With five games remaining, three rookies on the starting offensive line and a second-year quarterback behind them, the issue clearly is not whether the 18-year-old mark of 70 set by the Atlanta Falcons will fall, but by how many. At the current rate, the Eagles will allow 93 sacks this year - a staggering total of 23 more than any team has ever permitted, and 33 more than any Eagles club has yielded.
"The rate of sacks every game is atrocious," said guard Ron Baker, a nine-year veteran who was part of the 1980 Super Bowl team. "We had 3 in one game, but then it was 7, 6, 5, then the Dallas game it was 10, and Detroit was 11. That's really crazy.
"Hey, I'm a part of this offensive line. I can't hide behind a tree. I can't say, 'Oh, I was hurt that year.' If it happens, it happens. All I can say is, it's not something I'm going to be proud of."
And yet, it is easier to determine the historic nature of the Eagles' futility than it is to find one clear culprit. By some estimates, the front five has given up less than half of the 64 sacks allowed so far, with the running backs, tight ends, quarterbacks and even the wide receivers responsible for the rest.
But that hasn't stopped the questions, which have become more dogged and more annoying than the mob of hungry pass rushers that has greeted the overburdened Eagles on every stop of this treacherous season.
"I'm getting tired of all the same questions, over and over," bristled rookie guard Nick Haden. "I'm aware of the record every day I wake up. I was never on a team where I was involved in a record this poor. But we're not a bunch of losers in here, and we sure don't want to be. Our time's going to come.
"All of this talk is getting me mad because next year, when we give up the fewest sacks in the league, will we get a record? A pat on the back? We won't get bleep."
If Haden and his partners in grime who work the trenches every Sunday seem just a tad hostile these days, well, they are. In large part, they are the victims of their own inexperience and a seemingly endless series of changes resulting from injuries and from coach Buddy Ryan's relentless search for a combination of blockers that will work.
Haden, center Matt Darwin and tackle Joe Conwell weren't starters when the season began, and they had never played in a regular-season NFL contest before this year. Ken Reeves has moved from guard to tackle, with predictably erratic results, and Baker has readily conceded that this is far from his finest year.
"If you look at the makeup of our team, it's going to be a big part of anybody's defensive plan just to blitz the hell out of us," noted Conwell, who was with the USFL champion Baltimore Stars last year.
"First of all, it's because of youth. Young guys are going to have more trouble picking up blitzes. That's just a fact of life. And secondly, even the older guys haven't worked together long enough with the young players to develop the cohesiveness to make the kind of split-second decisions you have to make."
As is his nature, Haden summed up the problem even more succinctly: "It's not exactly a secret that some of us are still wet behind the ears. Some of us don't even shave."
Baker said he couldn't really determine whether the line had shown any signs of improvement - or any indications of long-term promise - because there had been so many changes, but he maintained that there had been no lack of effort.
In fact, he insisted that even at the end of some of the most humiliating games, the young linemen have shown an ability to block out their disappointment with far more success than they have their opponents.
But the consistency of protection that was considered so important to the team before the season - and is one major reason that the Eagles have a 3-8 record right now - has eluded and confounded them.
"This year has taught me that there's really a fine line between a quarterback sack and a touchdown pass," Conwell explained. "Anybody who tells you any different is full of bleep. We just watched a film of Denver and Seattle, and on one play, Seattle had good pressure from the defensive end, so (quarterback John) Elway moved up two steps in the pocket and was this far from getting sacked when he threw a long pass for a touchdown.
"We've had that kind of frustration here all year. Last week I gave up an obvious sack in a crucial situation. It was a stupid thing I did - bad feet, bad hands. I also gave up two hits on the quarterback in the first half.
"But I knew I could block that guy. I really knew it. If you go in there and the guy just beats the tar out of you, and you get to feel defenseless, then you might not want to come out again. But it hasn't been that way."
And that's one reason that this record will be especially hard to accept, according to Conwell. It shouldn't happen, but it's almost certainly going to happen - and maybe in an extraordinary way.
"It's embarrassing," he said, lowering his eyes. "You don't want to put your signature on that. I know I don't want my signature on it. But we can't let ourselves dwell on it. We've got more important things to think about than whether we're going to be labeled with an embarrassing record."
Haden said his own frustration built to such a point late in the Detroit game that he began to seek out Lions linebacker Vernon Maxwell, for no other reason than to deliver a message to the opponent and to the league.
Maxwell had been shadowing Eagles quarterback Randall Cunningham all day, so Haden decided to pick his spot. "It's true that by the end of the game, I wanted to take a couple of shots at people - not cheap shots, just shots," he said. "I wanted to let them know that we were still there.
"Well, I remember one time I had a chance to get (Maxwell). He was a guy who had shot his mouth off the whole game. So I said to myself, 'I'm going to get a shot in and let him know who I am.' Now he knows who I am."
Alas, when the Eagles break the record, so will everybody else.
