Cullen Jenkins

Seven games remain and the playoffs are still a mathematical possibility, but Eagles general manager Howie Roseman is making a list, and it's full of well-paid veterans who could be out of jobs come the offseason. The Eagles are projected to be about $18 million over the salary cap for 2013. Even if they carry over some of the $22 million they're under the cap this season, they will be looking to dump salaries and renegotiate contracts (offer pay cuts). The majority of the team's starters are under contract for next season, with cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie the one notable exception.

THE EAGLES are only a laugh track short of a situation comedy right now. At one point on Thursday night, they lost fumbles on three consecutive plays and four plays out of five - and I, for one, can never forgive myself for having typed the words "Bryce Brown" and "Steve Van Buren" in the same sentence a couple of weeks ago. Besides the fumbles, they also managed to draw a penalty for something no one had ever heard of - calling disconcerting signals...

It was so much simpler when Joe Banner was around. He was the cartoon villain with the black cape and the twitchy mustache. If the Eagles did something coldhearted or tone-deaf or just plain arrogant, Banner got the blame. Fans, media, radio talk-show hosts had their bad guy. So now what, now that Banner and his black hat are in Cleveland? It was Howie Roseman who stuck a second shiv into the back of defensive tackle Mike Patterson on Wednesday. It was Roseman, the general manager touted as a kinder and gentler contract negotiator, who slashed Patterson's pay in August and then deprived him of more money by putting him on the non-football illness reserve list.

A change was inevitable, and more moves are still to come, but with two broad strokes the Eagles made over their defense. The first brush began two weeks ago, when defensive tackles Mike Patterson and Cullen Jenkins were released. It continued on Tuesday, when Nnamdi Asomugha was cut, and a day later, when his counterpart at cornerback and in crimes against defense, Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie, signed with the Broncos. But the canvas was repainted when the Eagles signed eight free agents - seven of whom are defensive players - in a span of 48 hours last week.

When he looked at the team he inherited from Ray Rhodes in 1999, Andy Reid was appalled by the lack of talent on the offensive side of the ball. "The cupboard was bare," he said a few years later, after restocking well enough to make the Eagles a perennial playoff team. Lo these many years later, Chip Kelly has begun trying to rebuild the team he inherited from Reid. This time, the cupboard was bare on the defensive side, and Kelly has already gone about addressing that. That first offseason, Reid simply had to add inventory: wide receivers Torrance Small and Charles Johnson, offensive linemen Lonnie Palelei and Jeff Dellenbach, tight end Luther Broughton, and stopgap quarterback Doug Pederson.

It is the unavoidable nature of the situation, both for football reasons and otherwise, that Andy Reid will be under more scrutiny this season than at any time in his coaching career with the Eagles. We can pretend otherwise and emulate his narrow focus on the day at hand, but the past is prelude for all of us, and for none more so than Reid. The threads are interwoven between the professional and the private man, as they are in some ways for everyone who chooses a job in the public eye. Losing football games is not worth mentioning in the same breath as greater losses in one's life, but the fact is that Reid has suffered losses on the field and off. He is a long way from the bristle-cut redhead who came to town two months shy of his 41st birthday and began directing a narrow course that was as tightly drawn as that of Ray Rhodes had been haphazardly scrawled.

At 5:23 p.m., with the game tied in the second quarter, rookie quarterback Nick Foles took his first regular-season NFL snap after entering the game to a big ovation. With a woozy Michael Vick unable to continue, Andy Reid had finally been forced into making a move he had avoided for weeks. Vick left with a concussion. Foles could not save the game. There may be nothing that can save this Eagles season or Reid's job. Foles helped the Eagles to a 17-10 third-quarter lead before the team unraveled in the fourth quarter and allowed two defensive touchdowns and a special teams touchdown in a 38-23 loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday.

No player on the Eagles knows for certain whether Sunday will be Andy Reid's final home game in Philadelphia. If it is, the players want fans to understand that they support him - and that the fans should appreciate Reid's 14 years in Philadelphia. "If you sat here and tried to name five to eight coaches that are better than Coach Reid, I would like to hear them," running back LeSean McCoy said. "I guess people have their own opinions, and their minds are made up. I think the thing about the team is, we know how good of a coach he really is. " McCoy said that Reid "gets blamed for everything" - the coach also takes responsibility for everything - but that an examination of the team's shortcomings this year will reveal mistakes that are the faults of the players, not the coach.

The Eagles locker room seems happier this season as opposed to last. Winning will do that. Despite the popular perception four months ago after Joe Banner stepped down as team president, the locker room didn't suddenly turn into Tijuana when general manager Howie Roseman formally assumed the handling of all contract matters. Roseman had been in charge, really, as far back as February. He, with Jeffrey Lurie's blessing and Andy Reid's counsel, engineered contract extensions for four key members of the Eagles.

DOWN THE row of lockers, Jason Babin was talking about his greatest hope for the Eagles' defense - "what I want for Christmas," he said - is to create such a nasty persona for this group that opponents actually fear them. To which, Cullen Jenkins smiled. "I'm more of a nicer guy," he said. As it turns out, it takes a village to dismember a quarterback. And if Trent Cole is a bundle of lethal emotion, and Babin is a funny, sarcastic assassin, Jenkins is more of the even, stable, relentless center.