Friday, Jul 4, 2008
If head coach Andy Reid doesn't junk his pass-first philosophy -- especially with his top receivers now grounded -- the Philadelphia Eagles will never be more than Super Bowl bridesmaids.
Aug 12, 2005 | As Todd Pinkston hit the grass last week, his Achilles tendon torn, the Philadelphia Eagles' chances of winning the Super Bowl this season took a severe blow. With one of their starting wide receivers from last year's NFC Championship team out for the season, the Eagles were suddenly dependent on petulant receiver Terrell Owens, whose demands for a new contract have poisoned his relationship with the team. On Wednesday, the Eagles suspended Owens for a week after a heated argument with head coach Andy Reid. Now the Eagles have to decide whether T.O. (for whom quarterback Donovan McNabb has a feeling that "borders on hate," according to Peter King of Sports Illustrated) will be around this year, whether his noxious presence would be worse than his absence.
There's a lot to dislike about how this has turned out. It's too bad that T.O.'s career in Philadelphia appears to be over because his first year with the Birds in 2004 -- from the boisterous love Philly fans showered on him to his outstanding performance on the field -- looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. With the psychologically disordered Owens trashing Eagles management and bad-mouthing McNabb on ESPN Thursday, it now looks almost certain that he will be traded or benched. Which is a shame, because otherwise the Eagles would begin the season with arguably the best, most complete team the organization has ever fielded. The worst thing about the rotting relationship between T.O. and the Eagles, however, is that it overshadows the greatest obstacle to the Andy Reid-era Eagles finally winning a Super Bowl: Andy Reid himself.
By leading the Eagles to four straight NFC Championship games, Reid has earned the respect and admiration of Eagles fans. But despite his role in making the team one of the elite franchises in professional sports, Reid is plagued by two character traits that may block the Eagles from going all the way. As a big-game strategist, Reid is a timid coach who becomes more conservative under pressure. And his aversion to running the football runs counter to everything that history has taught us about how teams win Super Bowls. Now that the Eagles are once again having personnel problems at wide receiver, their inability to move the chains on the ground could prove fatal to their Super Bowl ambitions.
Even before Owens went nuclear, Iggles fans entered the season with a nasty hangover. They'd limped away from the television after the Eagles' Super Bowl loss to the New England Patriots with lingering questions. Chief among them: Why Donovan McNabb has a habit of vomiting during big games, but more important, why the Eagles didn't show any urgency during the penultimate drive of the game. After all, they trailed by 10 points with less than six minutes to go. Where was the hurry-up offense? They finally did score a touchdown but by then there was not enough time to get the ball back from the Patriots and tie the game with a field goal.
But if Eagles fans thought they'd get some straight answers about what happened, they were mistaken. Vomitgate went unresolved, with different people giving different accounts. As for Reid's brain lock in the fourth quarter, he refused to answer the question after the game, then on Monday made one of the more cerebellum-paralyzing statements ever made by an NFL coach. Claiming that he didn't really remember the Eagles' tortoise crawl up the field, Reid told reporters that he had "put that away a little bit," as if he were repressing an unpleasant memory. Then he said he was done addressing the issue.
As Eagles fans regrouped during the offseason, they had every reason to be leery of their quarterback and head coach. Any Eagles fan who has paid attention over the past few years is painfully aware of the tics that pervade Reid's offensive play-calling -- the quick out pattern to the physically unimposing Todd Pinkston, for instance, which has maybe once gained more than 1 yard in all the times Reid has called it. But these idiosyncrasies are part of a larger pattern.
First, there's Reid's strange lack of chutzpah. For a man who loves the trick play and who has opened more than one game with an onside kick, he pulls his head into his shell in the pressurized atmosphere of the post-season. The Eagles' Sunday stroll in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl was not the first time that Reid lacked aggression in a high-stakes playoff game. The Eagles took their time developing a sense of urgency in their 14-3 loss to the Carolina Panthers in the 2004 NFC Championship Game, and in the 2003 championship game against the Buccaneers Reid declined to go for the jugular when the Eagles intercepted a Brad Johnson pass in Tampa Bay territory with a 7-3 lead in the first quarter. With the delirious crowd at Veterans Stadium howling for blood, Reid responded with ultra-conservative play-calling. The Eagles went three and out and wound up punting. That cleared the stage for Bucs wide receiver Joe Jurevicius, not known for his speed, to take a 10-yard crossing route on third down and, as Eagles fans watched in open-mouthed horror, race 71 yards down the sideline, setting up a 1-yard touchdown run by Michael Alstott. The Eagles never recovered.
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