Phil Sheridan: No more excuses for Eagles: They're just bad

SEATTLE - Most weeks, the Eagles stink on Sunday. They have been known to lay an egg on Monday night. Now we can add Thursday to the list.

Clearly, the only day this team cares about is Tuesday. That's payday.

There can be no illusions after this horrible, 31-14 loss to the Seattle Seahawks. The Eagles are not a better football team than their record says they are. They are 4-8 because they are awful.

It's one thing when Bill Belichick and Tom Brady come to town and slash you to ribbons, which is what happened on Sunday. But this was Pete Carroll and Tarvaris Jackson. This was Seattle, another 4-7 team that got beaten at home by Washington (4-7 as well) four days earlier.

This was a game between two nowhere football teams, and the Eagles weren't even competitive.

They had a short week. So did the Seahawks.

They had to fly a long way. So did Washington last week. So did Arizona and San Francisco when they came to the Linc earlier in the season to kick the Eagles' backsides. Professional athletes travel. It's part of the deal.

They had injuries. Everybody has injuries. The Eagles had no Michael Vick or Jeremy Maclin, but come on. Most teams would take Vince Young and DeSean Jackson over Tarvaris Jackson and Golden Tate.

Forget the excuses. The real reason the Eagles lost this game: They are not a good football team. They are poorly coached and there is little evidence that the players' hearts are in this whole enterprise.

"This is Eagles football," defensive end Trent Cole said. "We don't give up. We never give up."

It didn't look that way. Their performance here was an insult to everyone who buys tickets, who dons Eagles gear, who cares more about this team than the men who play for it.

Think about this: On the final play, as the Seahawks QB took a knee, the Eagles were called for having 12 men on the field. They couldn't even get that right.

Tape of the enormously well-compensated Nnamdi Asomugha nudging Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch with his shoulder should be played on an endless loop on every TV in owner Jeff Lurie's house. This is where your money went, Jeff.

Or maybe he'd prefer watching the clock tick down in the second quarter while the Seahawks waited to kick a field goal. Andy Reid could have called a timeout, stopping the clock with 40-some seconds left, giving his offense a chance to answer with a late score. As it turned out, Seattle kicked off out of bounds and the Eagles got the ball at their own 40-yard line.

Yet they had only 16 seconds because their 13th-year head coach either didn't think of stopping the clock or didn't really want the ball in Young's hands.

"I didn't consider it," said Reid, who took two timeouts with him into the halftime locker room.

This is the same coach who has said the same thing after every one of his team's eight losses. It is his job to correct the mistakes, his job to fix the problems. And yet the same mistakes get made each week, the same problems flare up over and over.

LeSean McCoy runs for 7 yards on first down? Better make sure Young throws on second and third down so that Chris Henery can punt on fourth. That happened on two consecutive series in the second quarter. Eagles fans were rooting for defensive line coach Jim Washburn to take another crack at Marty Mornhinweg.

Of course, Washburn's charges might have tried tackling Lynch on one of his two touchdown runs. Or maybe they could have gotten pressure on the quarterback when he was completing passes 25 yards downfield on third downs.

In a way, the Seahawks did everybody around the Eagles a favor. After this steaming pile of lousy football, there can be no more delusional talk about winning out and sneaking into the playoffs. Even in a year when the NFC East is terrible, the Eagles have buried themselves too deep to even think about digging out.

Reid's defenders keep talking as if this is one bad season after 12 very good ones. That isn't true. This will be the third year without a playoff win. It is an appalling season after four pretty good seasons, which followed one bad season. Before that, there were six very good years. They seem like ancient history to Eagles fans.

That's because the fans care about this team. They live and die with it. They have waited more than five decades for a championship. Reid has now been the coach for 25 percent of those fruitless seasons. And in this, his 13th try, he has unleashed absolutely the worst team of his career.

"We still have four games to play," Young said.

Don't rub it in.