Pretty much everyone knows that Andy Reid will not be the head coach in Philadelphia after this season.
If the team’s owner demanding more than a .500 year before the season began wasn’t enough, the Eagles going 3-9 so far and showing new depths of futility on the fumble and injury fronts surely is. The question now is when Reid will be let go.
Or is it? As the Eagles prepared to play the Cowboys on Sunday night, a report surfaced via Mark Eckel of the Times of Trenton that “an extremely reliable source who is close to Reid” thought Reid would be the head coach of the Cowboys next year.
That happening, of course, means the Cowboys must fire their head coach, Jason Garrett, and that the Eagles would have to get rid of Reid.
The phrasing of the prediction had more than a few people wondering whether the source was in fact Reid’s agent, Bob LaMonte. Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk suggested that LaMonte may be trying to spin the story to save Reid’s job — namely, that the Eagles wouldn’t let Reid go if they knew he was headed to the division-rival Cowboys.
Garrett wasn’t the only coach that Eckel’s story assumed would be sacked. Chargers coach Norv Turner also appears to have lost his job.
“I know a lot of people think Andy is going to San Diego next year, and I can see that happening,” Eckel quotes the source as saying.
While Reid will certainly be in high demand next year if he is fired, with more than a half-dozen NFL teams likely needing new leadership, what makes all the posturing so curious is that Reid is still coaching the Eagles. The team has four games left this season, and Philadelphia just got rid of defensive line coach Jim Washburn, the latest in a list of coaches and veteran players who are slowly exiting the City of Brotherly Love.
If Reid is going to get the hook, it’s strange that the organization keeps weeding out those under him as the season appears lost (or that they’re letting Reid do so). It’s also strange that the respectable Reid appears to be in the middle of quite a bit of political maneuvering, and that no grown-ups in the Eagles organization are calling an end to the developing soap opera — with either a well-placed word or the firing of the man everyone knows is going to be let go.
Anyway, it’s far more entertaining than the Eagles’ games have been this season.
