As Philadelphia Eagle fans face national scrutiny following a viral video of one verbally assaulting a woman, star running back Saquon Barkley has come to their defense. 

With the Eagles set to face the Los Angeles Rams in a divisional playoff game on Sunday, Rams player Jared Verse expressed his hatred for Eagles fans in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. Verse’s comments came days after Eagles fan Ryan Caldwell was fired from his job when the video of him insulting a female Green Bay Packers fan at a playoff game last Sunday went viral. 

“I hate Eagles fans,” Verse said. “They’re so annoying. I hate Eagles fans.”

Barkley was asked by reporters about Verse’s comments ahead of the game, and suggested that the Rams rookie’s decision to say those things was “not smart.” 

“Probably not the smartest thing to say if you’re coming to Philadelphia,” Barkley told reporters on Friday.

Barkley cited his previous experience coming to play in Philadelphia as an opponent when he was with the New York Giants from 2018-23. 

“I’ve been on the other side, I’ve felt some type of way,” Barkley said. “I probably wouldn’t give them any extra fuel.”

Barkley expects Verse will receive an especially rude greeting when he takes the field on Sunday. 

“I’m pretty sure Philly fans have seen that comment. It was already going to be loud and rocking, so it’s just only going to add to it,” Barkley said. 

Eagles defensive back Darius Slay also weighed in on Verse’s comments and warned that snow in the forecast could result in fans throwing snowballs. 

“He ain’t the first person to hate Eagles fans. There’s a lot of folks who don’t like Eagles fans. There’s some people that played for the Eagles that don’t like Eagles fans,” Slay told reporters Fridat. “That just comes with the sport.

“I think Eagles fans are fired up regardless. They [don’t] have to say another word. And if there’s snow out there, I won’t be surprised if snowballs get thrown on the sideline.”

Verse is just one of the harsh vocal critics of Eagles fans in the aftermath of the viral footage of Caldwell. Verse said even though the game was in Los Angeles, he heard heckling Eagles fans, despite wearing headphones. 

“I didn’t even do nothing to em. It was my first time playing. Oh, I hate Eagles fans,” Verse said. 

The Eagles won that game 37-20, and Barkley ran wild, amassing 302 scrimmage yards, including 255 rushing yards with two touchdowns.

5 MOST INFAMOUS FAN MOMENTS IN SPORTS

Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley (26) gets pushed out-of-bounds by Los Angeles Rams linebacker Jared Verse (right) during the first half at SoFi Stadium.  (Alex Gallardo-Imagn Images)

Meanwhile, Caldwell was fired from his job as a project manager at BCT Partners after a video of his insults went viral. He has apologized but also defended himself by insisting his actions “were not without provocation” and that the viral video “does not show the full context” of what happened. 

“While attending an NFL game last Sunday to support my beloved Philadelphia Eagles, an incident occurred that I deeply regret,” Caldwell said in a statement. 

“What began as banter with two Packers fans sitting near me escalated to something more serious, and I said things that were unacceptable. In the heat of the moment, I chose unforgiving words to address one of the fans, Ms. Ally Keller.

“I want to sincerely apologize to Ms. Keller for those words, and to my wife, family, and friends, my former employer and colleagues, Packer fans, Eagle fans, the Philadelphia Eagles, the City of Philadelphia, and all who were offended. That said, there are two sides to every story. 

Ryan Caldwell was identified as the fan who hurled taunts at a Packers fan. (X/@Basaraski)

“The video clip circulating online does not reflect the full context of what transpired, and my actions were not without provocation. I will live with this experience, and I am certainly paying a personal price. For those who don’t know me, this incident does not reflect my values or the respect I have for others and is not indicative of the person I am.”

The viral video was filmed by Keller’s fiancé, Alexander Basara, and spread rapidly across the internet in the days after the Eagles’ 22-10 win. 

Caldwell’s apology and news of his firing prompted a wave of celebration and mockery by sports fans on social media. 

Eagles fans have a long history of unruly behavior. 

The franchise’s former home, Veterans Stadium, had an on-site judicial court and jail cells to deal with law-breaking fans.

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The Rams weathered a soggy downpour and won in Santa Clara. They played in a freezing windchill and won in New Jersey.

On Sunday in Philadelphia, the forecast calls for temperatures in the low 30s and a chance of snow for the NFC divisional-round game between the Rams and the Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field.

Rams coach Sean McVay is not concerned.

“If it does snow or if it does rain, we have to be mindful of what we need to do to adjust and adapt,” McVay said this week, “but there’s no way it can be as cold as it was at the Jets game.”

But are the Rams well suited for a game in the snow?

“We can’t simulate what that weather is like out here,” McVay said Friday after practice, “but that’s not going to be an excuse for us to not be locked in.”

When it comes to adjustments, the biggest will be how the Rams attempt to slow Eagles running back Saquon Barkley.

On Nov. 24, Barkley rushed for 255 yards and two long touchdowns in a 37-20 victory over the Rams at SoFi Stadium.

First-year defensive coordinator Chris Shula, echoing McVay, described it Friday as a “humbling” night.

So Shula must devise a scheme to keep Barkley under control, while also taking into account quarterback Jalen Hurts, receivers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith and tight end Dallas Goedert.

Shula showed an ability to adapt in last Monday’s wild-card victory over the Minnesota Vikings, scheming a blitzing pass-rush plan that netted nine sacks. One caused a fumble that edge rusher Jared Verse returned for a touchdown.

Is there an equivalent schematic adjustment to slow Barkley?

“There’s no perfect defense,” Shula said, adding, “so if you want to devote a lot of resources to the run, they obviously have some really good receivers and a really good quarterback.”

Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore also has the benefit of one of the NFL’s biggest and best offensive lines.

But the Rams showed against the Vikings that they are “playing as well as any defense in the league right now,” Moore said.

“You could tell just every phase of that defense is tied together, and the front is doing an excellent job getting pressure,” Moore told reporters in Philadelphia. “The challenge when you get in obvious passing situations, those guys are as good as it gets in this league collectively .”

The Eagles’ defense, under coordinator Vic Fangio, once again offers McVay one of his greatest challenges.

Fangio was the architect of the 2018 Chicago Bears’ defense that limited a high-powered Rams offense to six points. Former New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick borrowed heavily from that scheme and limited the Rams to three points in Super Bowl LIII.

In the November loss to the Eagles, the Rams totaled 290 yards and failed to convert all eight third-down opportunities.

Fangio’s defenses reveal “an identity and a philosophy, but I think there’s a flexibility” that enables him to adapt to his personnel, McVay said.

“They’re obviously at the top of the charts in every single metric that really matters,” McVay said, adding, “We know what a great challenge it’s going to be, and how little margin for error you have if you expect to consistently move the ball and ultimately finish drives.”

Fangio also respects McVay.

“He’s got a great offense that he has great command of,” Fangio told Philadelphia reporters this week. “And he’s a really good play-caller.

“During the game he can change gears on you at a moment’s notice. He’s one of the top play-callers in this league, for sure, without a doubt.”

Etc.

Cornerback Ahkello Witherspoon (thigh) was limited and defensive lineman Bobby Brown III (shoulder) and offensive linemen tackle Alaric Jackson (chest/knee) and Justin Dedich (illness) did not practice. All are listed as questionable, but McVay said he expected all would be available to play against the Eagles. Inside linebacker Troy Reeder and defensive lineman Larrell Murchison, who returned Thursday from injured reserve to practice, are out.

It is 76 days since Liverpool moved back to the top of the 2024-25 Premier League table with a 2-1 home win against Brighton & Hove Albion — a position they haven’t relinquished since.

Arne Slot’s side are not always showing imperious form but have still only been beaten once in their 20 league matches so far and have a four-point advantage over second-placed Arsenal, with a game in hand, going into the weekend’s fixtures.

So, are Liverpool destined to win just their second domestic championship in 35 years? And, if they are, at what point in the coming months will that triumph become all but nailed-on? We convened an expert panel — some with affiliations to the Anfield side, others to Liverpool’s biggest rivals — and sought their views.

Pep Guardiola has fried all of our brains.

He’s shattered a lot of English football’s illusions about its exceptionalism during his nine years as Manchester City manager. He’s affected the way pretty much every team in the country play. He’s changed what we all expect our full-backs to do. And our central defenders.

More immediately, he’s altered what we all think a title race looks like.

For the past few years – with one exception – the standard for anyone hoping to win the Premier League has been, as Jurgen Klopp once put it, perfection. Even to be close to that meant getting more than 90 points from the available 114. Actually claiming the crown usually required more: 93, or 98, or 100.

This season is different. A total of 85 will probably do it, maybe even 82. That means our reactions to individual results are out of kilter: in a campaign when City do nothing but win, drawing once at home can be fatal; in one where there’s more leeway for their rivals, the damage is limited.

Liverpool’s current league position, of course, makes them favourites, even if that game they have in hand is the last league derby at Goodison Park — hardly a gimme. But there is little to suggest the four-point advantage Arne Slot’s team currently hold over Arsenal is likely to be decisive. This is not the sort of season where a lead, once obtained, will not be surrendered.

Liverpool’s schedule, from here on in, is more challenging than Arsenal’s; it’s not unimaginable that they might draw three more games than Mikel Arteta’s side over the next four months.

Arsenal do not have a massive margin for error but I’d only be relatively confident that the twists and turns had ended if Liverpool came out of their game against them at Anfield, on the second weekend in May, with a three-point lead. And a superior goal difference, just to be safe.

Rory Smith

Call it a hard-bitten Evertonian self-defence mechanism, but I live with a chronic condition which presents as a persistent, underlying premonition of major Liverpool success. For example: they could be 18th in the 20-team Premier League table, managerless and riddled with injuries, and my nervous system would be preparing for an unlikely cup win and surge to a top-four finish.

So I’ve been tingling with the feeling that the 2024-25 title is coming to Anfield ever since they beat Real Madrid (in the Champions League) and Manchester City back-to-back in the space of five days as November became December.

A small part of me still just can’t rule out some astonishing City revival where they win every game between now and the end of the campaign in late May, as Liverpool drop points due to lingering defensive issues. Or that Arsenal will sign a decent goalscorer before this winter transfer window closes in a couple of weeks and really make it a contest.

But it would still be infinitely more likely that Liverpool will find another gear and triumph comfortably.

As it stands, I think it will only be after they have come through successive games against Chelsea and Arsenal in early May that I will completely make my peace with the forthcoming months of endless coverage, parades, plays, poems, films, statues and royal decrees that will accompany their record-equalling 20th top-flight championship.

Greg O’Keeffe

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If you’re a fan of a rival club — Manchester United, say — there is often a point in a season where you have to make peace with the idea the “Bad Thing” might happen, and you start steeling yourself for when friends in the group chat/at five-a-side start gloating more.

For me, that arrived after Liverpool’s trio of fixtures against Tottenham Hotspur, Leicester City and West Ham United either side of Christmas. It wasn’t just that Liverpool were good. It wasn’t just that Manchester City and Arsenal were wobbling. It’s that Arne Slot found enough tactical solutions for the problems the Premier League throws at you.

Left-back is an issue for this team, Darwin Nunez’s pace doesn’t quite compensate for the speed of his decision-making, Alisson is not quite the force he used to be in goal. Alexis Mac Allister – understandably – can look a little leggy when he returns from long-haul international duty in South America with Argentina. Yet Slot keeps tinkering and tweaking while reminding his players at half-time that hard running is not an optional requirement to winning games.

Alisson – a fine goalkeeper, but is he in decline? (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

Liverpool’s 2019-20 title triumph saw a Jurgen Klopp-managed side beat Leicester City 4-0 away on December 26 (it might have been Naby Keita’s last good game for the club) and stamp their authority on the rest of the league. This season’s 3-1 win over them at Anfield on that date wasn’t quite the same (if only because Leicester were a lot stronger five years ago), but there is a similar sense that when Slot’s side switch it on, nobody in England can compete.

Carl Anka

In 2019-20, there were two games around this point in the season that made Jurgen Klopp’s side winning the title feel like an inevitability: the 4-0 away victory against Leicester City on Boxing Day and beating Manchester United 2-0 at Anfield on January 19. The latter was their 21st league win from the season’s first 22 matches. Absurd.

I haven’t experienced that feeling yet this season. It is a funny time to pose this question due to the current wobble Arne Slot’s team is having. Had I been asked this question after the victories over Tottenham Hotspur, Leicester and West Ham United before and after Christmas, I would be more positive. But two draws since to make it three wins in seven league games doesn’t scream title-winning form, although they haven’t lost any of those matches.

As a pessimist when it comes to this type of thing, my realistic answer is: only when it is mathematically impossible for them to be caught, or Virgil van Dijk is actually lifting the trophy.

However, I would love that 2019-20-esque moment to come in a Merseyside derby – ideally the next one, at Goodison Park on February 12, but more likely when Everton go to Anfield in the first week of April. Those games are so crucial to momentum, positive or negative.

Failing that, a positive result at home against Arsenal on the weekend of May 10-11 will probably be the key moment where I’ll believe it is happening.

Andy Jones

Over Liverpool’s last seven Premier League matches, they have dropped points in four. That doesn’t look or sound to me like an unstoppable procession to the title. They’re the favourites to win it from here, sure — but I’m not yet convinced.

The issue, of course, is that their most plausible challengers, Arsenal, have a similar propensity to drop points — and a significant gap to overhaul. They’re also without arguably their best player for a while yet with Bukayo Saka having recently undergone surgery for a torn hamstring — and that blow to their attack has been compounded by an ACL knee injury for Gabriel Jesus last weekend.

Much could depend on how much, if at all, Arsenal strengthen before the winter transfer window closes on February 3.

I feel that Liverpool and Arsenal — and Nottingham Forest, and Newcastle, and Chelsea — will continue to drop points here and there. It will be interesting to see if Manchester City can pick up enough points to close the gap and apply some pressure.

Liverpool host Arsenal on the second weekend in May. Arsenal’s mission for the next four months is to make that game matter — and I think there’s every chance they can.

Only if Liverpool win that one, to give themselves a commanding lead with a couple of weeks of the season to go, will I see them as champions-elect.

James McNicholas

Ever since Steven Pienaar of Everton slid in to secure a 4-4 draw at Old Trafford in April 2012, I’ve always made a point of holding onto hope in a title race.

Pienaar’s 85th-minute equaliser in a match Manchester United had led 3-1 after 66 minutes was a goal that helped Manchester City to make up an eight-point deficit with just six games to go and one of those incredible occasions where the desperate mental gymnastics — ‘They just need to lose at Wigan, drop points at home to Everton, and we’ll beat them at the Etihad’ — perfectly checked out.

But even my optimism can only stretch so far.

City are out of this race, Christian Norgaard’s stoppage-time header to deny them a 2-1 win at Brentford on Tuesday the latest reminder that the reigning champions are far too flaky to make up what is currently a 12-point gap.

Norgaard’s late equaliser for Brentford on Tuesday underlined City’s frailties (Clive Rose/Getty Images)

That realistically leaves Arsenal, who I just can’t see reeling Liverpool back in with their inconsistency in front of goal and injury disruptions to their right-hand side.

Arsenal have to go to Anfield in the season’s third-last round of fixtures, and unless they are practically faultless from now until then, it looks like being the fixture that could allow the current leaders to ease their way to glory.

Thom Harris

When you’re writing about something that may arrive in the future, there’s an understandable caution, a fear that you’ll be made to look ridiculous should your prediction turn out to be nonsense.

But even with that in mind, I’m pretty confident about this one: I won’t predict a point between now and the end of the season on May 25 when it will be clear Liverpool have the title in the bag — because I think it’s already in there.

If we’re picking a point when I became sure, it was probably not a single game, but that first week in December, when they beat Manchester City with relative ease, something that came not long before Arsenal drew with Fulham and then Everton.

The certainty is less about Liverpool, an excellent if not historically brilliant team, but more that I just don’t trust any of the chasing pack to be consistent enough to catch them. City are going through some stuff, Arsenal aren’t ruthless enough, Chelsea are wobbling, teams will figure out how to beat Nottingham Forest soon enough, Newcastle are the form team now but are an Alexander Isak injury away from trouble.

Liverpool will end as the last team standing, the best of a Premier League season in which the overall quality has evened out, without one single behemoth overshadowing the rest.

Nick Miller

It seems to me that only supporters of other clubs are certain that the 2024-25 title will arrive at Anfield.

If it doesn’t, it conveniently gives them the chance to say Liverpool choked. You build them up, you knock them down.

Like a lot of Liverpudlians, I am reasonably confident the season will end in championship success for Arne Slot’s team. Yet there is also caution due to recent memories, as well as longer ones. Under Jurgen Klopp, Liverpool led the way three times at this stage of a season but only once were they in the same position when the music stopped after 38 games.

Further back, the promise of teams led by Roy Evans, Rafael Benitez and Brendan Rodgers was marked in springtime before hopes faded on the run-in.

It is for these reasons that I will only be certain about the possibilities relating to Slot’s Liverpool when those currently chasing can no longer catch them.

Simon Hughes

(Top photo: Phil Noble/AFP via Getty Images)