Why is what Philly did worse than Pittsburgh?
 

The initial reaction to Philly pulling Hurts seems like it has been cries of how much of a "disgrace" it was. For example:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">This is the most negative barrage of comments I have received about a game’s lack of integrity and that’s not even counting Giants-related bias.<br>Consensus from those in NFL and who have been associated with it: Disgrace.<br>That’s not the fault of the Washington Football Team.</p>&mdash; Chris Mortensen (@mortreport) <a href="https://twitter.com/mortreport/status/1345950760467619840?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 4, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

But how is that any worse than other teams resting their starters? Our game didn't matter, but Pittsburgh rested a few guys which almost certainly helped Cleveland get into the playoffs and forced the Dolphins to sit at home.

Just curious if there's some reason I'm missing that the former situation is so egregious while the latter is just normal.

Resting your starters for the playoffs is quite a bit different than pulling starters in a competitive game to lose on purpose.

Also both Pittsburgh and Kansas City players were still putting forth their best effort to win the game.

Pittsburgh was resting some starters for a more than reasonable reason. But they were trying to win with who they wanted to be available to play.

Philly flat out tanked this. They get NOTHING out of seeing sudfeld, a 27 year old journeyman. Why wouldn't you give an extra quarter to see what you have in hurts? The only logical explanation is pederson was sticking it to someone or wanting a tiny improvement in draft position. The look on Jason kelces face said it all. They weren't expecting it and resented it.

Philly was still trying. The QB they were trying out was just awful.

Andy has said all week that he was excited to get a look at some young guys this week. That doesn't seem very far off from wanting to get a look at Sudfeld.

Probably because they tried to win the game for three quarters and then blatantly gave it up by playing a guy who has no business making passes in the NFL. Tank jobs like that don't get much more obvious.

According to Twitter the eagles basically earned a 4th round pick by tanking tonight. Hope that was worth losing your team over.

I guess if it was more obvious they were doing it for the tank that makes sense. That's not how it looked to me, but :shrug:

Look at the Eagles players on the sideline throughout the 4th quarter. They knew what was going on, and they were ****ing pissed about it.

It was a tank (nobody is "evaluating" Sudfeld, they knew full well he's not a NFL caliber QB). If you're going to do it and don't want to take shit for it, it better not be that obvious.

They still had a pretty good shot with Hurts in there, once Sudfeld took the field, it was over. I guess they get a better draft pick?

Sudfeld is a 27 year old and has played quite a bit. The eagles know what he is. The one guy the eagles needed to learn the most about in the entire roster is the very guy they benched. This was a pure tank job.

I guess it's just weird to me because Pederson said last week that he wanted to get Sudfeld in the game. And he did. And then everyone was surprised.

I think it didn't help that the game was on national TV and everyone could see the Giants players losing their minds on Twitter over it.

That said, the timing of when they actually did it was probably a bit unusual. Often teams who are going to rest guys don't wait until the 4th quarter to do it. And it's hard to argue there's any reason to see what Sudfeld has out there either.

They move from 9 to 6. According to the draft chart that trade up is the value of a 4th round pick.