No matter how many thousand Greenshirts decided it was time for Big Red to hit the road, it wasn't going to happen until guys named Dawkins, McNabb, Runyan, Thomas and Westbrook provided the body language and body actions that invariably point a coach toward the door.
It would be inaccurate to say that Reid has weathered the storm. Because the storm has weathered him. It was spawned in the Inter-Topical Conversation Zone, in newspapers, on call-in radio shows, in blogs, in sports bars, chat rooms, forums, all the places where Eagles talk is 24/7. It came ashore at the
NovaCare Complex headquarters as a Category 3-and-out, but it did not spawn there.
Oh, there might have been murmurs of discontent over the playcalling during the dreadful patch of football that threatened to doom the season, the Bengal tie that began a crisis measured in goal-line inches and red-zone feet, in call after call that seemed to defy football logic. Nobody could quite figure Andy's unwillingness to endorse a McNabb sneak on fourth-and-a-short-1 when the quarterback had looked like a tackling dummy all afternoon. And why so few running plays against the AFC's worst run defense?
But there was nothing I heard or read from the athletes that remotely could be construed as mutiny or even lukewarm sedition. Mainly, the athletes were saying quite honestly, "It's on us, all of us." And if that implicated the coaching staff, it was an honest assessment that caused even Reid to alter his own maddening modus of accepting 100 percent of the blame. No matter how many Eagles deserved singling out, special mentions and the kind of disdain Bill Parcells - the anti-Reid - seemed to delight in dishing out.
After the debacle in Baltimore against a Ravens team more than a million of us apparently took just a little too lightly, Reid said the coaches, particularly him, had to do a better job and - this was a breath of rare air - the players had to play better.
