Benched

I don’t even have words for the performance the Eagles put forth yesterday. This team looked absolutely pathetic. So pathetic, in fact, they couldn’t even put together one offensive scoring drive. No touchdowns. No field goals. It was downright disgraceful.

Yesterday’s benching of Donovan further points toward the fact that his tenure with the Eagles is over. Yeah, he’s going to start this week against Arizona, but that’s probably just out of habit. His time here skidded to a halt at halftime yesterday.

Let me just take one last opportunity here to beat the dead horse about Donovan and Andy Reid.

I’m not a huge Donovan supporter. I’ve bashed him countless times for his inconsistency and the fact that, save for one NFC Championship game, he never came up big when it was needed. However, I also don’t think its fair Donovan will end up being the scapegoat for the ineptness of this team over the last few years. He’s simply a victim of Andy Reid’s flawed system. How did we expect him to win when he was asked to throw the ball 70% of the time? That said, how did we expect him to be successful when he was supposed to throw to guys like James Thrash, Jason Avant and Greg Lewis? How did we expect him to establish a decent passing game when he had a completely non-existent running game? The answer to these questions is simple. We couldn’t.

Look what happened when the Eagles armed Donovan with a good receiver. He won, thus proving that Donovan isn’t completely at fault here. Andy Reid’s system put unrealistic expectations on Donovan without even giving him any of the tools needed to carry out that system. Considering what Donovan has had to work with over the course of his time here, I think he’s done pretty well.

The bigger problem with this team is Andy Reid and his stubbornness. For the last four seasons, we’ve watched this guy undermine one of the most solid principles of winning football: You set up the pass by establishing a good running game. In all this time, Andy dismissed this notion despite the fact that his pass-first philosophy clearly hasn’t worked. He’s refused to change his thinking and that has killed this team. Unfortunately, I don’t think the front office understands this. Andy is their boy and he will probably remain the coach. The Eagles won’t publically say it, but the implication will be Donovan couldn’t handle Andy’s system. Then, Andy will spend the entire off-season telling us Kevin Kolb is perfectly suited to handle the West Coast offense. With that, the process will start over again. Andy Reid is here to stay. We need to get used to it. Also, on 950 tonight, Sal Pal made a great point by citing the fact that Andy has three years left on current contract. You think the Eagles brass will part with this guy when they are still on the hook for three years? I don’t thinks so. We’re in for at least another year or two of the Andy Reid show.

Alright, there’s my final rant on Andy and Donovan. I don’t think I can say anything new about this situation at this point, so hopefully the subjects of my posts vary a little bit in the coming weeks.