CLEM MURRAY / Staff photographer
Coaching intern Matt Nagy, a former Delaware QB, briefly thought he'd play tomorrow.
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BETHLEHEM - The National Football League doesn't do fairy tales, not very often, not anymore. It is too big, and has been for a long time. The players and the money are enormous now, so formidable and still growing, that the dreamers and the longshots occupy a smaller and smaller place in the landscape.
So many roster spots are spoken for before the first practice, so many players arrive with pedigrees and investments that make them automatics. Because of that, we cherish the exceptions as we chart their extinction.
With that, meet Matt Nagy.
"Life's crazy and it's full of opportunities," Nagy was saying yesterday morning, after he pulled on the No. 9 red jersey and practiced as the Eagles' third-string quarterback. He is 31 years old, out of the University of Delaware and the Arena Football League. He had never gotten a sniff in an NFL training camp. He was with the Eagles for his second summer as a coaching intern, preparing for the rest of his life.
And now he was playing, suddenly, because the Eagles needed a quarterback for a short period of time while backup Kevin Kolb recovered from a knee sprain. And now it was past midnight, Monday going into Tuesday, and the playbook was put away. "I was laying in bed, and I just got done, and just laid down and was thinking, and had a smile on my face that this is happening," Nagy said. "That might be all it is. It may be more. I don't know. But how can you not have a smile on your face with this opportunity?"
Four hours later, the Eagles practiced again. This time, Nagy was back in coaching shorts. The red No. 9 jersey was gone. Nagy was no longer a player, his contract rejected by the NFL, according to a source, because of a pre-existing Arena League contract that hasn't quite expired even though the league itself pretty much has expired.
And there Nagy was, running off the practice field, saying he couldn't comment - a legal technicality, a dream derailed.
The Eagles would not comment. The NFL would not comment. Within an hour, it appeared that the Eagles had turned to former Temple quarterback Adam DiMichele, whom they signed and then released after their spring minicamps were completed. An hour after that, this word came from Paul Sheehy, the president of ProStar Sports Agency, the group that represents Nagy:
"We are still working on this. It does not appear to be final yet. I am hoping for a resolution that will allow Matt this opportunity of a lifetime. He's a super QB and even better person, so we are doing everything we can to clear the obstacles preventing this from happening."
Hours passed. No announcements were made. The assumption is that it will be DiMichele - a kid with his own dreams, to be sure.
Still . . .
Nobody had guaranteed that Nagy would play tomorrow night against the Patriots. But given that playing Donovan McNabb for more than a couple of series in the first exhibition game would amount to coaching malpractice, and playing third-stringer A.J. Feeley for three quarters has already been ruled by the Supreme Court to be cruel and unusual punishment in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Guam, it seemed as if Nagy would get to see the field.
For a few hours there, it was a story that needed no embellishment. It really needed no other voices. It was simple and pure and funny and fun. It was about one man and one dream that was going to come true, at least for a couple of days.
Instead, it was a couple of hours.
Nagy said he promised himself he wasn't going to be the kind of guy who couldn't adjust to the denial of a dream. So he has an outside job opportunity waiting for him and he has come to Lehigh for two successive summers as a coaching intern. He has gone to meetings, worked on coaching stuff with players, tried to be a sponge. In the cafeteria, he has walked in and gone to the left side of the room, where the coaches eat their meals.
Then, yesterday morning, he went to the right side of the cafeteria instead. Then, last night, he presumably went to the left side again.
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