Immediately before Reid's arrival, the record books reveal there was a time when the Eagles made the playoffs just twice in 6 years and won a total of one postseason game. Somehow, evoking the contrast between this era and Reid's six playoff appearances in 9 years, with a postseason record of 8-6, does not elicit a similarly passionate response.

But here we are, preparing to open Reid's 10th Eagles training camp. Among current NFL coaches, only Tennessee's Jeff Fisher (14 years) and Denver's Mike Shanahan (13) have been in their jobs longer. Now 88-56 in regular-season games, Reid long ago surpassed Greasy Neale as the franchise's winningest head coach (as long as your criteria doesn't include championships). This year he matches Neale in length of tenure; by the end of the season, no one ever will have coached the Eagles longer than Andy Reid. Seventy-six Eagles seasons, nobody here longer than Andy, nobody winning more. Nobody remaining more of a mystery to fans and reporters.

And the thing is, nobody can begin to predict right now when the end will come. Reid weathered all that speculation a year ago about his family situation forcing him out. He said recently that he can't envision doing anything else, and that he doesn't blame his job or the fishbowl his family lives in here for the drug convictions of his two older sons.

There is no indication that Reid is on any sort of hot seat with owner Jeffrey Lurie. BYU, his alma mater and, some felt, his dream job, came calling years ago and was sent away. Every indication is that Eagles Nation will be gritting its teeth through painfully uninformative news conferences, punctuated by random throat-clearings, for years to come.

"When you first start off, you're just trying to make it to the next year. 'How will I make it to 3 years in this league?' - the average of a head coach. You're planning for the future,'' Reid, 50, said recently. "Then you hit this point - I don't know if it's Year 7, wherever it is - where you're going, 'Man, I love every minute of this.' You're not even thinking about when you're going to end. At least, that's not where I'm at; at my age and years here, you appreciate every day even more now than you did back then. You're still working hard. That part hasn't changed. The work level hasn't changed.''

Everybody who knows the story of how Reid became the Eagles' coach knows about the notebook that so impressed Lurie and team president Joe Banner - the notebook stuffed with plans and tips Reid accumulated toward the day when he would be a head coach. Much of it was the blueprint he copied from Mike Holmgren's Super Bowl-winning tenure with the Packers. Now, Reid says, there are three notebooks - the original, another with all the stuff he has learned since becoming a head coach, and a separate personnel binder, with the lessons from his seven seasons in charge of those decisions.

"I go back to the old one, to make sure I'm not too far away from the original [concepts]. It's a good reference,'' Reid said. He added that his methods, once nearly 100 percent copied from Holmgren, now are more 60-40 Holmgren and accumulated Reid wisdom.

No longer the apprentice, Reid has his own coaching tree now, with ex-quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator Brad Childress running the Vikings and former special-teams coordinator and secondary coach John Harbaugh coaching the Ravens.

"It's a tribute to the program - the players, coaches, Mr. Lurie, Joe Banner,'' Reid said. "It's a tribute to [Childress and Harbaugh], also.''

Balancing career, family

A year ago, the talk around the coach wasn't of Reid appreciating each day more than the one before. It concerned how Garrett and Britt Reid ran afoul of the law and ended up taking handcuffed perp walks that were splashed across the TV news. Wouldn't this make a father who famously slept at the office during the week have second thoughts about his priorities? Wouldn't he wonder if the pressures of a celebrity life that his children never sought helped push them off course?

"I don't blame the job,'' said Reid, who took a 5-week leave of absence in spring 2007. "Maybe because I heard from so many different people in so many different jobs. This thing is such a widespread thing, probably in the world, I only know it in the United States - it's so widespread, it touches probably everybody, in every profession. I'm sure even stay-home dads, it probably hits them, too. I don't blame the job for that.''

Reid acknowledged he'd been forced to think about what his career choices might have meant to his wife and children. He said his family never made him feel that he needed to change his path, though his media guide biography points out that each of the five Reid kids was born in a different state.

"I'm not saying that I haven't gone through that evaluation, but I don't blame the job for that. I say this after games - you go back and you evaluate everything. Well, you do the same thing in this situation,'' Reid said. "You go back and you evaluate yourself, you evaluate your job, you evaluate the house - you hit everything.

"I don't blame the job. My boys would tell you the same thing. They're the ones, if there was any doubt, [any thought] that I was going to give up the job, they were the ones sitting there going, 'Don't even think about that. Don't even go there. That's not why this happened.' ''

Last year there was speculation that his attention was divided. There has been no sign of such a thing this offseason. Reid seems especially eager to don the big, black T-shirt and shorts and take the field at Lehigh, even though you could argue that the NFC East is stronger than it ever was during the days when Reid took the Birds to four successive NFC title games, with the Giants coming back to defend their Super Bowl title and the Cowboys almost universally viewed as the conference's most talented team on paper.

"I think that's awesome. I love that,'' Reid said early in the offseason, when asked about those challenges. "That's why we do this thing. It keeps you sharp. It keeps you aggressive.''

First camp: 'Brutal'

Maybe one measure of how long Reid has been here is that Donovan McNabb reports to Lehigh next week as a battle-scarred, 31-year-old whose tenure seems to be at a crossroads, with his presumed successor, Kevin Kolb, waiting in the wings. The conventional wisdom is that McNabb needs to be healthy and productive this year, or era change will be at hand.