When Did We Become the Stupid Team?

Good teams don't beat themselves
The Eagles consistently beat themselves
Therefore, the Eagles are not a good team  QED

We've known from the beginning that this Eagles team would be a work in progress.  What is just now apparent, however, is that this little rehab project might actually be a full-scale fixer-upper. 

Good teams find ways to win.  Bad teams find ways to lose.  Puzzlingly, this Eagles team does both.

This is clearly a talented team.  The offense looks awesome for long stretches.  The defense is adequate and improving.  And if they ever run out of foot-bullets they're going to be hard to beat. 

But all this is obvious to anyone who's been watching these guys all year.  The more interesting question is why.  Why does this team keep self-destructing?  And what can they do to stop it?

Unfortunately, I'm all out of answers right now.  But I have a few theories to introduce:

1. Youth.  Obviously you can't blame every mistake on the young guys (see Barber touchdowns #1 and #2), but the litany of mistakes includes a lot of boneheaded plays by guys without much experience.  Drops.  Fumbles.  Running into the punt returner.  Too many men on the field.  A few ill-timed missed blocks.  Because some of the same faces have been around for awhile now, sometimes I forget that this isn't a veteran team to the extent it was three years ago before Reid started turning over the roster.

Solution: Game experience.  And tough love.  Quickly.

2. Lack of fire.  On offense, the Eagles play happy, go-lucky "family football."  On defense, the scheme requires players to be "under control" and analytical.  Given that this is still football, there's a distressing lack of anger out there. 

In fact, the Eagles have had only one game this season where they matched the intensity of their opponents.  (And a player who couldn't get up for the Cowboys game wouldn't have a pulse.)

I really don't think this is a coaching thing.  At this level, there's not much call for big pre-game or half-time speeches.  It's on the players. 

I think it's possible that too many of these guys have adopted Donovan McNabb's "play loose and happy" approach without understanding that none of them are McNabb.  It's time to make a change.  And the only guy who can make that happen is McNabb -- the other leaders on this team don't have the stature needed to pull it off.

Solution: It's up to McNabb, backed up by a few other veterans, to explain exactly what the point of this season is and to make the young guys realize they haven't won anything and the only way things are going to change is if they start coming to play, every down, from the beginning.

3. Poor situational coaching.  Look, I'm not putting this on Reid.  He'd need to have three more losing seasons in a row before I'd even start thinking maybe he'd lost his touch.  But there is a disturbing pattern here: something bad happens in a game, the coaching staff acknowledges the issue, fixes it, and it stops being a problem.

But shouldn't these guys be catching this stuff before it happens?  Given McNabb's history, when Reid gives him the play call with 10 seconds left in the half, shouldn't he mention that the throw has to go into the end zone?  Shouldn't ball security be a priority before all these guys start putting it on the ground?  Below the coordinator level, are the assistants up to par, or have the staff defections over the last few years started to bite?

Solution: I'm not in a position to evaluate these guys.  But perhaps Reid should be.

All in all, I just don't know.  It's the end of a long, crummy day and the Eagles are 4-3 and none of this makes any sense.  Realistically, can the Eagles go 7-2 from here on out to take the division?  Yes, they can.  They could even go 9-0 if they could just find and fix all the leaks in their game that keep killing them each week.

But if the same team keeps taking the field, they're going to waste a lot more performances like the one Westbrook put up today and be lucky to finish out 5-4. 

Time to start kicking some butt, Andy.