Eagles have talent but lack character

There has been a lot of talk lately about the 3-6 Eagles' lacking an identity. The truth is, they have an identity. It's just one they would prefer not to have, that of a soft, unfocused group of underachievers.

"Every team has an identity," defensive tackle Cullen Jenkins said. "It's just whether it's a good one or not. Right now, our identity isn't very good. It needs to be better. The only way to change your identity is to improve and get better."

More than any team in recent Eagles history, this group looks and feels like a collection of independent contractors concerned more about their own portfolios than about winning together. That feeling is especially strong during the fourth quarters of close games, when this team has found stunning new ways to collapse.

Is it far-fetched to make the connection between character and on-field results? Ask Andy Reid. In 1999, the coach explained why he and director of football operations Tom Modrak dropped some talented college players from their draft board over concerns about character.

"When you're out there in a dogfight, the good guys have an ability to reach just a little deeper and give you that something extra," Reid said then. "We're trying to bring a certain kind of guy in here. I want a guy who's going to be as solid as a rock in the locker room, then go out on the football field and be tough."

After a dramatic, come-from-behind win against Pittsburgh in 2000, then-special-teams coach John Harbaugh made the same connection.

"You hear about character," said Harbaugh, now head coach of the Baltimore Ravens. "Andy Reid and Tom Modrak talk about getting character guys. . . . What do they mean by character? Well, that's what you see in the fourth quarter of a game like that. That's character."

That same year, owner Jeffrey Lurie explained his coach's philosophy.

"Andy would rather have a less-talented player who does things right and buys into what we're trying to accomplish than a talented, me-first type of player," Lurie said then. "People think he focuses on high-character people, and he does. But they have to be tough. They have to have been leaders wherever they came from."

Character. Toughness. Modrak used to talk about how character comes through most clearly in the fourth quarter of a close game. When you looked around the huddle, you wanted to see quality teammates.

You did not want to see players who threw the ball away with the game on the line, who gave up chasing receivers they were supposed to cover, who flinched at contact instead of tackling a ballcarrier, who dropped a first-down pass or flopped on the ground a yard shy of the sticks.

Reid and Lurie and Modrak and Harbaugh were talking about the kind of players who went 59-21 from 2000 through 2004, who won seven playoff games, and reached four consecutive NFC championship games and a Super Bowl. They were talking about Donovan McNabb and Brian Dawkins, Jeremiah Trotter and Jon Runyan, Duce Staley and Troy Vincent, and Sheldon Brown and Chad Lewis.

Somewhere along the way, the Eagles' philosophy changed. Maybe it was because that original core never quite finished the task and won a Super Bowl. Maybe it was because Reid's stance softened through personal experience with his family and professional experience with a variety of personality types. Maybe it's just harder to find 53 character guys than it used to be. Maybe it was a combination of those things plus the ever-growing urgency to win a Super Bowl.

The Andy Reid of 1999 never signs Michael Vick or drafts DeSean Jackson or goes on the free-agent spending binge that created so much excitement over the summer.

Compare the moves of the last few years with these words from Lurie in 2000:

"You have to be able to give up short-term gratification for long-term gain. If you're not willing to do that, you'll always find yourself making patchwork decisions. You've got to avoid that."

This Eagles team is the very definition of patchwork. The defense was thrown together with little thought for how the talent fit the system and with an untested coordinator trying to make it all work. The offensive line was radically reconfigured to conform to a new coach's approach. Vick was given a franchise-quarterback contract on the basis of a very small body of work.

It's not that these are all bad people. It's not as simple as that. It's more like a collection of mercenaries with no real investment in the Eagles organization or in Reid's way or, maybe worst of all, in each other. And that is never more clear than in the fourth quarter.

That is when character is revealed and identity defined - for better or for much, much worse.