Eagles need action, not Reid's hollow words

Great assessment of Andy Reid by local sports journalist, from yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer....


By Ashley Fox

Inquirer NFL columnist

Until the Eagles actually score a go-ahead touchdown to win a close game in the final couple of minutes, I'm done believing anything Andy Reid has to say. It's all just meaningless words now, non-explanations, catchphrases, and taking responsibility for things that don't make any sense.
Apparently, after losing yet another NFC East game by single digits, Reid thinks the Eagles are just fine. He knows what he's got. There's plenty of time left. He's got the pieces he needs.

The only addendum to Reid's normal postmortem yesterday after a 36-31 loss to the New York Giants was this: "We all need to step it up here now another notch down the stretch."

Seems when you "lose three games by three feet," you have to make sure that you work things out and get that taken care of. At least that's what Reid said.

Whatever.

In the battle of potential vs. production, I'm taking production right now. And the Eagles' production is this: five wins, four losses, zero wins in the NFC East, resulting in a spot in the divisional cellar right next to the Dallas Cowboys.

That road to the NFC championship? It doesn't run through Philadelphia anymore. In case those inside the protective gates of the NovaCare Complex haven't realized it, that road hasn't run through here in a while.

While Reid chose to focus on how the coaches could do things "schematically" to put the players in better positions, the reality is not pretty.

The Eagles are 0-3 against their biggest rivals and 0-4 this season in close games. They can't gain 1 measly yard when they have to have it. They can't get a big stop when they need one. They can't stop the run. They're getting manhandled at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. Their coach is calling desperate challenges.

And now, in the latest troubling trend that has developed over the last two weeks, the Eagles can't run the football. Brian Westbrook has had back-to-back insignificant performances. Blame the scheme, or blame the player, but the Eagles' most dangerous weapon has been a nonfactor two weeks in a row.

But everything is A-OK. Just listen to the head coach, who knows more than anyone else in town because, you know, he's the head coach and he's been the head coach for the last 10 years. It's going to be fine because Reid knows what he's got. It's no time to panic. There's plenty of time left.

"I know what I have as far as coaches and players, and I know what we have to do," Reid said yesterday. "And we're going to go do it."

Sure you are. Maybe against the 1-8 Cincinnati Bengals. But what about against the Giants again? Or the Redskins again? Or the Cowboys again?

The Eagles' five wins this season have been against teams that, as of Monday, were 18-26. Their four losses have been against teams that are 24-12. The meaning in that is simple: The Eagles can beat the less-competitive teams, but they're toast against the winners.

That means the Birds are in the middle of the pack, at best. And really, is that any better than being, say, St. Louis? Not here.

While he did make the players report for work yesterday - something that hasn't happened on a Monday in a while - Reid seemed to have determined, after what had to be a sleepless night in his office, that the Eagles' glass is half-full.

Pointing to the positives in the game, Reid said that he was happy that "when the Giants were in a passing situation" - and boy, they didn't need to be often - the Eagles' defense was "able to pressure Eli, hit Eli and sack Eli." The truth is, the Giants rumbled right over the Eagles, gaining 219 rushing yards so that Eli Manning didn't have to be perfect with the passing game. Sure, the Eagles pressured Manning from time to time, but he had plenty of time to step into his throws, and the reality is the Eagles sacked him once and he had 31 pass attempts.

Reid also said that the Eagles' offensive line did "an excellent job of protecting the quarterback." True enough. But where was the run blocking? Keeping the quarterback upright is great, but how about providing Westbrook a few holes? He gained 26 yards on 13 carries. And when the Eagles really needed 1 yard late in the game, Westbrook couldn't get it because he had nowhere to go.

But at least McNabb was on his feet.

Everything else Reid said was pretty much a blur about taking responsibility for this and putting guys in a better position to do that and some overused blather about doing something or other schematically. It's now the scheme, and the execution of the scheme. How insightful.

Until the Eagles get a meaningful win - and Cincinnati, Baltimore and Arizona don't count - I'm not buying any of it. Show me, don't tell me. If you can't do that, don't bother with anything else.

Ulcer Alert #9

Why It’s Still a Race

Wednesday, October 29, 2008 8:45 AM
By Howard Fineman

Here’s all you need to know about Sen. Barack Obama and his campaign. He taped his half-hour TV special, which airs across your dial at 8 p.m. Eastern tonight, last week.

Now, a week is a year and a year is a lifetime in presidential campaigns. But it is characteristic of Obama to plan ahead in the heat of the battle. The cool, collected senator has known from the start (nearly two years ago) pretty much what he has wanted to say. He kept his eyes on the prize. The small stuff didn’t distract him.

That is why his campaign and its staff, which I have checked in with twice in the last week here in Chicago, remain relatively calm as they head into the final lap of a national NASCAR race that has not quite turned into the rout that history and other factors would lead you to predict.


By all accounts and by all odds, Obama is fairly comfortably ahead in the Electoral College—which, as Al Gore will tell you, is what matters.

On TV Wednesday night, Obama will give what one aide described to me as a “meaty” discourse on his basic tax and health-care proposals. No high-flown rhetoric, but rather a briefing paper for wary undecided swing voters---most of whom, the campaign thinks, are “soft Republicans” who kind of want to vote for Obama but need reassurance.

And yet, in the meantime, Sen. John McCain has not quite disappeared in the rear-view mirror.

I find that astonishing. And, if you are in the Obama campaign, you have to find that at the very least a teeny bit troubling in these last days.

Let me repeat the following litany, just for the sake of wonder if nothing else:

Consumer confidence is at an all-time low. The job performance rating of the outgoing Republican president is at Nixon-Carter levels. Nine out of ten voters think the country is off on the wrong track. The Democrats lead in the generic congressional preference vote by a double-digit margin.

Obama has outspent McCain on TV advertising three or four to one (though McCain is matching him in some key states here at the end). Obama has four thousand paid organizers in key states, an unheard of number. Most voters think that McCain’s running mate is not qualified to be president. Many people wonder aloud if McCain is in fact too old (72) to be president. Much of the media coverage of Obama has been fawning to say the least, and with good reason. He is one of the most winsome, charismatic candidates to have appeared on the scene in decades.

Still, in today’s “traditional Gallup” Daily Tracking Poll (the one that screens likely voters most rigorously, based on past votes), Obama leads McCain by only two percentage points, 49 to 47 percent.

Here in Chicago, they say that they expected a close race at the end, as one staffer put it. They are steady as she goes on ad spending, and they are fighting the end game on Red State turf, which is what the frontrunner does. They scoff at the idea that McCain could win Pennsylvania, and they are almost certainly right about that.

It’s hard to make the Electoral College numbers add up for McCain. He has to win all of the current tossup states (Montana, North Dakota, Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina and Florida), plus Ohio and Virginia and one of the following three: New Hampshire, Colorado or New Mexico. That isn’t just drawing one inside straight; that’s
drawing a whole casino’s worth of them.

Why hasn’t Obama run away with this?

Because the country remains culturally divided. Because the more it looks like Democrats will score huge gains in Congress, the more worried “soft Republican” voters get. Because McCain has succeeded, in the minds of some of those voters, in raising the hoary specter of “tax-and-spend” liberals. Because Obama hails from a place (South Side Chicago) and background (the son of professional academics) more reminiscent of Democratic losers like Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry than winners like LBJ, Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton. Because some voters remember the hate-filled sound bites of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

And, to a degree we cannot measure and may never fully know, because Obama is an African-American---and one with a Swahili name at that.

There is nothing that the staffers here in Chicago can do about any of that at this point. Up on the 11th floor of the office building here, staffers are hard at work. They aren’t thinking about those things. Their campaign manager, David Plouffe, won’t let them. “We expected this to tighten,” one of them said to me a few hours ago.

And so, it seems, it has.