A former landfill in Voorhees Township will become the home of a new solar field aimed at expanding access to renewable energy and lowering utility bills for New Jersey residents.
Once complete, the 13.5-acre community-scale solar array will join the more than 200 solar projects that make up the state’s Community Solar Energy Program.
Started in 2019, the program allows households served by the state’s four major electricity providers — Public Service Electric & Gas, Jersey Central Power & Light, Atlantic City Electric, and Rockland Electric Co. — to subscribe to a participating solar facility to receive renewable energy credits on their bill without requiring that they install solar panels themselves.
The program also mandates that a majority of the available renewable energy be set aside for low- and moderate-income households, who are less likely to be able to install their own systems, program manager Sawyer Morgan said in an email.
There are now more than 51,000 households subscribed to the community solar program statewide, Morgan said, receiving over $18 million in net savings since the first projects came online in 2021.
Most of the existing community solar projects are at capacity for participating households, he said, but the program anticipates over 100 additional solar projects to be completed and operational before the end of the year.
While New Jersey is currently home to 209 community solar projects with a total capacity of 291 megawatts, Morgan said, an additional 392 projects that are in development or under construction will add 703 megawatts of capacity to the grid.
“These projects are all on rooftops, canopies, landfills, contaminated sites, mining sites, and certain bodies of water as floating solar,” he said, including the solar project in Voorhees.
The 35-acre landfill on Centennial Boulevard ceased operations in 1972, and the property was acquired by the township five years later. In the decades since, the land has remained largely untouched, unable to be developed because of its prior use.
Now, solar panels are expected to cover about half the property, according to development plans approved by the Voorhees Township Planning Board last month. The exact configuration of the panels will be finalized before construction begins, the plans show.
The developer, Voorhees Solar LLC, was not immediately available for comment about the construction schedule, overall cost, and other project details. The company is owned by the Pegasus Cos. Inc., a wireless and broadband service provider based in Bala Cynwyd, according to the application submitted to the township.
“We can’t build a park or redevelop it with homes,” said Stephen Steglik, Voorhees Township administrator. “The only other option was keeping it empty and in its current state.”
At least with the solar project, he said, the township can create savings for residents while also collecting nearly $900,000 in one-time land lease fees.
The project will have the capacity to produce around four megawatts of energy when operating at full power, according to the project plans, enough to power up to 4,000 typical households.
Of the energy is generated by the project, 51% is going to be dedicated to low- and moderate-income households, Steglik said.
“While costs are going higher and higher, at the very least Voorhees Township is trying to take steps to maintain utility costs and at least try to save people a little bit of money,” he said.
U.S. borrowing is at record levels, interest rates are up, and Social Security is running low on cash. Yet new Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh has offered investors little information on whether the Fed will boost interest rates and fight inflation, or cut rates to feed growth.
As a past president of the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank, Patrick Harker sat in and sometimes voted at Fed Open Market Committee meetings that decided interest rate targets under Warsh’s predecessors from 2015 to 2025. He says it’s important for Fed leaders to speak clearly.
An engineering Ph.D. who grew up in blue-collar Gloucester City, Harker spent the previous 15 years, first as dean ofthe Wharton business school at University of Pennsylvania, thenas president of the University of Delaware, before he was chosen to run the Philly Fed by the search committee he headed after others declined the job.
Harker finished his second five-year Fed term in June 2025 and reported back to Wharton the next day as a professor. He says he has been putting what he learned there to use.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
How did you align while you were with the Fed?
People at the Fed asked: Was I a hawk, leaning toward higher rates to fight inflation? Or a dove, leaning toward lower rates to support jobs? I’m an eagle, loyal to this country. I’m for doing what the economy requires.
I’m where the vast majority of Americans are: They’re sick of ideology. It gets us nowhere. It drives countries to ruin. That’s never been us.
We are a pragmatic people. Let’s do reasonable stuff.
Are you worried digital finance will spin out of control?
My particular interest is around operational risks caused by technology. Those come in different flavors:
Concentration risk: Just a few key firms — Amazon, Microsoft — providing a lot of the financial infrastructure.
Model risk: Everyone using the same AI models. Some of my colleagues have found that if AI models set prices, they will collude [to illegally boost prices at consumers’ expense]. They will do the same with loans.
Fraud risk: Faster payments equals faster fraud.
Market risk, credit risk, and operational risk: We are looking down into the bowels of the systems moving the money and at cyber hygiene.
Will hedge funds’ use of insurance companies to make risky private credit loans fuel the next financial crisis?
If you pull one thread, will it start to fall apart? At the Fed, I was a bank supervisor. I worried about it. I still worry.
It’s not big enough yet to threaten the system [as mortgage losses did in 2008]. But the ‘private’ asset risks eventually all filter back to the regulated institutions.
I said that at a dinner of people in the private credit industry. They said, ‘We know what we are doing!’ They do; the first people in always know what they are doing.
But there’s only so much talent. And now you have people on the fringe taking bigger and bigger risks. And again all hell will break loose, and everyone will have to deal with it. It will go beyond the skill set of the industry.
You know Jevons Paradox? Technology puts people out of work, then becomes so cheap, demand for that technology explodes, and so do the jobs providing it.
Will AI improve productivity? It better. Our birth rate is not replacing ourselves. Our immigration policy has flatlined.
It’s the most basic rule of economics: If you want more output, you either get more workers, or better machines.
I’m more worried that in the United States, we are really bad at helping people make transitions to new kinds of work. A kid will figure it out. But if you’re 40 or 50, what do we do with you? No one cares; you can understand their anger.
Can Congress fix Social Security and the deficit?
I’m less worried about Social Security because politicians know they can’t get reelected without solving the problem.
With the deficit, they keep kicking the can down the road. It really depends on healthcare, a very large part of the U.S. budget. Economists are starting to talk about the Fed losing the ability to set rates [because it is too busy] keeping Treasury’s financing costs down. When debt gets too high, you can’t avert default.
In this country, we’ve all gone into our own herds, we don’t listen to the other side. But if there’s a vacuum in communications, someone else will fill it with their narrative instead of yours.
You protect credibility the institution built over decades by explaining yourself.
What can you make happen now that you’re back at Penn?
I’m a tenured faculty member. I put together an MBA class. I’m publishing academic journal articles on fraud in payment systems. I had to dust off my quantitative brain.
What motivates him I’m not sure, but he loves this place. His father died when he was here, and the school stepped up with financial aid, he doesn’t forget that.
What do you miss about the Fed?
One of the great privileges of the Fed, when you go to the Open Market Committee, there’s no personal electronics. For two days you have nothing to do but seriously think about what everyone else is saying.
Even if you disagree, it’s in a very professional way. To the public, Washington can look like a big food fight. But at places like the Fed, there are people seriously dedicated to their job.
Are you worried for your grandchildren?
There is hope. People worry everything’s gone nuts; we’re leaving the young people with a giant bill. And a political system that is seemingly broken.
People peddling crazy ideas understand the brain very well: Push these panic buttons. But to quote [former President Richard] Nixon, there is a silent majority who want to have a better life. Not to fight culture wars.
To find “A Nation of Artists” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, you walk from the Great Stair Hall down a long gallery lined with art that’s not part of the show. The path zigs left and tightens into what looks like a service corridor, and then zags right past the bathrooms.
After this distinctly unceremonious approach, you’ve arrived at one of the museum’s most spectacular events of recent years.
Not only is “A Nation of Artists” momentous — it is billed as the “most expansive presentation of American art ever mounted in Philadelphia” — but it comes with the added juice of inaugurating the museum’s newly renovated American wing on the second floor after a 14-month closure.
The occasion brings yet another distinction: amazingly, after three more galleries open in the wing, it will be the first time in a decade that all of the galleries in the main building will have been open at the same time.
The odd journey to the second-floor American galleries has long been in place, but it seems especially odd now. It would have been nice to reopen this major piece of real estate with more of an architectural drumroll than a drab, winding hallway, especially for an institution that, after the tumultuous year it’s had, could use a thing or two to celebrate.
“Miners’ Wives” (right) by Ben Shahn and “The End of the War, Starting Home” by Horace Pippin at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
It might also be easy to miss the show’s greater significance to the museum and its cohost, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. “A Nation of Artists,” which opened in April with more than 1,000 works at both museums, arrives as a bolt of ambition as the groups work their way through deficits and reorganizations and remind audiences and funders that beyond crisis, there is art, and it is glorious.
The show is the city’s major visual arts celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary, and while it’s an impossible task to compress the story of art in America into any single show, the overall image that emerges is not a cohesive snapshot, but a fascinating mirror.
There’s sometimes a random, almost improvisatory feeling to “A Nation of Artists” — despite the show’s attempt to place works around themes like the American West or inequity — because America is itself ever-random and improvisatory.
Works in thematically grouped ensembles in ‘A Nation of Artists’ in the newly renovated Furness and Hewitt building at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
More than 120 works from the collection of John and Leigh Middleton and their family are augmenting “A Nation of Artists.” But after the show closes and the Middleton works are gone, PAFA will put in place a newly curated permanent collection, and the PMA will be left with a sweeping look at American art that starts on the first floor with earlier works and proceeds to the second to bring it up to the mid-20th century.
In other words, “A Nation of Artists” absorbs the Middleton works, but also spotlights the incredible riches in residence nearly all the time. That’s no small thing at a time when arts and culture in Philadelphia is struggling for engagement in the attention economy.
The painting “Christ Rejected” by Benjamin West and marble sculpture “Paradise Lost” by Joseph A. Bailly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
A crisp reset at PAFA
At PAFA, the outside world seems to creep in in ways both positive and worrisome.
How can you admire the fruitful pedagogy at PAFA on display by generations of academy students and instructors without feeling concern for the place? The relationship between the museum and school — a specific artistic legacy unique to Philadelphia — is what makes PAFA special, and it remains to be seen whether a recently revamped certificate program at the school is the ultimate answer, artistically or financially.
The exhibition marks a crisp reset: the reopening of PAFA’s jewel of a building, the riotously detailed 1876 Furness and Hewitt-designed landmark, after a renovation project that included a new HVAC system and other renovations.
Laylights (variously utilizing natural or artificial light) in the newly renovated Furness and Hewitt building at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
It’s good news that there are no dramatic changes; the building continues to dazzle. I visited the show there a half dozen times, and via the church-like rose window and skylights, nature played handmaiden to art. When clouds parted, sun filtered into some of the spaces, and in one gallery the natural light made the whites and colors of George Bellows’ North River pop.
The marble sculpture “Peri at the Gates of Paradise” by Thomas Crawford in the grand staircase at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
On another morning, the sunlight made the grand stair hall of the Furness building practically vibrate. The smooth white of marble sculptures like Thomas Crawford’s Peri at the Gates of Paradise glowed and the stars-on-cobalt pattern beneath the skylight seemed to be showering down.
Here on this day, there was no more beautiful interior in the city.
At the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In the rear is the oil painting “Death on the Pale Horse” by Benjamin West.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
A more sequestered PMA
If PAFA maintains a lively relationship with the outside world, the PMA’s new American wing feels sequestered. There are no visible windows letting in light in the second floor American galleries — no natural light except for a small opening in a staircase.
The layout and footpath (including that unceremonious approach) is largely the same as it had been before the renovation. But the flow within and from gallery to gallery is more open, and there is now a central spine of four continuous middle galleries that opens up a vista that helps to orient the visitor. Three remaining galleries in the renovated American wing are expected to reopen, though the date is uncertain.
Three Thomas Eakins oils (from left): “Mending the Net,” “The Pair-Oared Shell,” and “Sailboats Racing on the Delaware.”Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
The PMA half of “A Nation of Artists” features a lot of big names (Andrew Wyeth, John Singer Sargent, Georgia O’Keeffe), as well as about three dozen works by Thomas Eakins — intimate portraits as well as epic canvases. There’s a beautiful sequence of three Eakins oils, all painted within a decade of one another, all with rivers in various hues and states of excitement: The Pair-Oared Shell, Sailboats Racing on the Delaware, and the stunning Mending the Net, a seemingly ordinary scene that gathers filmic mystery and story through minutely detailed figures mending a fishing net by the river against a gauzy beyond.
In terms of visitor experience, the new second floor American space succeeds most in moments of drama. The wall in one gallery uses a specially reproduced rich-burgundy period wallpaper, and the relationships among the paintings, furniture, pottery, and other items in the room ricochet beautifully.
“The Lost Pleiad” by Randolph Rogers in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s salon-style gallery.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
A sumptuous feeling immerses visitors in the high-ceilinged salon-style room (gallery 211) that includes vast landscapes and marble sculpture. Though it’s not immediately obvious, the first-floor American works are also part of the show, and they hold yet more Middleton works.
Classics and surprises, and a lot of charm
There’s greater poetry in the architecture at PAFA, but the work itself at both museums is undeniably impressive in scope, and especially at the PMA: painting, sculpture, furniture, silver, fabric, works in clay, and more.
The curators — Kathleen A. Foster and Alexandra A. Kirtley at the PMA, and Leah Triplett and Lea C. Stephenson at PAFA — have delivered not just old favorites, but also surprises.
“Black Night: Russell’s Corners” by George Copeland Ault at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
PAFA’s classics include Winslow Homer’s Fox Hunt; the Jasper Johns Flag1960-66 from the Middletons (which the couple brought home from an auction in 2010 for $28.6 million); and George Copeland Ault’s Black Night: Russell’s Corners (1943), whose flat, cold, electric light suggesting a modern encroachment on agrarian life, can only be appreciated in person.
Among the pieces to which I kept returning: Pink Flower with Clock by PAFA 2011 graduate Aubrey Levinthal, because of the smart way it plays with the idea of photographic positive and negative imagery even though it is an oil; and Harriet Goodhue Hosmer’s Puck on a Toadstool, from 1856, whose supernatural energy is so potent that the figure appears poised to shape-shift and break free of its marble confines.
At the PMA, a single canvas has me reconsidering Edward L. Loper Sr., the Wilmington artist who had his beginnings working for the WPA. Loper’s Abandoned Ferry Terminal is a complex refraction of shadows and colors from 1958 whose geometries never seem to stop shifting.
A small shadowbox of a man and woman formally costumed from around 1880 might be the most unassuming bit of charm in the entire exhibition. Its maker is unknown.
Custom wallpaper at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, with “Portrait Figures of a Man and a Woman, in a Shadowbox.”Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
Leaning into representation
If you ever wanted a lesson in the difference how a work is displayed can make, just consider how much more substantial an achievement The Gross Clinic looked a few months ago. With bright but warm lighting at the PMA, Eakins’ 1875 canvas was frightening in its vividness, the red of blood on the surgeons’ hands glistening. Today, at PAFA, it looks a little washed out, overpowered by the light coming through the nearby rose window.
Both museums have made a conscious effort to represent a spectrum of identity — gender, regional origin, ethnicity, and so on. This is all to the good, of course. Everyone will find something relatable in this exhibition, and many will discover works that aren’t necessarily relatable on first examination but become so. This is why museums, and good curators, are important.
Detail of “Nydia, the Blind Girl of Pompeii” by Randolph Rogers at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.Tom Gralish / Staff Photographer
It’s a fascinating marker of time to think about the cultural whiplash of the past couple of years in this country, and how vulnerable the simple concept of representation now feels. The tastes of the art establishment change, and so too does how we perceive art.
How could it be otherwise? Every movement comes in with an air of moral and scholarly authority that purports to lay down once and for all an accurate cultural perspective.
The prevailing ethos arrives as the new reality. Then the next reality comes along.
“A Nation of Artists” runs through July 5, 2027, at the PMA, 2600 Ben Franklin Parkway; and Sept. 5, 2027, at PAFA, Broad and Cherry Streets. philamuseum.org, pafa.org.
That’s what Samantha Paige Rosen’s father told her when she was 29.
Rosen was living alone in Bethesda, Md., and struggling with what she called unrealistic deadlines at her copywriting job.
She liked being in the D.C. area and was reluctant to move back to her parents’ house in Bala Cynwyd. Plus, this wasn’t what adults were supposed to do, she thought. Ultimately, she decided to listen to her dad.
“My job was making me sick,” she said, referring to her deteriorating mental health.
The morning after she moved back into her childhood room, she already felt a difference. “The depression lifted. A lightness. A steady, quiet heartbeat,” she wrote in a 2022 essay, “Unlearning the Shame of Living with My Parents as an Adult,” for the literary publication Catapult.
That decision shaped the trajectory of her life.
Samantha Paige Rosen, author of the anthology “Living, Together,” prepares to take her cat to her parents’ home for a visit last month. She lives in Penn Valley, a short walk from her parents’ home.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
Thanks to the care provided by her parents, she was able to get well and build a tutoring business. And her experience inspired her to pitch, sell, and edit an anthology called Living, Together: Reimagining Community in the Age of Disconnection, out last month from Beacon Press and now an indie press bestseller.
The anthology, a mix of personal essays and conversations featuring 22 writers who live in the U.S., offers a window into the experience of living outside of a nuclear family arrangement. For some, that means living in a multigenerational household, a cohousing community, or three polyamorous parents and children. The book also goes beyond just housing, to focus on building community and chosen family.
Copies of the anthology “Living, Together” by writer Samantha Paige Rosen.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
Novelist Sarah Thankam Mathews writes about her experience sustaining Bed Stuy Strong, the mutual aid organization she helped found during the pandemic. Author Rhaina Cohen explores her and her husband’s decision to live with their friends. Novelist Jonathan Escoffery talks about how his sense of community was shaped by his Jamaican immigrant parents and fellow writers of color.
When she was living with her parents, Rosen, now 36, said she didn’t know anyone who was living in a nontraditional setting and couldn’t find much writing about it. In a lot of ways, the book, she said, “was for me.” She wanted to hear about all the ways people were building homes and community.
It’s difficult to quantify the trend of alternative living arrangements because it’s such a vast term. But what is clear is that what Americans tend to think is middle-class “normal” — living with a spouse and children — is on the decline.
Writer Samantha Paige Rosen, author of an anthology called “Living, Together”, in her home, located a short walk from her parents house, July 20, 2026, in Penn Valley, PA.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
Multigenerational and otherwise non-nuclear family living is common in several global cultures, but Rosen wanted to highlight American writers as a way to combat the thinking that more communal ways of living are suited for other countries but not here.
Living, Together fits into a growing canon of literature focused on envisioning alternative family and relationship structures. From Cohen’s best-selling 2024 The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center to Mathews’ 2022 novel All This Could Be Different, from Sophie Lewis’ 2022 Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation to Lola Milholland’s 2024 memoir Group Living and Other Recipes, there’s a growing tide of voices calling for collectivism over individualism.
“There’s a real hunger for interdependence and people don’t know how to get it,” Rosen said. She hopes the book will open people’s eyes to what’s possible. And not just what’s great about communal living, but what’s difficult about it, too.
When Rosen lived with her parents, sometimes she’d visit friends’ places and wonder if she was doing what she should be doing “as an adult woman.” Her mom, Patty Rosen, also remembers fielding some judgment from others about her daughter’s living situation.
“When’s Sam gonna move out?” they asked.
But the Rosens said they loved living together, even with things like negotiating sound while Samantha was tutoring and dealing with her cat crying at the front door. Or being parented a little too much.
Writer Samantha Paige Rosen, author of the anthology “Living, Together,” poses with her parents in their home in July. Rosen lives a short walk from her parents’ home in Penn Valley and visits with them daily.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
And going on dates? “She didn’t like to be asked about it,” Patty said.
They’d ask about the date’s name and profession, Rosen explained. “Then,” her father, Stuart Rosen, said, pretending to whisper behind his hand, “I would Google.”
In 2025, Stuart and Patty downsized and moved into a house in Penn Valley. Rosen moved into the house across the parking lot — a house she could only afford because of the years she lived with her parents.
The shift in their family’s living situation echoes something Rosen learned while working on the book.
“Those who’ve taken communal living from an idea to reality have reframed their thinking around it again and again, or gotten rid of the frame entirely,” Rosen wrote in an email. “It can last forever or for a season of life.”
In this season of life, Rosen brings Fergal, her cat, in a backpack to her parents’ house everyday to play with their cats. Every Tuesday, she and her dad have dinner and watch a movie. Some evenings, her mom comes over after she finishes work to watch a movie in bed.
Writer Samantha Paige Rosen, author of the anthology “Living, Together,” lives across a parking lot from her parents’ home in Penn Valley.Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
The latest iteration of their living situation — and the potential for all the other ways she might live in the future — calls to mind something Rosen wrote in her essay.
She said she wasn’t sure what she’d choose if she had complete freedom to live the way she wanted.
“But I know I’m interested in figuring out how to live beyond the boundaries society has established for me. I didn’t always believe I was capable of that, but I am. We all are.”
Samantha Paige Rosen will be speaking about her book at the Head & the Hand, 2230 Frankford Ave., Philadelphia, as part of “Hot Debut Summer” on Saturday, Aug. 22, 7 p.m.-9 p.m.
“Living, Together: Reimagining Community in the Age of Disconnection” is available in digital and physical bookstores.
Good morning, Philly! 👋 Thanks for starting your week with The Inquirer. Let’s get into it.
Thirty SEPTA bus routes are set to change at the end of August. The public transit agency launched its bus network redesign efforts after ridership declined, and this will be the first phase of changes.
And on a more serious note, an off-duty Philadelphia police officer was shot and killed on Sunday outside an after-hours lounge in Southwest Philadelphia, police said. Another person was also left in critical condition.
Plus, the president’s confidence in Stacy Garrity has become a critical question in the final stretch of the Pennsylvania governor’s race, and more news of the day.
The first phase of SEPTA’s bus network overhaul begins Aug. 23, when 30 routes will be affected in some way. Some routes with low ridership or that duplicate nearby service will be eliminated. Others will be extended or run more frequently, and two new routes will be added.
🚍 What routes will change? New and expanded routes include Route 72, a new crosstown bus running along Cheltenham Avenue, and the new Route 76 bus from Columbus Commons to Rising Sun and Olney. Route 45 will be extended to provide service to the Navy Yard, and Route 79 will be extended from South Philadelphia into University City.
🚍 What routes will be eliminated? Routes 35, 47M, 62, 78, 80, 89, and 106 will be cut, officials say.
🚍 What areas are most impacted? South Philadelphia, Kensington/Juniata, the Cheltenham Avenue Corridor, the Lancaster Avenue Corridor, and Roxborough.
An off-duty Philadelphia police officer died after being shot early Sunday morning in Southwest Philadelphia, police said.
The shooting occurred near a property neighbors and police have called an after-hours lounge. A social media account linked the address to a nightclub called “Nipsey’s Hookah Lounge.”
Responding officers found the off-duty officer and another gunshot-wound victim at the scene, police said. Both victims were taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, where the police officer was pronounced dead around 8 a.m., police said. The other victim was in critical condition when he arrived at the hospital, said police spokesperson Sgt. Eric Gripp.
The United States and Canada are moving closer to a deal to avert the imposition of punitive 50% tariffs on such Canadian products as hockey sticks, wine, and cement, according to officials.
Pennsylvania’s GOP nominee for governor, Stacy Garrity, is looking for help from President Donald Trump and national Republicans.
No matter what they’re seeking treatment for, teenagers who come to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia emergency department are handed a 10-minute health survey with questions about anxiety, depression, and self harm. About one in three have reported symptoms of depression or suicidal thoughts that may otherwise have gone unnoticed.
A Gladwyne-based senior services organization is planning to build an independent living community on an estate in Radnor Township, a move the group says is necessary as demand for senior living services rises in the region.
A man who police say burglarized nearly 30 stores in Philadelphia was arrested last week in Florida. Ravon Service, was arrested at a resort hotel in Kissimmee, Florida, about 20 miles southwest of Orlando, according to the U.S. Marshals Service in Philadelphia.
Quote of the day
When Samantha Paige Rosen quit her job and moved in with her parents at age 29, she thought it “wasn’t what adults were supposed to do.” But she’s glad she did it anyway. Her anthology, Living, Together: Reimagining Community in the Age of Disconnection, offers a window into the experience of living outside of a traditional nuclear family arrangement.
🧠Trivia time
What is the name of the sports apparel company that was once based in the Philly suburbs and had been known for its trash talk-inspired T-shirts?
🛍️ Shopping for: Art and antiques at Gargoyles gallery and vintage shop, which just returned to South Street with all its treasures.
🚢 Impressed by: Philadelphia’s official tall ship, the Gazela,which at 125 years old isn’t done riding the waves.
🚴 Admiring: City bike messengers. They race through shifting dispatches, tight deadlines, and city traffic while pushing to reclaim streets and make cycling safer.
Cheers to Rosemary Hering who correctly guessed Sunday’s answer: Ridley Park. Seamus Coffey, 8, caught a piranha in the borough’s lake. Now, he’s a budding fishing influencer.
Photo of the day
The Phillie Phanatic hugs Joe Girardi before the start of the All-American Perfect Game in Philadelphia on Sunday, Aug. 16, 2026. Girardi was the manager for the West team.David Maialetti / Staff Photographer
📬 Your ‘only in Philly’ story
Think back to the night that changed your life that could only happen in Philly, a true example of the Philly spirit, the time you finally felt like you belonged in Philly if you’re not a lifer, something that made you fall in love with Philly all over again — or proud to be from here if you are. Then email it to us for a chance to be featured in the Monday edition of this newsletter.
This “only in Philly” story comes from reader David Theriault, who describes a delightful Uber ride in the city:
It happened one night about a month ago, we had friends in town and had a reservation for dinner so we called an Uber.
We all jump in the Prius and I can hear Fleetwood Mac playing softly on the stereo. So I ask the driver, as we all pile on top of one another, “Do you like Fleetwood Mac?”
At that point, the driver cranks the stereo up to level 11 and he reaches between the seats on the ceiling and gets an LED dome light flashing. He starts singing “Go Your Own Way” at the top of his lungs and then reaches for a full sized gold microphone and continues to drive and sing into the mic for the rest of the trip.
Of course he got a good tip and we all had a great conversation over dinner.
P.S. He was a pretty good singer!
👋 Have a good day, every one!
By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer’s Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.
I love hearing from readers. From those who agree and those who disagree. Unless I mess up, I try to respond to everyone who invested their time in what I had to say and then cared enough to write in. The only kind of feedback I abhor is the one that accuses me of bias, because duh.
Whether you’re reading this in print (bless you) or online (thank you), it should be clear we are in the Opinion section, and bias, in the sense of a bent or an outlook, is how we do. However, I do not consider my side of the story to be the end of it. Regardless of whether someone is moved to drop me a line or not, I am here for the conversation.
This is what happens in real life, at least ideally. I say something, and you say something back, and if we disagree, we at least respect each other’s right to do so.
Unfortunately, the hardening of political positions seems to be doing away with even that. I know liberals who feel it’s a waste of time to try and talk to someone who thinks differently on trans rights, for example, just like I know conservatives who believe there’s nothing they care to learn from some socialist “Dumocrat.”
Perhaps that’s why — even with the decade or two (or three) age gap between the participants and me — there was a feeling of kinship for me at the 2026 BridgeUSA National Summit held recently in Philadelphia. The group, which has 130 chapters on college campuses across the country, wants to ensure we don’t stop talking (and listening) to each other — especially if we disagree.
And no, this isn’t some equivocating, middle-of-the-road, fine-people-on-both-sides kind of thing, Manu Meel, BridgeUSA cofounder and CEO, said. The organization’s goal isn’t to find common ground or change the way people think, but to urge and teach students to use their strong opinions to engage respectfully and constructively with those who have different beliefs.
To hear the 27-year-old Meel tell it, Americans have always had differing opinions, and that disagreement is the engine of democracy. What our young nation would look like, in fact, was forged in disagreement. The problem today isn’t that there are disparate points of view, he said.
“The real divide is between the open-minded MAGA people, the open-minded liberals, the curious conservatives, and the close-minded ideologues,” Meel noted. “The real divide is between the builders and the breakers.”
Manu Meel, cofounder and CEO of BridgeUSA, speaks during his keynote speech at the group’s annual summit in Philadelphia on Aug. 8.Courtesy Clay Goswick/BridgeUSA
The breakers in this case are the extremists on both sides of the political spectrum, those who make up for what they lack in numbers with the volume of their voices and rigidity of their views. The ones who stoke the outrage machine and scare the majority into silence.
Sahar Toshtzar, a 21-year-old political science student at Drexel, told me she feels that fear often keeps people from engaging.
“Sometimes it can be a little bit isolating having a mission of wanting to bridge the political divide,” she said. “Nobody really wants to talk about politics; nobody feels safe enough to talk.”
For Toshtzar, her first BridgeUSA events on campus about a year ago proved revelatory.
“I went to the discussions that we had, and it was, ‘Wow, people are talking like normal,’” she said. “I’m laughing with a conservative and relating to something completely outside of politics with them.”
The experience didn’t alter her beliefs, but it changed her opinion about those she disagreed with politically, she said, and she hoped that perhaps they shifted their opinion, as well.
I think that’s the biggest lesson to learn from engaging with people we disagree with. Our differences aren’t the issue. Deciding we can’t talk about them is — and that decision is just a choice we dress up as a fact. If we can start to acknowledge that, it will become much harder for those who fearmonger and demonize to control the public discourse, to degrade our politics until it is all a zero-sum game meant to humiliate the losing side.
Of course, there are a few people who you absolutely cannot reach, and some you may not even want to be in the same room with, but, again, they are in the minority. Speaking from experience, even someone who may seem initially hostile can turn out to be willing to engage in conversation. So, to paraphrase Hillary Clinton, don’t put all your deplorables in one basket.
Better still, we can learn from young people like Meel and Toshtzar.
“At the end of the day, it’s a basic social skill to be able to sit down and talk to somebody. To stay calm, hear them out, and have them hear you out. Maybe even change your opinion on something,” Toshtzar said. “If you can’t do that, the basics of politics don’t exist.”
We could certainly do far worse than sticking to the basics.
The biggest reason to wonder about the Phillies’ playoff chances isn’t their pitching or the heart of their lineup.
It’s their schedule.
Only five teams in the majors will play a tougher slate than the one the Phillies face from here on out. Of their 37 remaining games, only 12 will come against teams that entered Sunday with a losing record. The Phillies have won about 60.5% of their games against losing teams. Even if they take two of three in each of those four series, they would need to go 15-10 against winning teams in order to reach 90 wins. They are 23-30 against such teams.
Maybe it’s a stretch to say that Alec Bohm saved the Phillies’ season when he hit a three-run home run in the eighth inning to lift them to a 7-5 win over the Twins on Sunday. But they are at a point of their season when they desperately need to stack up wins. At the very least, Bohm’s blast put them back on the safer side of a daunting bit of math.
Alec Bohm hit a three-run homer against the Twins on Sunday.Bailey Hillesheim
No team in baseball history has ever won a World Series after losing more than 42 of its final 81 games. The Phillies are now 22-22 since the midpoint of their schedule. If they maintain their current winning pace against both winning and losing teams, they would finish the season with 20 losses in their last 37 games, which would give them 42 losses in their last 81 games.
The Phillies face two issues here. The first is making the playoffs. They had a 65% chance to do so heading into Sunday’s game against the Twins. They are three games up on the Marlins and 3½ games up on the Cardinals. Both of those teams have tougher schedules than the Phillies. Except, both of those teams are in town this week for three-game series at Citizens Bank Park. The Cardinals took two of three from the Phillies last week. The Marlins swept them three weeks ago.
Long story short, there’s a decent chance that this week ends up deciding the Phillies’ fate. Win both series, and suddenly their cushion is four games on Miami and 4.5 on St. Louis with 31 to play. The flip side is perilous. Lose four of six, and suddenly the Phillies have lost ground on the competition with 13 of their remaining 31 games coming against the Rays, Braves and Brewers, who have the three best records in the majors. Not to mention a three-game series in Arizona against the Diamondbacks, who are 21-12 in their last 33 and who entered Sunday tied with the Phillies and Padres for the last two NL wild-card spots.
The second issue is a more abstract one. Only five teams in big league history have advanced to the World Series after losing more than half of their final 81 games. The Diamondbacks did it in 2023, when they lost 45 of 81 to finish the regular season but ended up beating the Phillies in the NLCS. That year, Arizona lost in the World Series to the Rangers, who were 41-40 in their last 81. It helps to be playing well this time of year. You are who you are most recently.
The Phillies are who they’ve been all season, save that torrid stretch that had everybody ready to give Don Mattingly a seven-year contract extension. Since June 27, they have one winning streak longer than two games. They haven’t won more than four in a row since May 18, and they haven’t won more than five in a row all season. Of the nine NL teams that entered Sunday with a winning record, only the Phillies do not have multiple winning streaks of five-plus games.
The time is now. Jonathan Bowlan needs to be a big part of it, too. He picked up a hold on Sunday, pitching a scoreless eighth inning two days after recording his first save of the season. The right-hander has allowed three runs in 16⅓ innings with 18 strikeouts and four walks since moving into a consistent high-leverage role.
The Phillies need to look at the next month and a half as an opportunity. In their last 41 games, they’ve won exactly three games against teams that had a winning record at the time. They haven’t won a series against such a team since taking three of four from the Nationals in late June. They’ve lost nine of their last 12 against teams that had a winning record as of Sunday.
They are going to play a lot of teams that happen to be the kinds of teams they need to beat. It starts on Monday.
MINNEAPOLIS — Pick a date, almost any date during the season, and the Phillies have ranked near the bottom of the majors in on-base percentage.
It’s a fundamental problem.
“Because everything we’re trying to do up there,” Kyle Schwarber said, at risk of stating the obvious, “is based around that result of trying to find a way on base.”
The numbers never really added up, though. Going into the last week of July, for instance, the Phillies reached base at a .303 clip, tied for last. But they also had the fourth-best hard-hit rate and were near the middle of the pack in barrel rate, which measures how often a hitter makes contact with the optimal combination of exit velocity and launch angle.
Maybe it was bad luck. The Phillies were batting .281 on balls in play. (Major league average is .289.) Or maybe it was self-inflicted. As a team, they swung at the second-highest rate of non-strikes (34%).
Whatever the case, they needed to figure it out.
So, they had a meeting.
Hitting coach Kevin Long, his two assistants, and hitting analysts meet with the players before every series to go over strategy and review scouting reports on opposing pitchers. But this was different, multiple players said over the weekend.
In getting together the last week of July — before the deadline trade for contact-hitting savant Luis Arraez — Long and his staff highlighted things the Phillies were doing well before inviting the players to brainstorm why it wasn’t translating into better on-base results.
Bryce Harper (right) has drawn a walk in seven consecutive games through Sunday and has 21 walks in 15 games in August.Bailey Hillesheim
“I think there was a stigma there of us being last in on-base, and that can wear on a group, right?” Schwarber said. “But the room starts talking, guys start giving their opinions, and then it’s like, all right, how do we work through what we want to work through to get to where we need to be?
“As a group, it was a pretty good conversation, and I feel like we’ve been building on that and doing some really good things.”
In fact, halfway through the month, the Phillies are leading the majors with a .362 on-base percentage in August.
To make sense of the relative traffic jam on the bases, the easiest place to start is here: a 29% rate of swings at non-strikes so far this month, far below their 33.2% season average — and even the 30.4% league average.
But there’s more. The Phillies are walking nearly twice as often, from a 7.8% rate through July 31 to 13.1% this month. Bryce Harper says his dad tells him he’s at his best when he’s walking. With Arraez batting behind him, Harper has drawn 21 walks in 15 games in August. Bryson Stott (15) and Schwarber (13) are also walking at a higher clip.
As a team, the Phillies appear to be staying true to Long’s long-held philosophy of being “selective-aggressive.”
It’s more than that, though, according to Schwarber. Because if the last few years have taught the Phillies’ hitters anything, it’s that chasing pitches out of the strike zone is “the nature of the beast of the game,” Schwarber said. It’s in their DNA. Most of them won’t suddenly stop doing it, even though they don’t mean to.
And besides, every hitter is unique, with different strengths and vulnerabilities. There wasn’t a paint-by-numbers approach to figuring out how the collective group could reach base more frequently.
Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto (left), celebrating after a homer by Brandon Marsh.Yong Kim / Staff Photographer
But several players cited something J.T. Realmuto brought up in the meeting that seemed to resonate.
Stay aggressive to your plan.
“There’s going to be times when, yeah, we’ll have a team approach on some guy or whatever it is, but also, everyone’s got their own individual plan, right?” Schwarber said. “So, if you have your plan, that means that you’re going to be aggressive to the things that you want to do.”
In talking it over, the hitters concluded that many of them were often deviating from their plan and letting the pitcher dictate an at-bat.
“I think it just kind of brought out that, look, we’ve kind of got to clean it up a little bit,” Alec Bohm said. “We’re swinging ourselves out of innings, out of at-bats, and the numbers say there’s not a lot of strikes coming over the plate to a lot of us.
“So, let’s at least be looking for something [specific]. And if we’re going to go down, let’s go down with a plan and not just be up there free-swinging. I think that kind of landed with everybody, and I think we’re definitely responding in a good way.”
The Phillies have 37 games left and a one-game lead for a National League wild card. Applying more pressure to opposing pitchers would help ease the burden on theirs. One-quarter of the Phillies’ games have been decided by one run.
Two weeks of getting on base at a higher clip doesn’t erase four months at or near the bottom of the leader board. But Arraez brings a contact-oriented approach and lengthens a lineup that has lacked a cleanup hitter to provide protection to Harper.
Maybe it’s all sustainable. Maybe not. Maybe they’ll look back at a hitters meeting in late July as a turning point.
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“The biggest thing we were able to accomplish in that meeting was highlighting a lot of things that we do well,” Schwarber said. “Those are things that can get your brain going in a different way, and then it’s like, ‘OK, we’re last in on-base. How do we kind of maneuver this?’
“I felt like it was just a really good conversation that we had. There was input from everyone in the room, so I felt like that was a really good way to go about it.”
In the summer of 1993, Tom Austin, a Wharton grad, was in the process of creating a start-up with a fellow Penn alum, Seth Berger, and a friend, Jay Coen Gilbert.
The company was going named “AND1,” and Austin wanted to take edgy slogans — the kind you’d hear in a local pickup basketball game — and print them on T-shirts. Six months later, the T-shirts became a cultural phenomenon.
AND1 sold $1.6 million worth of apparel in its first year. Then came AND1’s mixtapes, which were video compilations of street ball moves, but because the first mixtape was shot at Rucker Park in Harlem, the company became known with New York basketball.
Though, at its core, AND1 was a Philadelphia brand.
Alex Coffey gives us a deep dive into how AND1 came to be, and even after the company was sold, its roots remain very much intact.
Alec Bohm, celebrates after hitting a three-run home run during the sixth inning against the Twins on Sunday.Bailey Hillesheim
Things were looking bleak, then a funny thing happened on Sunday. The Phillies rallied from an early five-run deficit to pull ahead in the eighth inning of a 7-5 victory to complete a three-game, two-state sweep of the Twins.
It marked the second-largest comeback of the season for the Phillies. They have now inched ahead of the Diamondbacks and back into sole possession of a wild card spot.
And the infield did some shuffling on Sunday with Trea Turner out for the game. But Don Mattingly confirmed that their star shortstop avoided an injury after fouling a pitch off his leg. He could’ve started Sunday, but the interim manager didn’t want to push it.
What we’re…
👊 Reminiscing: The highlight moments from UFC 330 taking over Xfinity Mobile Arena — did you see who lost their teeth?
👏 Celebrating: Before the Women’s Lacrosse League championship, Tina Sloan Green was honored for her legacy in the sport.
🏌️ Reading: On a rainy Sunday, Jack Whaley, a 22-year-old rising senior at Florida State, won the U.S. Amateur Golf Championship.
🏀 Learning: Dawn Staley doesn’t want to coach in the WNBA, she wants ownership. Philly has yet to extend the offer.
The Eagles played backups across the board on offense, and Sean Mannion’s scheme intentionally featured vanilla looks.David Maialetti / Staff Photographer
The Eagles’ 24-7 loss to the Ravens on Saturday night didn’t reveal much, especially their new offensive scheme.
It was difficult to identify Sean Mannion’s version of the Kyle Shanahan-Sean McVay system, let alone any functioning NFL offense, but Jeff McLane writes, that’s not surprising … or all that concerning as of now.
In other news, Joshua Weru and Uar Bernard suited up for their first football game at any level. Neither player lit up the stat sheet, but they certainly showed glimpses of potential.
And while there wasn’t a whole lot to take away from the Eagles’ first preseason game, it was enough to stir some movement in our latest 53-man roster projection.
Joe Girardi manages the West team in the All-American Classic on Sunday.David Maialetti / Staff Photographer
The Perfect Game All-American Classic brought together 60 of the top high school baseball players in the country and former major leaguers at Citizens Bank Park on Sunday.
Former Phillies manager Joe Girardi and former Phillies center fielder Shane Victorino coached Team West and East, respectively. With several other coaches involved in the event, Victorino said it’s a testament to the “Phillie way.”
Were the Jamie Drysdale and Trevor Zegras contract extensions enough to give the Flyers passing offseason grades?Yong Kim / Staff Photographer
It looked as if the Flyers were making the biggest splash of the NHL offseason by offer-sheeting Leo Carlsson, but ultimately, Carlsson is still an Anaheim Duck — and the Flyers still don’t have a young center on the roster.
With training camp a month away, how do we assess the Flyers’ actual offseason moves? Here’s what those in the national media are saying about the 2026-27 version of the team.
Chris DiJulia’s funeral drew around 600 attendees.Ed Hille / For the Inquirer
More than 600 people crowded into St. Denis Catholic Church in Haverford last Wednesday for an 80-minute celebration of 56 years of life well-lived.
Chris DiJulia was a fixture at St. Joe’s basketball games. He had cerebral palsy and spent his life in a wheelchair. On July 27, he died of natural causes related to his condition. DiJulia was inspirational to all who knew him, and last Wednesday, he was the king of Philadelphia basketball, writes Marcus Hayes.
We compiled today’s newsletter using reporting from Marcus Hayes, Alex Coffey, Scott Lauber, Jeff Neiburg, Jeff McLane, Olivia Reiner, Ryan Novozinsky, Ariel Simpson, Gabriela Carroll, Mia Messina, Lauren Jones, and Conor Smith.
By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer’s Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.
Happy Monday! Thanks for getting your morning started with me. We’ll be back in your inbox tomorrow. — Bella
For the first time since training camp kicked off late last month, the Eagles got some work against a real opponent Saturday, when they traveled down to Baltimore for what ended up being a 24-7 preseason defeat to the Ravens.
What was learned? Not a whole lot, really. The Eagles, as expected, rested almost all of their projected starters. They ran a pretty bland offense and didn’t peel back the curtain to what the new scheme under Sean Mannion might fully look like.
More will be revealed this week, when the Eagles head north for two joint practices against the New England Patriots on Wednesday and Thursday before preseason game No. 2 on Saturday.
Still, Saturday’s action combined with some recent practice observations were enough to stir some movement in our latest 53-man roster projection. (Here are links to our previous iterations from a month before training camp started, and two weeks ago.)
Quarterbacks (3): Jalen Hurts, Andy Dalton, Cole Payton
Traded: Tanner McKee
Status quo here. Dalton got the start on Saturday, which seemed to reveal that the Eagles consider him QB2 over McKee for now, even despite Nick Sirianni again saying after the game that nothing has been decided. Neither quarterback looked very good, though the play-calling and scheme were pretty vanilla and they were playing behind backup linemen and throwing to backup receivers. The end goal here hasn’t changed. The Eagles likely will be looking for a trade partner for a quarterback-needy team between now and roster cut-down day, which is Aug. 30. We’ll leave McKee as the one who eventually is traded, though it could be Dalton.
Running backs (3): Saquon Barkley, Tank Bigsby, Will Shipley
Cut: Dameon Pierce, Carson Steele, Ja’Quinden Jackson
Same three here from our previous two projections. Pierce popped a little in the early days of camp but has been dealing with a hamstring injury. Shipley had a few solid runs on Saturday, a little bright spot in what was a lousy night for the offense.
Wide receivers (5): DeVonta Smith, Dontayvion Wicks, Makai Lemon, Darius Cooper, Hollywood Brown
Cut: Elijah Moore, Johnny Wilson, Danny Gray, Britain Covey, Quez Watkins, Erik Ezukanma, Samori Toure
Our first position group with some movement. We’re keeping five players instead of six this time because needs for spots at two positions on defense came up (more on those later). The order of the top five players also has changed. Cooper has moved into the “lock” category with the three guys listed ahead of him, while Brown’s struggles in camp make it fair to wonder if the Eagles would consider cutting him and dealing with the cost of releasing a player who signed a $5 million guaranteed deal. That seems hard to fathom for now. Moore has played well enough to warrant giving him a roster spot, but one could argue keeping Brown and Moore is a bit redundant.
Tight ends (4): Dallas Goedert, Johnny Mundt, Eli Stowers, Cameron Latu
Cut: Grant Calcaterra, Stone Smartt, E.J. Jenkins
Another unchanged position group. Goedert and Mundt will be on the field often, while Stowers, a rookie second-round pick, might need some more seasoning. Latu’s status as a blocker and special teamer should have him on the right side of the cuts.
Offensive line (10): Jordan Mailata, Landon Dickerson, Cam Jurgens, Tyler Steen, Lane Johnson, Fred Johnson, Markel Bell, Drew Kendall, Willie Lampkin, Micah Morris
Cut: Myles Hinton, Michael Jordan, John Ojukwu, Jake Majors, Cameron Williams, Hollin Pierce
Two new names make the cut with the final two spots in this group. The first eight players listed are locks. Lampkin has come on strong over the last week or so and was a bright spot Saturday. Lampkin and Morris, a sixth-round pick, are in the field over Jordan and Hinton for now. The No. 9 and No. 10 spots certainly are still up for grabs. It’s also possible the Eagles keep only nine on the initial 53 and try to get some guys through to the practice squad. Kendall and Lampkin can play both center and guard.
Defensive tackles (6): Jalen Carter, Jordan Davis, Moro Ojomo, Byron Young, Ty Robinson, Uar Bernard
Cut: Gabe Hall, Zion Wilson, David Blay
We left Robinson off of our initial iterations of this exercise, but he had his best week of camp and had a sack Saturday (though he did have some mishaps, too). Bernard remains the wild card. For now, we’ll guess the Eagles decide it’s too risky to expose him to waivers and keep him on the roster after camp breaks. Robinson offers some insurance at a position where the Eagles are rostering a player who likely won’t play.
Ty Robinson sacks Ravens quarterback Tyler Huntley during the first quarter of a preseason game.David Maialetti / Staff Photographer
Edge rushers (6): Jonathan Greenard, Jalyx Hunt, Nolan Smith, Arnold Ebiketie, A.J. Epenesa, Joshua Weru
Cut: Tarron Jackson, Keyshawn James-Newby, Jose Ramirez
This may be considered an overreaction. Weru, an International Pathway Player like Bernard, played his first-ever padded football game Saturday and had a quarterback hit. Sure, he was unblocked off the edge, but you saw the athleticism the Eagles loved when they signed the former rugby player from Kenya. Weru has a lot of developing to do, but he has clocked a 4.45-second 40-yard dash, a 41 1/2-inch vertical leap, and a broad jump of 11-2. If he flashes in more preseason action, will another team claim him if the Eagles waive him?
Much has been made about Bernard. The Eagles drafted him in the seventh round and signed Weru as an undrafted free agent. But they might have two players worth protecting come Aug. 30. We’ll see. Ahead of Weru, those five spots should be considered locks. Barring injury, don’t expect much movement here. It’s the top five guys, and then maybe Weru.
Cut: Chance Campbell, Deontae Lawson, Brandon George
There’s some buzz around Chance Campbell. Vic Fangio seems to like him. The 2022 sixth-round pick came off injury and was a well-liked member of the practice squad last year. He’s also having a good camp. But unless the Eagles want to cut Mondon, their own fifth-round draft pick from last season, it seems superfluous to keep five off-ball linebackers just for the heck of it. Mondon seems to be developing and is a solid special teamer. Trotter, meanwhile, probably starts on some NFL teams. There doesn’t seem to be a need to keep five players here.
We are going one fewer here than last time for a few reasons. Needs along the defensive line forced the hand a little, and there’s also some positional versatility in the defensive backfield that makes it unnecessary to roster six corners if there are other positions worth stretching. Michael Carter II, who is in a competition to start at safety, can be the backup nickel. DeJean will play safety in base. Jones, who is out right now with a shoulder injury, and McWilliams offer inside-out abilities. Ringo is the roster casualty here. He had a nice interception on Saturday, but also got beat for a touchdown.
Kelee Ringo intercepts a pass in the end zone to stop a Ravens drive late during a preseason game.David Maialetti / Staff Photographer
Safeties (4): Drew Mukuba, Marcus Epps, Michael Carter II, J.T. Gray
Cut: Cole Wisniewski, Andre’ Sam, Max Pulley, Kapena Gushiken
This position is getting pretty interesting. Wisniewski, a seventh-round pick, has been sidelined by a hamstring injury, and it’s hard to give him a roster spot right now. The new UDFAs, Gushiken and Pulley, have had their moments. Sam has been around the building on the practice squad for a few years. But we’ll give the fourth spot to Gray for now. The 30-year-old is an elite special teamer.
Special teams (3): Jake Elliott (kicker), Braden Mann (punter), Rocco Underwood (long snapper)
These are the only three specialists on the roster. Underwood has had a few snapping issues so far in camp, but the Eagles haven’t brought anyone else in. They could cut him on Aug. 30 and then find another snapper before Week 1.
