Quitting time for Eagles?

Everyone agrees the Eagles' 4-7 record is unacceptable, given the expectations and the talent. The question is which is worse, the 4 or the 7?

Seven losses in 11 games, and 10 in the last 14 going back to the end of 2010, is obviously not very good. But the Eagles' wins are every bit as aggravating and frustrating - two of them, especially.

On Oct. 30, the Eagles stomped the Dallas Cowboys at the Linc for their only home win of the season. On Nov. 20, they went to the Meadowlands and beat the New York Giants physically as well as on the scoreboard.

If you watched just those two games, you'd have no reason to think the Eagles were anything other than a tough, aggressive, disciplined, and well-coached football team. You wouldn't be able to visualize the steaming mess that got itself beat in Buffalo or by Chicago and Arizona and New England.

It's one thing to be a bad team. Indianapolis without Peyton Manning is a bad team. Jacksonville, which fired coach Jack Del Rio on Tuesday, is a bad team. Bad teams lose to better teams. Pretty simple.

But this team has shown that it can be very good. And that makes an effort, or a lack it - as in Sunday's game against New England - all the more galling for fans.

"If we go out and play our game, we pretty much think nobody can beat us," linebacker Jamar Chaney said Tuesday. "But we haven't been playing like we're supposed to play, and we know that."

There has been a lot of talk about toughness since that game and some of the other bad losses. These Eagles have been called soft, and have been accused of avoiding contact.

"I would never question the toughness of any of my teammates," wide receiver Jason Avant said. "Even in this harsh situation, we have to play as hard as we can for each other and stay tight."

Frankly, toughness is not quite the right word here. To make it to the NFL, you have to be extremely tough. Some guys are tougher, and some guys relish physical play more than others, but let's just concede that all 53 players are tough.

The issue has more to do with investment. Every professional athlete does a private risk/reward calculation when he plays. Players who believe in what they're doing, who feel the likely reward is worth it, will risk their health on every single play. When doubt creeps in, or when there doesn't seem to be a realistic chance to win, you start to see halfhearted efforts from tacklers and short arms by wide receivers and happy feet from quarterbacks.

This is why Andy Reid made a point of saying the other day that the defensive players were "all-in" with coordinator Juan Castillo. There has been evidence to the contrary ever since that Buffalo debacle, when players visibly gave up on chasing opponents, but that is a point no coach can concede. Lose the players, and it's over.

Losing the coaching staff is worse. That's why Reid and the Eagles were quick to claim the argument between Marty Mornhinweg and Jim Washburn was not about play-calling or offensive philosophy. No one will say what it was about, of course, only that it wasn't the one thing they could never bring themselves to admit it was about.

For now, the heat is on DeSean Jackson for ducking contact on a couple of dropped passes in the New England game. But LeSean McCoy had two similar drops with defensive players bearing down on him. And would Michael Vick's ribs keep him out of three games if the Eagles were 8-3, or if he hadn't signed his big contract in the summer? Not saying he should be playing hurt, just that he's also making risk/reward calculations.

A team that looks tentative and a step slow and unwilling to sell out on every play may just be soft. Or it may be that the players are discovering the hard way that their game plan is fatally flawed, or that adjustments aren't coming from the sideline.

The last Eagles team that looked this lost and this hopeless was Ray Rhodes' 3-13 squad in 1998. That team took the field knowing it had little chance to win and was usually proven right within a few minutes. Having to play out each game was humiliating. Having to play out the season was sheer torture.

That team included Brian Dawkins, Tra Thomas, Troy Vincent, Hugh Douglas, Duce Staley, Ike Reese, Irving Fryar, and Jeremiah Trotter. They were not only tough, but they proved for years that, when invested, when they were all in, they were the core of a very good team.

All it took was a coaching change. What will it take this time?