What a conundrum. Just two days from the start of the Eagles 2016-2017 season and we have no columnist to pick games for us. Last year, as everyone knows, we employed Snickers, an anthropomorphic possum, to serve as our official Eagles handicapper. The lovable little scamp quickly scittered his way into our collective hearts and became a fan favorite.

Unfortunately, he was terrible at picking games. TERRIBLE. I’m not sure he picked a single game correctly through the five weeks we allowed him to pick games last year. He had terrible jokes, awful possum puns, he would play dead whenever we tried to tell him he needed to improve his performance….it was frustrating.

So after smashing his head on a rock, we abandoned our game predictions and vowed to never do it again.

But it’s a new year. New grass on the field, a new quarterback at the helm, so why don’t we try this again?

But who will make our Eagles picks now? Well, we decided to bring in SPECIAL GUESTS each and every week to share their knowledge with us, their wisdom, and hopefully not sue the website for using their likeness and making fun of them to pick football games.

But who is up first this season…..?

Hey gang, it’s me, Chris Wheeler! I am back in the city of Brotherly Love, ready to put up some crooked numbers, visit my favorite toupee shop for a tune-up and do what I do best, pick Eagles games for degenerate gamblers.

Screaming line drive into the stands. Woah! Look out down there. Hope everyone’s ok.

Opening day for the birds this year. The grass is green, we have a new QB, that urine smell in the city is going away for the fall…it’s a great time to be alive.

I still love this city even if I was summarily dismissed from my announcing position so chrome domed Tom McCarthy and his lackeys could take over. Really still chaps my hide to think about it, but I’m a professional.

Oh well, I’ll have to just keep bribing the Phillies catering staff to slowly poison McCarthy’s pregame slop bucket every night. The best revenge is living well, let me tell you.

On to the predictions.

Eagles (0-0) vs. Browns (0-0)

Point spread: Eagles -3.5

Tough game to handicap here, folks. First game of the year, Carson Wentz making his debut against a hungry young Browns team with RGIII back at the helm. Kind of reminds me of seeing Steve Carlton in a Minnesota Twins uniform back in 1988. Feels unnatural.

Speaking of Lefty, he invited me out to his home one offseason in 1990. As everyone knows, Lefty was a bit of a recluse and had taken up living in a compound way out in the Colorado mountains. Walking up to his shack that day I must have triggered some survivalist game snare he had set up to capture elk, and I soon found myself hanging upside from a tree, a noose around my left ankle.

Well dang it, if old Wheels wasn’t trapped in that snare for days on end before Lefty came out to see if he caught anything.

He asked me what I was doing up in the tree, and despite being legally blind from having all of the blood in my body rush to my brain for the past 72 hours, I told him “Just hanging around.”

Just hanging around! Get it? We had a great laugh, he cut me down and nursed me back to health for two weeks after.

Ahh geez. That was a real double whomper.

So it’s going to be an ugly game this Sunday. Two teams that aren’t exactly the 1927 Yankees out there, buggywhipping each other and trying to put on a show, but playing the game the right way.

No lead is ever safe at the Linc, but I tell you, it’s a real wacky game sometime. It can be goofy!

Carson Wentz, now, he’s a real bubbly kid and he likes to reach out there and get it, but I don’t see him or either of these teams doing too much this game. He’s going to want to look first ball fastball, middle-in, and just be loosey goosey out there.

Doug Pederson’s first game as a head coach…now, he’s a gamer.

This guy really has the Phillies number.

Look for a low scoring affair, with the Eagles defense scoring the only touchdown between the two teams. Eagles fans, however, will go home happy.

Eagles 13 – Browns 9