Maybe it's fairest to say there are different degrees of commitment, and that throwing in the towel is rarely an across-the-board thing. I doubt they took a vote in the locker room and decided to dial down the effort. But if you were to say there are guys on this defense who seem to have lost confidence in, and hope for, what they are trying to do, the flow of the last two games certainly sustains that view.
A big chunk of what we saw Thursday night had to do with Young. A team doesn't play hard when the quarterback isn't giving it a chance to win, and Young did not give the Eagles a chance to win in Seattle. In fact, there were some games very much like this one in 2005, when Mike McMahon was the quarterback after Donovan McNabb really ripped up the sports hernia he'd been playing with. (One of those hopeless games was in prime time against the Seahawks, strangely enough.) When the most important guy on the field, the one who gets the ball every snap, keeps giving it to the other team, spirits droop. Doesn't have a lot to do with the coach, unless players are thinking that the coach must be an idiot for playing this quarterback.
The quitting question is so big because it might determine whether Andy Reid gets another season to turn this mess around. The brass is not eager to fire Reid, after 13 years, with all this high-priced weaponry assembled, talent and schemes that might not suit the next coach. But if the product doesn't look a lot better, starting this coming Sunday at Miami, keeping Reid will become the hardest sell Eagles management has tried to make since the short-lived ban on carrying hoagies into the Linc.
Opinions will be formed about more than just Reid in these final four games, with all reasonable hope of the playoffs gone. Here is a stab at the players with the most to lose and the most to gain before the curtain comes down on the Eagles' season New Year's Day against the Redskins:
Five with most to gain:
