The Nixon Question

The most famous moment of the Watergate hearings came when  Republican Senator Howard Baker asked White House Counsel John Dean, "What did the President know, and when did he know it?"

If I'm Jeff Lurie, that's the question I'm asking myself this morning.

It's annoying that I seem to need to write this every time, rather than just stating it once and moving on, but since the same question keeps coming up, here's what I think about Andy Reid.  I don't think he's forgotten how to coach.  I don't think his offensive system has been "figured out."  I don't think his play-calling -- which often isn't even his play-calling -- has been the real problem this year.

I do think he's never properly valued the run game.  I do think he continues to be a much better coach from Monday through Saturday than he is on Sunday.  But the Eagles are not a mediocre team this year because he's suddenly become a bad game-planner.

They're a mediocre team because they're a mediocre team. 

All that stuff about "he should have run the ball, no wait that didn't work, he should have passed the ball" is just a distraction from the real issue here.  Knock yourself out arguing about that, but in the end it doesn't matter.

What matters is that Andy Reid is the architect of the least talented team in the NFC East.

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We'll never know exactly how the Eagles' front office works.  The folks at the top have overlapping titles and indistinct job descriptions.  So we can't say definitively who made what mistakes.

But Andy's the grand poobah of that whole deal there, as he might say (not the poobah part), and I find it hard to believe that if he ever came into conflict with Heckert or Banner or whoever is running the scouting these days, that Lurie would ever side with the other guys. 

So now Lurie has a couple problems.  The first is that there's always been a little kernel of truth to the idea that Reid won (early) with Ray Rhodes' players.  Not a HUGE boulder of truth, because this roster certainly wasn't loaded with talent when he got here, but it didn't hurt that guys like Brian Dawkins and Tra Thomas went to all those Pro Bowls. 

The second problem is that the Eagles have now gone through pretty complete cycles with two different (nominal) GMs, and the results upstairs have continued to lag behind the results in the coaches' offices.

This is why Lurie needs to ask himself what Reid knew, and when he knew it.  If the leadership of this team got together this summer, cracked a few cold ones, and assured Lurie that happy days were here again, then we have a serious problem.  Because that would mean these guys don't have a good handle on their roster, aren't doing a great job evaluating talent, and continue to be overly optimistic in their approach to developing players. 

But what if there's an alternative explanation?  What if those same people met two winters ago and laid out a plan for the future of the franchise that made it clear they knew some rebuilding was in order?  After all, it's not that hard to pinpoint where a lot of the problems lie:

1)  The Eagles have aged badly at a number of key positions, such that former Pro Bowlers at quarterback, safety and left tackle aren't the same guys they used to be and former Pro Bowlers at cornerback, middle linebacker, defensive end and defensive tackle aren't around any more.

2)  Two bad drafts hollowed out the talent base just at the time those picks should have been stepping into starting roles.  (Check out '03 and '04.  With Andrews out, there's one guy still on the roster from those two drafts.  And he just got benched.)

This would explain a lot:

• Why they drafted Kevin Kolb when they could really have used some immediate impact talent to make a run.
• Why they traded their first round pick to Carolina for a first-rounder next year and two immediate line prospects (Trevor Laws and Mike McGlynn).
• Why no younger players got the patented Eagles' early extension this year (Banner blamed the salary cap, but check out what he said: "I'm a little reluctant to lock in to too many players without knowing what the next cap will be. Also, we're only a couple of years away from the next round of television deals. So you don't know what's going to happen with that. You don't know what your player costs are going to be. I'm glad that, for the moment, we don't really need to do anything."  Not sure I properly weighted that last part when it first came out.)
• Why they were unwilling to make any go-for-broke free agent moves this summer or fall.  Why bring Tony Gonzalez onboard a sinking ship when you're going to need that pick next year to continue rebuilding your core?

Now I realize that not once in the last two years has any member of the Eagles organization come out and said, "Please be patient, we're rebuilding."  But that doesn't really prove anything.  As long as they can maintain the illusion of competence, there's no point in bumming out the paying customers -- rendering them non-paying, non-customers -- nor do you want to create an atmosphere around the team where guys think, "It's ok we lost, we're not really trying this year anyway."

But this makes a huge difference for Jeff Lurie.  If the guys he has running this team didn't know what was coming, then it's clearly time for some different guys to be running this team. 

If they did know, then you still have to watch the way things go the next few weeks.  There's a difference between ugly and unraveled and Lurie needs to decide which one we're seeing. 

But assuming the team doesn't crack and this is, ahem, "all part of the plan" ... then at least recognize that it's time to level with the fans.  Now that we know winning out isn't going to solve everything, you're not going to get away with just telling everyone it's steady as she goes.

Not if you want to be able to show your face in the city, at any rate.