Andy Reid

Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie married Philadelphia resident Tina Lai in a private ceremony this weekend. Lurie, 61, announced last July that he and Christina Weiss Lurie were getting divorced after 20 years of marriage. Lai will have no official role in the Eagles organization. The wedding was attended by family and close friends. "I am happy and excited as Tina and I begin our lives together," Lurie said in a statement. Lai, 39, is from a family that owns restaurants in Philadelphia, including the Vietnam Restaurant in Chinatown and the Vietnam Cafe in University City.

YOU'VE NOTICED Andy Reid's mustache. It has grown since last season. It's bigger than Montana and we don't mean Joe. Sports Illustrated has gotten the story behind the mustache. Reid told the magazine that he stopped trimming the 'stache after the death of Andy Cheschelski, who was Reid's high school offensive line coach. Reid said that Cheschelski and Danny Hime, another of his high school coaches, both had large mustaches. When Cheschelski died, Reid told Hime he wanted to pay tribute to him by not trimming his mustache.

IN AN ANONYMOUS first-person plural, the Daily News editorial writers recently chose to criticize Andy Reid, albeit "gently. " His silence, the writers argued, was not "golden," they say. I would like to comment on those parents whose children have troubles. And I would like to call them "the Parents in God's First Orchestra. " They are the blessed ones. So often I have seen 24-hour parents toiling and anguishing away about what one waitress once explained to me was "that phone call.

ANDY REID hasn't said much to the press since his overhyped, underproducing Eagles ended the season at .500. But Reid broke his silence (somewhat) to Sixers.com's Matt Cord at the Sixers game Wednesday, answering some pretty unique questions - just not on anything that Eagles fans really wanted to hear. However, if you're an Andy fan, there were some interesting tidbits from Big Red. On the Sixers: "It's great to be here. This is an enjoyable product they are putting out here.

THEY BOOED Andy Reid the first time the Eagles took a lead yesterday. The 69,144 at Lincoln Financial Field booed, I suppose, because they had seen this movie one too many times, knew what was coming next, the way fans of horror flicks do. A sure touchdown had devolved into the worst kind of compromise: A 14-play, 88-yard drive that used almost 9 minutes of the clock provided just a field goal, just a two-point advantage over the New...

The office door would close softly behind him. The man who always worked, who never took a break, who essentially lived at the office, was leaving early. Andy Reid had to go see his sons. Every Thursday night for nearly two years, Reid would quickly eat dinner in his office and then put aside his job as the coach of the Philadelphia Eagles and drive, sometimes longer than an hour, to a prison. For one son, Reid had to go to three prisons. He was a very successful coach of a very successful franchise in the National Football League.

Andy Reid heard them. He heard them loud and clear. Four days after his son died and two days after he buried him, the Eagles coach walked onto the Lincoln Financial Field grass Thursday night for what was essentially a meaningless game. In their 2012 preseason opener, the Eagles starters played as if the game against the Pittsburgh Steelers had no significance. The team won, 24-23, on Alex Henery's 51-yard field goal with 12 seconds left. The Eagles won despite the futility of the starters, and they survived a scare - and the prospect of Mike Kafka as their starting quarterback - when an X-ray on Michael Vick's left thumb came back negative.

THE NEW YORK Jets' Rex Ryan is the NFL's most overrated coach, according to a poll of league players. Eagles coach Andy Reid was third in the voting, behind New England's Bill Belichick. The survey was conducted by the Sporting News, which polled 103 players from 27 teams. The players were not allowed to vote for their own coach. Ryan was named on 35 ballots, followed by Belichick (16), Reid (nine) and Washington Redskins coach Mike Shanahan (eight). The Pittsburgh Steelers' Mike Tomlin was fifth with four votes, followed by the St. Louis Rams' Jeff Fishers, San Francisco 49ers' Jim Harbaugh and San Diego Chargers' Norv Turner, who were tied for sixth with three votes each.

Donna Widmann, 37, a seventh-grade English teacher, was not thrilled by the announcement Tuesday that Andy Reid would again be the Eagles coach next season. "I know my whole family is not happy about it," Widmann said as she waited for a train at Suburban Station for a late-afternoon commute home to Chestnut Hill. However, other fans at the station were pleased with team owner Jeffrey Lurie's decision to keep Reid for a 14th season. "You just can't throw Andy under the bus," said Dwayne Green, 50, of Wilmington.

THE SUPPOSITION is that a team quickly will hire Andy Reid as its head coach for next season. Arizona appears eager to be that team. Arizona, the team that handed the Eagles three of their more painful losses since December of 2008; the team that visits Lincoln Financial Field this year. Can't beat 'em, join 'em. Let this serve as the Cardinals' caution, then: Reid was fired Monday because he authored the most absurd season a head coach has produced in recent professional sports history.

[ Clears throat ] . . . "Injuries . . . " Andy Reid opened most of his Eagles news conferences with the above intro, and after 14 years it became a part of the local lexicon and fodder for sports radio. It could be maddening at times, especially after a particularly difficult loss, but Reid's injury roll call served a purpose. He obviously wanted to control the message, and there were certainly times when he was less than forthcoming, but Reid's list kept speculation and error-prone reporting to a relative minimum.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That professional golf would be a lot more interesting if there were more feuds like the current one between Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia. It's a great game and peerless as a nap inducer on a nice Sunday afternoon, but everyone is always so mannered and gentlemanly that it lacks the snap a little good old-fashioned hatred can bring. Hockey players are nasty and basketball players are trash-talkers. Football players punch each other in the pileups and a baseball pitcher who doctors the ball with everything short of a chain saw is considered a wily competitor looking for an edge.

THE MUSIC Howie Roseman was happiest to hear from the Eagles' practice field this spring wasn't Nicki Minaj, Lupe Fiasco or even the Lumineers. It was the sound of Eagles players trumpeting their excitement over new coach Chip Kelly's changes. Roseman, who spoke to reporters yesterday at Lincoln Financial Field after participating in a Rothman Institute panel discussion of "The Impact of Sports," was asked if Kelly's loud, frenetic practices were as big an adjustment for him as they were for reporters, accustomed to the more staid style of 14-year coach Andy Reid.

This is a post by Les Bowen on Eagletarian, the Daily News' Eagles blog .   AT THE CONCLUSION of the Eagles' Academy for Men yesterday, at the indoor NovaCare field, participants' parting gifts included a posterized version of that amazing, reach-back onehanded catch Jason Avant made on the sideline Dec. 9 at Tampa Bay in the Birds' only post-September win. Interesting choice, in that new coach Chip Kelly has had Avant practicing some...

On any given day during the last several seasons you might have found five or six Eagles sprawled out in their locker stalls catching some midday zzzzs. In most cases, the players would build themselves a makeshift bed with pillow, their heads covered with a shirt or some other piece of clothing, their outstretched legs obstructing passage through the narrow lockerroom at the NovaCare Complex. There were other places to sleep - the lounge, the trainer's room - and, it seemed, plenty of opportunities for exhausted players to nap under Andy Reid.

"Andy and Tammy Reid are having a 'moving sale' and you're invited!" states a news release from Harriton High School in Rosemont. Eagles running back LeSean McCoy will also sign autographs as part the Saturday morning fund-raiser at the school attended by the five children of the ex-Eagles coach and his wife. Proceeds benefit Laurel House, a shelter and anti-domestic violence agency, and Harriton High football, with those donations made in the name of the Reids' son Garrett, who was found dead of a heroin overdose in his dorm room at Eagles training camp in August 2012.

THEY SAY GREAT minds think alike, but in the NFL, at least, that's not always the case. Take Bill Parcells and George Young. Parcells, who will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this summer, is one of the best coaches in NFL history. Young, who should be in Canton, was one of the best judges of football flesh the game has known. Young, who died in 2001, was the general manager of the Giants for 19 seasons (1979-97). Parcells worked for him as head coach for eight of those seasons (1983-90)

If Andy Reid were still the coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, there is no question what the team would do with the fourth pick of the NFL draft on Thursday night. Reid would request that the player-personnel department run by Howie Roseman take the biggest offensive tackle still available. That would have been a solid decision, just as it will be if Chip Kelly makes the same one, but it is also in keeping with the straight line of Reid's draft history. In nine of the 14 drafts with Reid as head coach, depending on which side of the ball required more attention that year, the Eagles took either an offensive or defensive lineman with their initial selection.

THE FIRST-YEAR coach who had the worst draft luck in Eagles history might have been Bert Bell. Bell, who helped found the franchise in 1933, took over as owner-coach in '36, just as the NFL adopted Bell's idea of a college draft. And Bell's Eagles got the first-ever pick, after going 2-9 in 1935. It was quite an opportunity. Bell used it on the first-ever Heisman Trophy winner, running back Jay Berwanger, of the University of Chicago. But Berwanger didn't want to play pro football, at least not for the Eagles.

At Oregon, Chip Kelly's ratio on offense was around 60-40. That's 60-40 in favor of the run . Andy Reid's run-pass disparity as Eagles coach was nearly the opposite. You can probably count on one hand the number of times Reid ran the ball 60 percent in a game during his last eight years here. The NFL is much different from the college game, as Kelly has been made aware of many times. But even if his run-pass ratio is more balanced in the pros, it is safe to assume that the Eagles will rush substantially more than under Reid.