Barkann didn't ask that, or about Roy Williams, or even about how a Super Bowl-aspiring team could enter the season with Tony Hunt and Dan Klecko as their fullback options.
Anyway, as far as I can tell, the basic theme of Banner's tour is that he feels your pain, understands your perennial frustrations this time of year and plans to do . . . well, nothing really.
No change of coach, no change of quarterback, no sacking of general manager Tom Heckert. He says you people are on board with that. Citing an outside organization hired by the team, he claimed, "The popularity of Andy Reid in this city is as high as any coach in any sport in the country.
"The popularity of Donovan McNabb is as high as any athlete almost anywhere ever here in Philadelphia."
Really, he said that.
So take that, Charlie Manuel and Brad Lidge.
In almost the next breath, though, while paralleling the careers of the Eagles coach to former Oakland Raiders coach John Madden, Banner said this:
"In Oakland, that got him elected to the Hall of Fame. In Philadelphia that gets Andy, at least from the public's perspective, uncertain about his job's future."
Which is it: Do we love the man more than any coach in America?
Or do we want him canned?
Banner seems to get caught often between what he should say and what he wants to say. Probably because he and Jeffrey Lurie came into town a decade-and-a-half ago with all that gold-standard hooey, he knows he has to say that anything less than a Super Bowl championship is unacceptable. So he does, repeatedly.
