It's Time for Change in Philadelphia

I really don’t know how much more of this I can take. Even my optimism will eventually run out.

After years and years of constantly defending the Reid-McNabb era as always being right there, just a tweak or two away from a Super Bowl title, a break or two from finally breaking their string of coming up short in the big game, I can no longer do it. I’m officially done.

At some point it can’t be about what the Eagles don’t have and the breaks they haven’t gotten and the calls that the refs have blown. At some point it has to reflect on the two guys at the foundation.

I love Andy Reid and Donovan McNabb (most of the time). But I really can’t take any more of these playoff defeats. I need something new.

I should have known this day was coming earlier in the week when I had this feeling of impending doom surrounding this game, because even though I wanted to convince myself that the Eagles were going to come out with a different gameplan, that Jason Peters and Winston Justice would earn the money they don’t deserve and the secondary might considering jamming receivers instead of giving 8 yard cushions on 3rd and 3, I couldn’t do it.

So I was already preparing my generally logical assessment of the Eagles after their annual playoff loss around Tuesday: “I know that we are really one-dimensional with a defense that comes up small in the big games with a pretty inconsistent quarterback who likes throwing the ball at receivers feet and a coach who refuses to call timeouts, go for two, and go for fourth downs at the right time, but we are just 2 players away!” I think I’m going to stop lying to myself for once and say it loud, kind of like the Chappelle Show Black Bush skit.

“Can I be real son,” “Be real son,” “The Eagles cannot win a Super Bowl with Andy Reid and Donovan McNabb,” “Say it loud” “THE EAGLES CAN’T WIN A SUPER BOWL WITH REID AND MCNABB!”

I never wanted to be that typical Philly guy who called for the head of McNabb and Reid after every big playoff loss. I genuinely believed in this “process” and “system” and thought that we had what it took to get it done when it mattered most because all it takes is one time to get it done. And that they would eventually get it done because that’s what quality people like Reid and McNabb eventually do.

As successful as they have been in the regular season, all the wins they have accumulated, all that really means nothing. Because it is finally apparent to me that these two just don’t have the championship formula.

Something about the way they play (never running the ball, only being able to score off the big play, inability to stop the run or get pressure with the front four) seems perfectly suited to win in the regular season and just good enough to crush dreams in the postseason (As an unrelated note, there is nothing more annoying that seeing this from Donovan and watching him suck right after. Kinda like when he smiles at the defensive line right before he holds on to the ball too long before getting sacked).

If we were really content with being a 10 win team every year that loses to teams that it probably shouldn’t in the playoffs (Tampa, Carolina, Arizona are the ones that stick out to me. The Tampa game was the worst because that’s the Super Bowl they would have unequivocally won and that’s the game that closed down Veterans Stadium), then this foundation can continue until the end of McNabb’s career. But after a while, the disappointment just gets to be too much. I can only take being the early 90s Buffalo Bills redux for so long.

The consistent choking in the biggest of games has made it abundantly clear and this latest debacle against the Cowboys has only solidified the point. They made Jeremy Maclin, DeSean Jackson and Brent Celek look like a return to the Freddie Mitchell, James Thrash, Todd Pinkston days, while the run defense had me longing for the Darwin Walker, Dhani Jones, Michael Lewis core. It was a beatdown in its truest definition.

It came after a less-severe yet equally disturbing loss last week against the Eagles, which makes this week’s no-show completely unacceptable.

This Cowboys game was the quintessential Eagles stinker. A slow start caused by predictability on offense. They never stay on the field for more than two minutes and their defense gets gassed in the first quarter because they can’t stop the run and it’s pretty much over from there. Completely unable to get anything going on offense, this snowballs into the monstrous beatdown that occurred on Saturday night.

I know it’s unfair, not right, whatever. But in reality, you can only take so much of one thing before you snap. I snapped last night.

I don’t know what the answer is but Reid and McNabb aren’t working the way they should. I’m not campaigning for Kolb or anything like that (because I honestly don’t know because they guy has been wildly inconsistent in his appearances) but I know what I don’t want. I want no more of this losing in the playoffs. I want someone who can do something in the biggest of games.

They are great guys who have done a lot of great things and have taken this Eagles franchise to heights that they have never achieved. You think that if you keep plugging along and plugging along that you would eventually get to the promised land. They do so many things right, but do so many things wrong at the most critical times, and that’s what’s burned into your memory.

They cannot win a Super Bowl. And that’s really all that matters. Because whether you’re the hapless Detroit Lions or the Philadelphia Eagles, if you don’t win the Super Bowl, nothing else really matters. And Reid and McNabb, for all their talents, just don’t have what it takes. And no amount of optimism will change that.