AS YOU WORK your way through the Eagles' locker room, it is easy to notice the void.
The question you ask isn't complicated:
Now that your team is 3-6 and all but eliminated from the playoff race, who steps up?
With a season of such promise smashed against the rock, which players are going to pull this unit together and convince it that the last seven games matter, that the team has to keep pushing through?
And there is the problem.
You pass by the quarterbacks, the defensive backs, the wide receivers, the defensive linemen, the offensive linemen.
You don't even think about the linebackers.
Heck, with David Akers sent packing, you can't even get any insight from a kicker.
There are only a precious few players on this roster who know what it is like to be an NFL champion.
There are only a handful who know what it is like to overcome adversity on the professional level.
The Eagles are in a free fall and there is hardly anyone in this locker room with the credentials to rally the troops together.
As you read the names on the locker stalls, there are only two or three names you realistically feel like it's worth your time to ask the question of.
The quarterback isn't one of them. Neither are the diva wide receiver or the big-ticket free-agent cornerback.
Only three Eagles - defensive end Cullen Jenkins, cornerback Asante Samuel and wide receiver Steve Smith - have won a Super Bowl. Obviously, it was not with the Birds.
Cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie is the only other Eagle to have played in a Super Bowl. Ironically, he was a rookie on the 2008 Arizona Cardinals team that beat the Eagles in the NFC Championship Game.
That's it, just four players and three of them are new to the Eagles this season.
"We're sitting here 3-6, and I think that can bring a team together because you realize that the only people you have to lean on is each other," said right tackle Todd Herremans.
But who goes to the center of the circle?
For most of Andy Reid's tenure as coach, the Eagles had a guy like Troy Vincent, Hugh Douglas, Jeremiah Trotter or Brian Dawkins - someone who could grab hold of the team in adverse times and say, "Enough is enough. We may not win it all, but we are damn sure going to fight like men."
There is no obvious candidate on this squad.
Wide receiver Jason Avant tried after the Eagles dropped a fourth straight game against Buffalo when he called that players-only meeting.
