Think what you want about head coach Andy Reid and offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg, but past results have shown that once they get all the players they're counting on healthy, they'll figure a way to get this offense working efficiently.
And whether it's fair or not, if the late Johnson were still the Eagles defensive coordinator, we'd think much the same way about the defensive side of the game.
But we don't know what McDermott is yet. We can believe that he has been properly prepared for this role, but we don't how he's going to perform.
We don't have enough empirical evidence to know if the Eagles' defensive lapses in the first two preseason games are easily correctable with proper adjustments and execution or a sign of something more troublesome.
"I do," McDermott said yesterday when asked if he thought he is where he needs to be as a defensive coordinator at this stage. "I feel like I'm on schedule in terms of my development.
"It's important that, just like the players, we need to make progress and that includes me, that I develop continually with each week and with each game. As I mentioned before, my second call is better than my first, and my third game is better than my second."
That all may be true, but the problem is that whatever McDermott and his defense have been doing, it hasn't been good enough. And if it doesn't get better in the next few weeks, this defense is going to be in for a lot of hurt come Sept. 13 when the Eagles open the regular season at the Carolina Panthers.
You can say what you want about the insignificance of preseason games. You can even point out that the Eagles faced future Hall of Fame quarterbacks Tom Brady and Peyton Manning in those first two games.
