It's Only A Matter Of Time Before The Philadelphia Eagles Lose Jake Elliott To Professional Pickleball
I've blogged about this before but I'll say it again--every friend group has that one guy who is annoying awesome at seemingly every game. It doesn't matter if you're playing pick up basketball, cornhole, golf, whatever. This guy is somehow a dog in all of them and just kicks everybody's ass in any competition.
Jake Elliott is that guy for the Philadelphia Eagles. Not only is he a Super Bowl winning kicker with one of the best legs in the NFL, but he's probably flirting around the line of being a scratch golfer. Anytime the Eagles social media team puts out a video asking guys in the locker room "who is the best ______", the answer is almost always 75% Jake Elliott.
And now from the looks of this video, he's an absolute menace on the pickleball court. The behind-the-back shot was obviously ridiculous, and the hand-eye to pull that off is insane. But the truth about that shot is that anybody can get lucky once. What really shows me that Jake Elliott is a freak is the touch on that backhand dink after pulling off that shot. That's not a guy who just got extremely lucky on a desperation shot--that's a guy who knows what he's doing out there. He clearly didn't just pick up a pickleball paddle for the first time over the weekend.
There's more and more money getting pumped into pickleball each year. These guys are all signing six-figure contracts. That's still a far cry from the $6 million per year the Eagles give to Jake Elliott to make him the highest paid kicker in the league, but maybe Jake is getting bored just drilling 60-yarders in his sleep. Maybe he's ready for a new challenge. He already looks like he's a solid 4.0 player with the raw talent to be 5.0+. All I'm saying is that we are going to see Jake Elliott compete in a pro pickleball tournament at some point in life. Might not be tomorrow, but it certainly won't be never. Maybe he'll be playing with Nick Foles.
Sidenote: Everybody who has never played pickleball before always swears they could be a professional pickleball player if you gave them a month to practice. Then they go out there and get their shit shoved in by someone's grandma because it turns out they actually have no idea how to play the game. The game gets so much disrespect because every jackass who played a varsity sport in high school thinks they're a better athlete than they actually are. Jake Elliott isn't one of those guy.