Job may be taking toll on Eagles' Reid

But the stress of an erratic season and the nights spent in his office combined with the weight Reid has gained over the dog years that he has spent in Philadelphia? Now that scares the hell out of Childress, because he hears the toll it is taking just about every time he talks to Reid, and he knows.

The Eagles might have sneaked into the playoffs, might even mute the critics with a win at the Metrodome tomorrow over Childress's third-seeded Vikings, but some noises won't go away easily.

"There are two stand-alone factors in heart disease: smoking and obesity," Childress said the other day, sitting in his office at the Minnesota Vikings' practice facility in suburban Minneapolis. "Forget everything else. Your ticker can be good, blood pressure good, but those are separate drags on the spectrum.

"It's amazing the discipline [Reid has] in every other area, but you've got to bend somehow, I guess, and that's it. I hear him breathing through it. I hear the same thing, and it's scary."

Do-or-die game

In 1986, Childress was the offensive coordinator at Northern Arizona in need of an intelligent, savvy, dedicated offensive line coach, and Reid, then at San Francisco State, fit the bill.

Reid, his wife, Tammy, and their two little boys lived behind Childress, his wife and their two young children. The families would barbecue together, and Reid and Childress carpooled to work.

Although they were together in Flagstaff, Ariz., for only one season, and their careers traveled divergent paths, Childress and Reid remained close. Childress was the offensive coordinator at the University of Wisconsin in the 1990s while Reid was an assistant with the Green Bay Packers, and when the Eagles hired Reid as their coach in 1999, Reid hired Childress to coach the quarterbacks, which ended up including a rookie named Donovan McNabb.

An Illinois native, Childress quickly learned about the pressures of coaching in Philadelphia, where football is a way of life, and losing isn't tolerated. It wasn't easy. The Eagles' offices were in what Childress called the dungeon at Veterans Stadium. Cats defecated everywhere. Homeless people hit up the coaches for money when they came to work in the early morning. On Mondays after games, beer soaked through the walls, and the stench of vomit was overwhelming.

"The Veterans Stadium stories alone could fill up a book this big," Childress said, spreading his thumb and forefinger six inches apart. "One after another after another after another. That's why you have to have a sense of humor and laugh."

Which is what Reid did.

After Childress, who went on to become the Eagles' offensive coordinator, left for Minnesota in 2006, he and Reid continued to talk. They have had weekly conversations throughout this season, and Reid never hinted that anything was amiss. Not after the tie with Cincinnati or the loss to Baltimore.

"He really is the same from week to week," Childress said. "We talk about mutual problems, mutual solutions, but by the same token this deal makes strange bedfellows. All of a sudden, here we are head-to-head, so while we talk, there's still that competitive thing there, whether it's for free agents in the off-season, or if I talked bad about my right tackle sometime during the season. We're both mindful.

"We have fun and can tweak each other, but competitively you know he's always listening, always tracking. So am I. That's just the nature of the beast until we get on the same side sometime."

Artis Hicks entered the NFL in 2002 as an undrafted rookie free agent with the Eagles. In four seasons in Philadelphia, he said he rarely, if ever, saw Reid get frustrated or angry.

"Andy's the type of guy who keeps a lot of stuff close to himself," Hicks said. "He's more reserved than a lot of coaches, and because of that he's able to thrive there, because he's not going to let too much of what goes on on the outside, as far as the media and the fans, influence what he does. I think you have to be like that to be a head coach in a town like that. . . . The fans there, they have little patience for losing."

That's the truth. Rhea Hughes of WIP-AM (610) said that of the calls into the morning show in the last two months, only one was pro-Reid.