It's Not You, It's Me

The Eagles lost to Ravens 36-7 on Sunday, to move their record to 5-5-1. There was a lot that went wrong in this game, which featured a quarterback change, more horrendous play calling, and a 108-yard interception return for a touchdown. We aren’t going to re-hash the Eagles crappy display of football from Sunday against the Ravens, because what’s the point; we all watched it, we all are depressed. Instead, we are going to focus on one thing in particular and call out head coach Andy Reid for being a gutless chump.

After a dismal first half, McNabb was off to another bad start, which has become common place with this Eagles team this season. At some point during half-time, Reid decided that Kevin Kolb would start the 2nd half as the Eagles QB. The terrible thing about this was Reid was not man enough to break the news to McNabb. Instead, Reid delegated the responsibility of doing his dirty work to Pat Shurmur, Eagles QB coach.

Andy Reid drafted McNabb back in 1999, and since then, the two have been almost inseparable. Reid has always defended McNabb when McNabb played poorly, and McNabb always defended Reid when Reid’s coaching was poor. Being the starting quarterback of a team for 10 years warrants the respect of the head coach to come tell McNabb when he is going to bench him, especially when Reid has been McNabb’s head coach throughout his entire tenure here.

The benching of McNabb is Reid’s way of deflecting the blame away from himself, and throwing McNabb under the bus. There is no way in the game against the Ravens that Kevin Kolb coming into the 2nd half gives the Eagles a better chance to win that game. First off, it’s unfair to Kolb to come into a hostile environment, against a very good, aggressive defense and expect him to be successful. The move was only done for Reid to try to show that what has been going on with this team lately is not his fault, it’s McNabb’s. Reid still refuses to admit any wrongdoing on his part.

This is desperate, last minute effort to save his job. But is his job really in jeopardy? McNabb is probably gone after this season even before yesterday's game, and this benching only solidifies that. Now Reid has a do-over with Lurie to see how far he can take a Kolb-lead Eagles. Yet on top of all that, it wouldn’t have been so bad had Reid just taken 30 seconds to explain to McNabb that he was benched, and they could discuss it later after the game. That didn’t happen, because Reid is a coward. He should now go to McNabb and tell him, "It’s not you, it’s me.”