West Coast Offense

Before anyone starts shoveling dirt on the West Coast offense, it seems fair to check to see whether it still has a pulse. It's easy to assume that Bill Walsh's brainchild has seen its best days. A quick look around the NFL reveals 1999 to be, at the very least, a down year for teams running variations of the offense Walsh perfected in San Francisco. Or is it merely a good year for offenses that are too busy making big plays to bother with Walsh's precision, short-passing game?

There's nothing new about the Eagles dropping their expectations and going with a remedial version of their original offense. So why did the Detroit Lions act so surprised? It happened in each of Jon Gruden's three seasons as the team's offensive coordinator. In 1995, when Ray Rhodes and Gruden first tried to bring a West Coast-style offense to Philadelphia, the team got off to a 1-3 start and reverted to what Gruden fatalistically dubbed the "Jersey Shore" offense. By handing the ball to Ricky Watters and Charlie Garner 30 times a game, the Eagles were able to go 9-3 the rest of that season and make the playoffs.

There it was, a cultural change in progress. Early on, the Nebraska Cornhuskers had the ball, first and goal, at Pittsburgh's 4-yard line. The call came into the huddle. Pass. Second and goal. Pass. Third and goal. Pass. "You're Nebraska. Run the ball," said a Nebraska sportswriter up in the press box at Heinz Field yesterday after the Huskers quarterback was sacked, two passes were dropped, and Nebraska had to kick a field goal. He was joking. Sort of. Maybe. Adjustments are being made.

Dana Bible, who is expected to replace Jon Gruden as Eagles offensive coordinator, has worked alongside some of the top practitioners of the so-called West Coast-style offense. An Eagles official confirmed yesterday that Bible will get the job. Bible, 44, spent the last three seasons as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Stanford University. He has been in coaching on the collegiate and pro levels since 1976, but this job would be by far his most visible and demanding.

This description of a physically gifted quarterback struggling to grasp the West Coast offense ought to sound familiar to Eagles fans: "Even with his tremendous athletic ability, he really had a tough time with that system. He wasn't throwing to receivers who were open. He was forcing passes. He was taking off and running with the ball when guys were wide open. " Yet Guy Benjamin, the former 49ers quarterback who knows Bill Walsh and the offensive system he conceived as well as anyone, was not discussing Randall Cunningham's performance so far in this new and complicated Eagles attack.

Speed, while certainly a good thing, is not the only thing. At least not for wide receivers in the West Coast-style offense the Eagles run. "That's not an absolute must," coach Andy Reid said last week. "We don't have to have a blazer. " It is widely assumed the Eagles will take at least one receiver high in this weekend's NFL draft. While fans clamor for a track star, the coaches are more interested in overall football ability. "If we decide to draft a receiver, I want a good receiver," Reid said.

There is a chicken-or-egg element in the relationship between the West Coast offense and the great tight ends who have played in it. Does it take a great tight end to make the offense work, or does the offense make tight ends look great? If the former is the answer, the Eagles are probably another draft away from getting their offense where they need it to be. If it's the latter, if a well-run offense will create opportunities for the tight ends, the Eagles can get by with the guys on the roster.

The Eagles' new offensive coordinator, Dana Bible, said yesterday that next season's offense won't be much different from the one Jon Gruden ran for three seasons. The Birds introduced Bible yesterday, and the former offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Stanford University said straight off that he planned few radical changes to the West Coast offense that Gruden developed. "Naturally, it will take on the personality of myself and the offensive coaches," Bible said in a conference call from his office at Stanford.

If Bill Walsh happened to catch on TV the Eagles' 20-17 victory over the Dallas Cowboys Sunday, he probably wondered at least two things. The first thing he probably wondered was how in the world Barry Switzer ever got a license to coach in the National Football League. The second thing he probably wondered was what exactly the Eagles have done to his offense. Walsh, as you probably are aware, is the inventor of the high-tech West Coast offense, or at least the guy who perfected it. The Eagles claim to use the West Coast offense.

There were no surprises among the eight roster cuts the Eagles announced yesterday, which brings them from 75 to 67 players. They must get to the regular-season limit of 53 by 6 p.m. today. Released were: wide receivers Bam Childress and Jamal Jones, cornerbacks Therrian Fontenot and Nick Graham, running back Ryan Moats (waived/injured), safety Marcus Paschal, offensive lineman Stefan Rodgers and linebacker Pago Tagofau. Once Moats gets over the high ankle sprain he suffered at the end of the Patriots' preseason game, it will be interesting to see if someone takes a shot with the 2005 third-round pick.

MY DAILY NEWS colleague Rich Hofmann is much better at this than I am. Over the last decade, he has made a point of debunking the popular notion that Eagles coach Andy Reid and offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg are pass-happy maniacs with no regard for the running game. Hofmann concedes that the Eagles throw a lot, but he has always said that when judging the Birds' perceived lack of commitment to run, you have to understand the overall philosophy of the offense.

AS LONG AGO as the last century, it turns out, there was a hint Ryan Nassib had a fascination with Orange. Now, the 6-2, 230-pound redshirt junior from Malvern Prep is eagerly preparing for his second season as Syracuse University's starting quarterback. But in 1998, even before he began playing football, his name could be found in a newspaper and he was asking quite the question. How do they make Cheetos? Nassib was then a student at a grade school, Ss. Simon & Jude, in the town where he still resides, West Chester, and, as part of a class project, he fired off questions to the Inquirer for a column called "Kids' Talk.

E SPN THE MAGAZINE is relaunching with a Sept. 5 edition it bills as being completely about Michael Vick. Some of the subjects assayed seem pretty familiar to a Philadelphia audience, which has pondered the Vick ponderables for 2 years now. One piece is about how there is no middle ground, you either think Vick is a terrible person or you think he was given too harsh a sentence. (I think there is room for middle ground there, but that probably wouldn't make a compelling story.)

Colt McCoy, a guy a lot of football insiders questioned when he came out of Texas a year ago, looked poised and comfortable running Cleveland's new West Coast offense in the preseason opener on Saturday night. Turns out that McCoy had gone to Hattiesburg, Miss., during the lockout to get tips on the West Coast offense from none other than Brett Favre. (Tell me Browns president Mike Holmgren didn't have something to do with that!) During the one-day break in the lockout in April, McCoy scooted into Browns headquarters to get new coach Pat Shurmur's playbook.

It's funny how these things come around. Twelve years ago, Jeff Lurie and Joe Banner interviewed four candidates for the Eagles' head coaching vacancy. Three of them - Dom Capers, Jim Haslett, and Willie Shaw - were defensive coaches, as was Ray Rhodes, the man they sought to replace. The fourth (and really the only serious candidate) was Andy Reid, acolyte of the pass-first West Coast offense as created by Bill Walsh and interpreted by Mike Holmgren. Reid was the only serious candidate because Lurie and Banner saw the trend.

ANDY REID spent seven seasons in Green Bay freezing his ample butt off and learning the West Coast offense from one of its master practitioners, Mike Holmgren. The screen pass was a staple of Holmgren's offense in Green Bay, and when Big Red struck out on his own in 1999, he brought along both his ex-boss' offense and his fondness for the screen to Philadelphia. Found the perfect screen receiver 3 years after he arrived here when he drafted versatile Brian Westbrook in the third round of the 2002 draft.

When Andy Reid made the stunning decision to bench Kevin Kolb in favor of Michael Vick, a prevailing feeling among some observers was that he was just like one of the con men in his favorite film, The Sting. For months, the Eagles' coach and his lieutenants sold the idea that Kolb would step effortlessly under center and run the West Coast offense as it was originally intended. The quarterback would take a three-step drop and zip the ball to one of his "young gun" targets, or he would play-action pass and heave a bomb skyward to his speedy receivers.

Jerome Harrison thought he had a bright future in Cleveland after rushing for 561 yards in the Browns' final three games last season. He thought wrong. The Browns were so impressed by Harrison's prolific late-season production that they went out and traded for one running back - Peyton Hillis - and drafted another - Montario Hardesty. They were so impressed that, on Wednesday, they traded the 5-9, 205-pound running back to the Eagles for Mike Bell. "I'm happy to be here," said Harrison, just before going out for his first practice with his new team.

As Kevin Kolb tries to clear the cobwebs from his head, everyone in Philadelphia is playing the "what if" game. What if he misses this week's game against the Lions and also next week's game against Jacksonville? What if Mike Vick goes out in his place and lights it up in both of those games, running and throwing for a bunch of yards and leading the Eagles to back-to-back victories? What then? Who will be their quarterback in Week 4 against the Redskins - Vick or Kolb? Andy Reid, of course, suggests we all stick our what-ifs where the sun don't shine.

Great Valley football fans will see a new look from the Patriots this season, as first-year coach Mike Choi has shaken things up, particularly on offense. If comments from some of the 70 candidates who reported to preseason practices are an indicator, the new offense is a popular change. Choi decided to shift from the wing-T to a pro set after he was chosen to succeed former boss and veteran coach Gary Phillips in February. Phillips' contract was not renewed after 17 seasons. "It took us a little while to install the offense.