Decisions, Decisions

What should the Eagles do beyond this season?



I think we can safely say that the Eagles have to at the very least strip Andy Reid of his GM duties and move on from the McNabb era.

If your quarterback goes three seasons without leading his team to a 4th quarter comeback, continues to come up small in the big spots, and is injury prone then it's time to move on.

I defended McNabb until I was blue in my face. I did it last year when the team was throwing him under the bus and meanwhile he had little to no weapons to throw to.

But, the facts are the facts. McNabb comes up small in big spots. Years ago he used to come up with a big play by using his legs or finding the receiver when they needed it most. He was 50% of the reason why 4th and 26 became a reality and not fantasy.

Against the Giants in 2002 he came up big on Monday Night football when the Eagles had a 9-3 lead in the 4th quarter. But, he sealed the win with a 40 yard touchdown run.

He was a major reason why the Eagles were so successful in their early years of the Andy Reid regime. The other reason was their dominant defense.

Those years are in the past. It's been four years since this team was "that" team. They weren't even "that" team in 2006. This team was headed for a mediocre season before the defense woke up and Jeff Garcia played efficient football to lead the team into the playoffs.

Andy Reid, who for many years was great at preparing his teams is no longer that coach. And, his talent evaluation is sorely lacking. The years of bad drafts where they struck out on high draft picks like Jerome McDougle, L.J. Smith, Billy McMullen, Matt Ware, Reggie Brown, Matt McCoy, Ryan Moats, and Winston Justice have made this transformed this team into an also-ran.

And, those busts I mentioned were drafted between 2003-2006. Added to that, they were all drafted in the first three rounds.

The two drafts that were deathblows to the Eagles' team were the 2004 and 2005 drafts.

In 2004 and 2005 they ended up with just four quality players in Shawn Andrews, Mike Patterson, Todd Herremans (I'm being lenient there), and Trent Cole. The rest of the players are either out of the NFL or barely contributing to the team any longer (i.e. Considine).

Don't expect the Eagles to cut ties with Reid just yet though. He has three years remaining on his contract. They may take away his GM powers, much like the Seahawks did with Mike Holmgren.

Reid and McNabb have given us some great years of football and are their winningest coach and quarterback in franchise history, but 10 years has shown us they cannot get the job done.

I would cut ties with Reid completely if I were in Joe Banner's shoes and get Bill Cowher on the phone. And, perhaps entice Jimmy Johnson to come out of the Fox studio to handle GM duties.

We can wish can't we?

Two things are certain, Reid probably won't be the GM next year. And, McNabb won't be back.

Mark it down.