Just another Groundhog Day with Andy Reid

IT'S THE QUESTION we get asked most, especially when Mondays follow Sundays like this past one. People ask why bother attending Andy Reid's day-after press conference when your why and how questions invariably invoke "just because" answers, when you invariably leave the room with less enlightenment than when you entered, that ol' Groundhog Day feeling once again.

Joe Banner said it best years ago, when he issued his definition of insanity as repeating the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result. Yet there we were again yesterday, each trying to formulate that question that could not be answered with a yes, no, or we'll see, to somehow unearth that dam-breaking question that will release a flood of explanations, muting perhaps the fan frustration about a grossly underachieving 3-6 team.

A frustration that Reid again claimed yesterday to understand, even as he once again stoked it with vanilla answers to specific questions.

"Surrender Andy," read the latest edition of a banner situated across the entrance of the Eagles' NovaCare practice facility and through midday no Eagles player this time around had intimidated its removal. After another Sunday fourth-quarter, homefield surrender - this time to a two-win team - to do so would seem to invite further ridicule, especially as questions about the Eagles' game-day toughness are revived.

Or maybe, deep in the recesses of their minds and what's left of their hearts, the players too have doubts about Reid's effectiveness going forward, especially inside the current Reid-Banner-Howie Roseman management dynamic that one of the team's tainted stars, Asante Samuel, recently likened to a fantasy-league operation.

In one of these Mondays earlier this season, Reid spoke about how the NFL is all about games decided by seven points or less; that good, bad and great fall inside such margins. Well, in the 10 seasons before Jim Johnson passed away - discounting Reid's first season as a mulligan - the Birds were 42-32-1 in such games. They are 6-10 in the two seasons since, including a 1-5 mark this year.