Phil Sheridan's Latest Column Is Slightly Mis-Informed

There are some people that absolutely despite Phil Sheridan.  Personally, I think there are worse columnists in the Philadelphia sports media than him (*cough*cough*Jack McCaffery *cough*cough*), but the column he wrote after the Eagles loss to the Cardinals is by far and away one of the most ridiculous pieces of writing I have ever written.  Not that I am intentionally getting away from directly talking about the Eagles, okay, never mind, I am, I am intentionally getting away from directly talking about the Eagles second real all-round poor performance of the season, but as poor as the Eagles were today, this column from Phil Sheridan is worse.  After the jump, a FJM style breakdown (Sheridan's words in italics).


With this, his Eagles' latest new low, the issue stops being whether Andy Reid should return for a 14th season as head coach. He should not.

Ignoring the awkward grammar, Sheridan says the issue should not be whether to return for a 14th season.  And then he takes a stance on it.  Okay.  Normally when some says something stops being an issue, the focus goes elsewhere, not one side of the issue.  But maybe I got different English lessons.

After blowing a fourth-quarter lead for the fifth time, after falling to 3-6 with a roster full of expensive stars, after letting John Flipping Skelton outplay Michael Vick - after all that, the issue has become whether Reid can give owner Jeff Lurie even the flimsiest pretense for defying reason and bringing him back for 2012.

Uh, because of a decade of near consistent success, something almost impossible to do in the NFL?  This is a bad year for the Eagles, and it certainly has not been Reid's best, but easy there, there is a "flimsiest pretense for defying reason and bringing him back for 2012."

We really are in end-of-the-line Ray Rhodes and Rich Kotite territory now. That is stupefying, given Reid's accomplishments from 2000 through 2008, but it is still true. This is what it looks like when the bottom falls out.

So we are ignoring the 2009 Philadelphia Eagles and the 2010 Philadelphia Eagles, both of whom made the playoffs.  Now I know someone's clever retort is going to be "But they lost in the wild card round both times!" to which my reply is the NFL Playoffs are largely a crapshoot (though not quite as much so as MLB) and one game should never be the basis of judging a coach's tenture.  Not to mention in the past two-and-a half years, we have seen the evolution of Mike Vick into a top QB in the NFL.  We'll talk much more about him in a moment.

This little episode with wide receiver DeSean Jackson lent an air of utter dysfunction to a season that had already become an embarrassment. Jackson is a grown man who should have been at his Saturday morning meeting, but that is hardly the point. Beginning with the decision to draft a guy everyone knew was as mercurial in temperament as in talent, the Eagles have managed this situation in such a way that this was inevitable.

It lent an air of dysfunction because he had a mental lapse and missed a meeting?  DeSean Jackson is playing for a contract, he'd be mad to intentionally miss a meeting.  And did Phil Sheridan just question the decision to draft DeSean Jackson?  Sure, he has not had a great idea, but he has been vital to the Eagles offense since his drafting and as we'll see, even Mr. The Eagles Should Not Have Drafted DeSean agrees with this.

It's not exactly wrong of Reid to bench a player in order to set an example. But to bench this particular player, with all the issues surrounding his contract and how his production is affecting his value and how teammates like Steve Smith are earning scads more than he is? When some of these players clearly have quit on plays earlier in the season with no apparent consequence?

I do not have strong feelings one way or the other on benching players for not attending a meeting other than that a coach should keep it consistent.  If Derek Landri or Colt Anderson missed a meeting, I would expect them to receive the same punishment/non-punishment.  And if I know Andy Reid like I think I know him, I think he would be consistent should this same situation arise with another player, but that is conjecture and speculation on my part.  And "quit on plays earlier in the season with no apparent consequence?"  Does Sheridan have any evidence that players "quit" on plays?  DRC had an effort mistake last Monday and Steve Smith had an effort mistake today, but it does not mean the players quit or have quit.

It just smells bad. And that stench carried over to Sunday's loss to the Cardinals, the latest in this season of shocking new lows.


Did Sheridan ever stop to think that maybe this putrid smell was just somebody farting?  Who's to say Todd Herremans did not have some bad black bean soup last night?

This Arizona team was 2-6 on merit, traveling to the East Coast for a game that started before noon according to the players' body clocks. They were without Kevin Kolb, leaving a second-year man from Fordham to start at QB.


A team's W/L record is not always a merit-based statistic, especially in the NFL where a season is only 16 games long, although the Cardinals record is rightfully poor this season.  And said second-year man from Fordham did not have a particularly strong game, either.

They were ranked among the worst teams in the league in pass defense. The biggest danger going in was that the Eagles could win without changing anyone's opinion of them.
Can you make sense of that last sentence?

But to lose? And to look utterly clueless on both sides of the ball? How does anyone explain that?

Explainable through the fact that, yes, the Eagles did play a bad football game today.  Unfortunately for the Eagles, it just so happened to occur in the midst of a season where Lady Luck has been nothing short of Cruella De Vil in her spite of the Philadelphia football team.  Consider this, at 3-6, the Eagles carry a +17 point differential, good for 2nd best in the NFC East.

"It's my responsibility to make sure that everybody is on the same page," Reid said. "Obviously, by this performance, that didn't look very good. That's my responsibility. I don't know about disconnects and those types of things, but I have to do a better job, along with my guys."


It drives fans crazy that Reid repeats such things after every loss. It sounds especially empty now. That's because the problems and failures this year are the direct results of Reid's decision making. The Eagles aren't losing because of injuries or bad luck or anything else. They are losing because of poor decisions that seemed obvious to anyone outside the Eagles' NovaCare bubble who was paying attention.

Now imagine this.  The Philadelphia Eagles have a head coach who in post-game press conferences after losses, consistently singles out players for poor performances, blames the refs, and curses out the media at every opportunity he gets, i.e. someone the opposite of Andy Reid.  Do you know what the reaction to said head coach would be?  HE DOES NOT MAKE HIMSELF ACCOUNTABLE!!!!!!!!  FIRE HIM NOW!!!!  It is a double-edged sword where as a head coach, you can't win.  If you always blame yourself in press conferences, you risk being too bland or repeating the same tired cliches ad nauseam with the media wanting every mistake Reid confessed to never happen again.  But if you go the other way and don't blame yourself, you risk losing your locker room on the strange count that players do not like being thrown under the bus, and criticisms from not making yourself accountable for mistakes you made.

It was Reid who made Juan Castillo his defensive coordinator. One of the presumed candidates, Pittsburgh assistant Ray Horton, was hired by the Cardinals instead. That was his defense embarrassing Reid's offense all afternoon.


Ray Horton was a presumed candidate?  Do a Google search.  This comes up in a total of one report, which cited Ray Horton as an "interesting name that has not been mentioned as frequently" and "a name to keep in mind."  Hardly a presumed candidacy.  Do we know if the Eagles ever interviewed him?

It was Reid who married Jim Washburn's unique-for-a-reason defensive line approach to woefully mismatched linebackers and safeties.


Which is why you remedy this in the off-season by keeping Washburn and focusing on picking up (specifically) linebackers who can tackle.

It was Reid who threw money at Nnamdi Asomugha, Vince Young, Jason Babin and Smith instead of Jackson, a player who had actually won games for him.

Howie Roseman is the Eagles' general manager, not Andy Reid.  The problems here.  Nnamdi is being used incorrectly by Juan Castillo, Vince Young was brought in to be a backup, Jason Babin is having a very solid season, having already recorded 9 sacks.  And Steve Smith, well, there's one disappointment.  But there is no long-term commitment to him as he is only a one year deal, so his signing is hardly something to completely crucify the front office for.

It was Reid who committed real gold to Vick based on a few fool's-gold games last season. In his last 16 games, Vick has thrown 18 interceptions. The Eagles are 7-9 in those games, with Vick failing on fourth-quarter drives in five of them.


The most interceptions Donovan McNabb ever threw in a 16-game season with the Eagles was 13.

As the Cardinals made clear, defenses have figured out how to limit this guy and, with him, this offense.

Well here it is.  His critique of Mike Vick.  What Phil Sheridan will not tell you is entering into this Sunday's game with Arizona, Mike Vick was 4th most accurate passer in the NFL according to Pro Football Focus's Accurate Percentage which takes completion percentage and modifies it to eliminate spikes, throwaways, and receiver drops.  Unfortunately, I do not have the ability to give you the accuracy percentage for Mike Vick's performance today, but I can tell you that from watching it, his throws were not crisp, he was missing receivers, and he did not have a lot of help from his receivers.  My gut would tell me his accuracy percentage would decline after this, though because I have not done the work I cannot say for certain.  But from observations, this most certainly appeared to be the worst game Vick has played this season.  Also, 16/34 for 128 yards, no TDs and 2 INTs is ugly no matter how you slice it.  Vick did have a bad game, but he has not had a bad season.  While interceptions in the last 16 games may be alarming, if you go back and look at several of the interceptions he had in the beginning of the season, you will find that a sizable amount of them were tipped balls that can only be considered the product of luck.  His 2 picks today were well deserved, but again, this was Vick's 1st all-round poor game of what has been a very solid season for him.  Even if Phil Sheridan will never admit that.

"Our goal was to be really physical," former Eagles linebacker Stewart Bradley said. "The kind of blueprint that Chicago laid out [last week]. You can attack him with good old-fashioned physical football across the board. It wore on him."

Especially when, through benching Jackson and failing to give DeSean McCoy enough carries, Reid and his staff minimized two of the Eagles' best weapons.

"It made things a little easier not having to worry about that deep threat," Arizona cornerback A.J. Jefferson said.

While I believe LeSean McCoy should have gotten significantly more than 14 carries today (especially when it became obvious Vick was not having a good game) and Andy Reid erred in that situation,  I have never seen DeSean McCoy play so I cannot give a proper analysis on whether or not he should have been any carries in today's game.  Also, didn't Phil Sheridan just infer the Eagles should have never drafted DeSean Jackson?  Now he is inferring he shouldn't have been benched?  Strange logic. 

But the Jackson benching reverberates even more off the field. It was almost quaint, Reid trying to set the tone the way he did early in his tenure.

That was a long time ago now. Reid has let his program drift away from the high-character standards he set early on. He now has a team that plays soft and that seems more interested in contracts than contact. His ship appears rudderless, and there's no one to blame but the captain.

Yeah.  It's almost as if the Terrell Owens saga never happened.  What we have here is the foundation of a future narrative that will soon read, "Reid started out strong on high-character guys, but then he became soft."  Terrell Owens signed in 2004.  The controversy played out in 2005.  That was 6 years ago.  If Reid ever drifted away from "high character guys," he did that a long time ago.  But if you look at Reid's track records, Terrell Owens is the exception, not the rule for Andy Reid.  Also, if Reid has gone soft on character, how does one explain the off-the-field transformation of Mike Vick?  It could have all happened in prison, but by and large, Vick has stayed away from any meaningful trouble since joining the Eagles, something that could not be said about his time in Atlanta, even before the dog-fighting scandal.

It's funny.  Phil Sheridan goes on and on and on and on about the Eagles' problems, but only once does Sheridan mention Juan Castillo, and that was just to say that Reid hired him.  If you look at the deep pass to Larry Fitzgerald that set up the game-winning touchdown, you will see that Larry Fitzgerald was left to be covered one-on-one by........rookie safety Jaiquawn Jarrett, playing in only his 4th NFL game.  Nnamdi Asomugha and Asante Samuel were both healthy and on the field for this play, and Jarrett's alone with Fitzgerald.  Now all the credit in the world to Larry Fitzgerald who made a great catch there, but how do you have a rookie safety covering Larry Fitzgerald?  One-on-one.  Alone.  On the outside.  Up by 3 with 2:55 to go.  Inexplicable scheme from Juan Castillo.  That is what needs to change.  Not Andy Reid.  Even with his penchant for ignoring running backs no matter how good they may be, Andy Reid has been a consistently successful coach in the NFL.  While some may associate Reid with Castillo by association for hiring him, it is very rare that a coordinator gets fired during the middle of a season.  Let's see what happens in the off-season.  The Eagles have had by-and-large an unlucky season with one game that could legitimately be considered terrible all the way around (Cardinals).  Their true talent level is probably somewhere in the middle of the pack in the NFL this year.  Last week's DVOA from Football Outsiders certainly seems to suggest that.  

Despite what Phil Sheridan says, given history, both recent and not-so-recent, this season is hardly grounds for firing Andy Reid.  And no, I do not believe a head coach should be fired because of one bad defensive coordinator hiring, especially if Reid relieves him of his duties in the off-season.