DAVID MAIALETTI / Staff photographer
Stacy Andrews was brought in as a free agent and will be the starting right guard.
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Paul Domowitch: A new look for Eagles, but not rebuilding
JEFF LURIE doesn't speak to the media very often. And when he does, well, the Eagles owner usually doesn't say anything that you want to put a headline on or lead the evening news with.
The one notable exception was Aug. 7, 2003.
It was 2 weeks into the Eagles' fifth training camp under Andy Reid, and Lurie was holding his annual state-of-the-team news conference.
The Eagles were coming off their third straight playoff season and their second straight NFC Championship Game appearance, albeit a hard-to-swallow, 27-10 loss to the Tampa Bay Bucs.
Weary of the nonstop offseason bashing his team had taken on sports talk radio over the loss to the Bucs, Lurie fired back with his infamous "gold-standard" claim.
"When I'm talking to other owners or other GMs in the league, we're kind of the gold standard," he boasted that day.
"We've got the best record in the decade, and we're poised to win big and win championships . . . We're a young, ascending team. We haven't even hit our potential. I think we're a team that can dominate this league, I really do."
Six years later, six Lombardi Trophy-less years later, those words still haunt Lurie. They are thrown in his face by critics every time the Eagles stumble or make an unpopular move.
We're the gold standard.
We're poised to win championships.
We're a team that can dominate this league.
Never mind that the Eagles have been to five of the last eight NFC Championship Games. Never mind that they have made the playoffs 7 of the last 9 years. Gold means winning it all, and that hasn't happened.
In a salary-capped NFL world where the Super Bowl window of opportunity is only supposed to be open for a finite period, the Eagles haven't been the gold standard, but they've certainly been the kings of sustainability.
"People said you couldn't get good and stay good, and we didn't believe them," club president Joe Banner said in January 2005, shortly before the Eagles made it to their only Super Bowl under Reid, losing to the Patriots, 24-21.
"You never know what's going to happen for sure in this league, and you always worry about injuries. But there's reason to be optimistic that we should be able to continue putting a team on the field that's good enough to compete for a Super Bowl for the next few years."
The trouble is, the Eagles' inability to get over the Super Bowl hump has caused many frustrated fans to believe that being good somehow is good enough for Lurie, Banner and Reid. That they aren't willing to do what it takes and spend what it takes to be great, to be the true "gold standard."
The only way they ever will silence their critics, of course, is the same way the Phillies silenced theirs - by winning it all.
Reid knows that better than anyone.
"Anything we say [is meaningless because] you've got to win the championship," said Reid, whose team is 1-4 in their five NFC title game appearances, including a 32-25 loss last January to an Arizona Cardinals team the Eagles had squashed by 28 points less than 2 months earlier.
"We can sit here and paint a pretty picture. It's obvious what we did with the football team on the personnel side in the offseason. And there are other things that we've looked at, too. All of us. But until you get the ring . . . "
When the Eagles failed to re-sign safety Brian Dawkins and let their longtime offensive tackle tandem, Tra Thomas and Jon Runyan, walk after the season, the knee-jerk reaction of many was that the Eagles were blowing off 2009. That they were rebuilding.
Then they signed offensive lineman Stacy Andrews and fullback Leonard Weaver. Then they traded for offensive tackle Jason Peters. Then they spent their top two draft picks on wide receiver Jeremy Maclin and running back LeSean McCoy. Then they traded for cornerback Ellis Hobbs. Then, last month, they signed Michael Vick.
In truth, this is anything but a rebuilding year. The Eagles were as aggressive this offseason as they've been since '04, when they got wide receiver Terrell Owens and defensive end Jevon Kearse.
Will they follow the lead of that team and make it to the Super Bowl? Who knows? Injuries so often dictate a team's fate, and the Eagles were hit by a huge one early in training camp when middle linebacker Stewart Bradley suffered a season-ending knee injury. They also have an offensive line that, while better on paper than last year's, has yet to play a down together.
"I like this team," Reid said. "I'm not going to compare it to other teams until we get where we need to get to. But I like the talent as much as I've liked any team that I've had. But it's a team sport and we've got to make sure that we bring that talent together.
"Some of the success of the other teams that we've had here is that they gelled. Players had played together for so long that they knew they had that continuity there."
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