Eagles' defensive breakdown

THE BIGGEST crack is not on Michael Vick's right hand. The Eagles wish it was, because the hand will heal with time. That is pretty much a certainty. With this team, it is among the only certainties.

The real crack is on defense - and by crack I mean the kind of chasm that has the potential to swallow a football team whole. It wasn't supposed to be like this, with all of the money they spent on that side of the ball during free agency, but here we are. Even with a strong pass rush, the Eagles have just allowed four touchdown passes in back-to-back games for the first time in 22 years. They have blown fourth-quarter leads in back-to-back games for the first time since Rich Kotite's last two games as coach in 1994.

And now, just three games into the season, it is time for this head coach, Andy Reid, to begin the grand reassessment - after he pulls his head out of his own attaché case, that is, because the coach really had a howler of an afternoon in the Eagles' 29-16 loss to the Giants.

That is done, though. The play calls are the play calls, whoever made them, and they are not fixable. Reid has to turn his attention to now, and to this defense.

There are three questions:

Is the problem a coaching problem - and, specifically, first-year defensive coordinator Juan Castillo?

Or, is it simply a matter of the players not making plays?

Or, is it just the kind of rut in the road that otherwise-competent NFL defenses often find themselves hitting during the course of a long season?

If Reid is being honest with himself, he will conclude that it is the players - specifically, the linebackers and safeties (oh, and zillionaire cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha, too).

The problem, for Reid, is that this is the worst of the three possibilities. If it was Castillo, you could just take away some of his responsibilities and not even tell anybody. If it was merely a lull, you could just ride it out.

But when it is the players, what can you do? They have already shuffled the linebackers' positions and left people wondering if it wasn't just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. This is how bad things are: They gave up 105 yards on 22 carries to the Giants' running backs and thought things went OK.

If they don't change something, opposing teams are going to pick this thing like a scab - but it isn't as if they have a farm team with a ready inventory to raid. Maybe they can find a safety and a linebacker on the street - and, yes, they need one of each, at least - but warm bodies are difficult to come by in late September.

That is where they are, though. When asked if he anticipated wholesale changes on defense, Reid said, "We'll see."

Which is called stalling for time.

I know a lot of people want to pin this on Castillo, the former offensive-line coach - and if you want to blame the Giants' final touchdown on him, and on a third-and-11 blitz call that left the Eagles vulnerable to the screen pass that Eli Manning threw to Ahmad Bradshaw, go right ahead. But the other three touchdowns were player failures, period - and one more spectacular than the next.

The Giants' first touchdown came on a 40-yard pass to running back Brandon Jacobs, a play on which linebacker Casey Matthews was badly sucked in by a play fake and ended up watching Jacobs run away from him. It was a well-designed play by the Giants - the two wideouts on that side took all of the coverage across to the other side of the formation with them - but Matthews was scorched.

"Yeah, that was my guy," he said. "I just lost him, really. Obviously, they faked the run, sucked us up in the gap, and then on the boot the linebacker to that side just needs to take them when they leak out, and I saw him. It was just a little too late."

The second touchdown was a true disaster. The Eagles threw a big blitz at Manning and he countered with a nothing kind of a throw to Victor Cruz that turned into a 74-yard touchdown after Kurt Coleman and then Asomugha both missed tackles. At that point, Coleman was excused from further duty and Nate Allen took his place.

Then there was the third touchdown, the go-ahead score with 8:07 remaining, in which Cruz outfought Asomugha (mostly) and safety Jarrad Page (sort of) for a 28-yard pass that was entirely up for grabs. It was eye-opening, watching the team's premier free-agent acquisition lose in that kind of competition. In three games, he has not been as all-worldy as his advance notices.

"I always grade myself hard," Asomugha said. "When there are big plays that happen, that's the stuff that we were just hitting on - missing the tackle on the all-out blitz, you know, was the first one. And then the deep ball, that play, something should have happened for the defense. There's no way that [Cruz] should have come away with that with two defenders on him. So, not pleased.

"We just need to continue to get better. Besides that, it's a solid game. You know, everybody for the most part was playing hard, myself as well. It was just those couple of plays that they got that kind of hurt."

Kind of.

After the game, Asomugha got his first real taste of Mad Andy.

"He was upset that we didn't play more aggressive," Asomugha said.

Whatever the initial emotion, though, the real work begins now. As badly as Vick is being beaten up, it is the defense that could kill this season.