He knows you probably don't care about his problems, or that it was a tough off-season. What you care about is winning.
In that case, Banner has some good news. He likes the way things came out.
"I feel this year we have the best roster in the league," Banner said. "That's assuming everyone is healthy and standing at the end. You can only make a statement like that on the first day of training camp. After that, anything can happen."
Football is a capricious game. Its most important players can disappear on any play, and its most important moments are not decided best-of-seven. The careful plans and preparations can be blown apart in an instant. But you already knew that.
Banner also said he thought the Eagles had the NFL's best roster in 2003 and 2004 and even last season - "as crazy as it sounds given the way the regular season went" - he said he thought the roster ranked among the top three in the league.
"You get humbled over the years, but since I've been working in the league I don't think the best team has won the Super Bowl any year," Banner said. "You get a ball bouncing the wrong way, a bad call from the ref, a windy day when you plan to throw a lot. You lose once. Even if you get to the playoffs, and it's a year where most people would say you did really good, you don't feel satisfied. There are just too many things out of your control."
In a way, the careful planning, the painstaking structuring of contracts and massaging of the salary cap that goes on in every NFL front office is exactly the opposite of the sometimes random events on the field. David Tyree did not plan to catch a football against his helmet. It just kind of happened.
