Reid running out of time to find answers

Some coaches go out defiantly, raging against circumstances that left them owning a closetful of casual clothing emblazoned with the logo of a now-former employer.

Andy Reid, I realized yesterday, will go out with a whisper, muffled by a throat-clearing harrumph.

The thing that struck home, watching Reid discuss Thursday's 31-14 loss at Seattle, first in his postgame news conference, then yesterday back at NovaCare, was the lack of anger. This isn't the guy who tried to walk away from the podium when the questions didn't start quickly enough after the loss in Buffalo Oct. 9. (Back then, littering the field with interceptions and losing to a bad team was still kind of new.) He still says the same things, about putting people in the right positions and working to turn the team around, but more and more - at least the way I see it - you hear Reid emphasize how this is all his responsibility, his fault.

Reid is making it easy for Joe Banner and Jeffrey Lurie.

I don't know that Banner and Lurie plan to part with Reid after this season. I am certain they would love to see this team show a late-season pulse, enough to allow them to continue with their original plan, which was to give Reid 2011 and 2012 to win a Super Bowl with Michael Vick before reassessing. But back-to-back blowout losses have created a downhill momentum that is making that scenario harder and harder to envision.

The howls of outrage are going to get only louder. Banner and Lurie should keep the NovaCare drapes open, so they can see the villagers coming with their pitchforks and torches.

"I know there's going to be a lot of crap going on this week," Vince Young said Thursday, perhaps his most prescient observation during his three-game, eight-interception interlude as the starting quarterback.

Banner has been approached after each of the last two games, offered a platform to defend Reid or say whatever might be on his mind. He has declined both times.

"It comes back to the head coach. That's where it should come back to," Reid said yesterday, when asked to pan back a bit from his discussion of how you can't start the game with a turnover long enough to explain how his team is 4-8.

Reid allowed that a question about whether he worries about getting fired was "a logical question, but as a coach, you don't do that," you stay focused on making the team better.

"Every year you have to come together as a football team," Reid said, implying that, for whatever reason, this group hasn't.

"I think we're all searching," he said.

Obviously, you can't be searching 12 games into a 16-game season. If you're still looking for something in the NFL in December, it isn't there to be found. Maybe that's why Reid seems so subdued.

It will be fascinating, when the season ends and the players can drop the "we need to focus on turning it around next week" talk, to try to chart when and where the Eagles went off the rails. I suspect players knew in training camp that the promotion of Juan Castillo from offensive-line coach to defensive coordinator would be a train wreck. But I think the Eagles clung to the notion they could outscore their mistakes well into the season, until it was apparent that just wasn't happening.

"A good team executes," defensive end Trent Cole said Thursday night.

The only time Reid showed emotion yesterday was when he decried the NFL Network's reading of DeSean Jackson's body language and the network's suppositions about Jackson's sideline interactions with teammates in Thursday night's game.

"That kid was all in [Thursday] night," Reid said.

I was making my way though security at SeaTac airport while Reid was talking. Following the media reactions on Twitter, I wondered whether his indignation on Jackson's behalf amounted to trying to create an issue to take the focus off his disaster of a team. But watching the news-conference video on the team website, I saw Reid eventually conceded, "This is all petty stuff, I know."

Reid knows his team won't rally around the notion that DeSean is being unfairly maligned. Whatever Jackson's mindset was against the Seahawks, he bears some responsibility for this season, however much his coach wants to shield him from it.

Also, at 4-8, it's all petty stuff, for 1 more month. Then it gets important again; the first week of January 2012 might be the most significant for the Eagles since 1999.

Back then, Reid had answers. Thirteen years later, he says he's searching. But the time is no longer his.

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