After getting cut, Douglas gave himself a week. If no other team called, he decided, that would be it. He would retire an Eagle, as the franchise's third all-time leader in sacks with 54 1/2.

The week passed. No one called. Douglas kept his word. He wasn't going to wait for a desperate team to call him in Week Eight.

So Douglas accepted coach Andy Reid's offer to stay with the organization. He is working as the community ambassador, basically a liaison between the team and the public. The job keeps him around the team, and around the game.

Asked whether it was harder being around the NovaCare Complex and not playing, Douglas said no.

"I think it would be harder if I was just sitting at home and not doing anything and not affiliated with football," he said. "See, this way, I'm still with the team. I can still be around. It's an easier transition for me."

Douglas wants to stay around the game. He would like to work in the media, probably as a television personality. During the playoffs in 2003, while still with the Jacksonville Jaguars, Douglas worked for the NFL Network, and showed promise on-air. He's getting radio experience this season at WIP-AM (610).

And he'll be the Eagles' ambassador, officially, for at least a year - "No matter what it is, I'll always be affiliated with the Eagles, even if I'm ambassador from afar," Douglas said.

Douglas just knows he needs to work. His father, who died in 1999, would have had it no other way.

"I always knew that my career wasn't going to last forever," Douglas said. "I always tried to remain humble as far as the way I perceived different things. I think a lot of guys have trouble adjusting because they put themselves on this pedestal, and they feel like they're adored by all these different people. So when it's gone, they have a hard time adjusting to being a nobody, or being perceived as a nobody. Their whole lives have always been defined by football.

"But I never really considered myself a professional athlete or a star. I considered myself to be a guy who has a pretty-damn-good-paying job that pays the bills, and this was what I was doing for a living. I never really had a problem with that. So when it was over, I was like, 'OK, now I have to adjust a little bit, and keep it moving.' And that's it."

[Sgt PSN]

I'm glad to see that he's "at peace" with himself and how his career ended.  I'm also glad to see that it ended with the Eagles. 

[rjs246]

An athlete that knows how to retire without making an ass out of himself? Amazing.

[SunMo]

well, i wouldn't go that far, he is a regular on Angelo's TV show

[Zanshin]

The difference is when Hugh makes an ass of himself, he's working to do so.  It's not a pathetic, inadvertant thing.