Bob Brookover: Asante Samuel takes postgame shots at Andy Reid

The in-game thumping was performed by the Atlanta Falcons, an unbeaten football team with Matt Ryan, a tremendously talented Philadelphia native, at quarterback.

The postgame pounding was administered by Asante Samuel, a former Eagles cornerback best known for three things: missed tackles, trash-talking and interceptions.

Samuel, as he did during his four seasons in Philadelphia, missed some tackles, including one that led to a LeSean McCoy touchdown in the second quarter. What he did not miss after the Falcons' 30-17 win over the Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field was an opportunity to tear down his former head coach.

Irritated that Andy Reid would not acknowledge him after the Falcons became the first team to beat the coach after a regular-season bye week, Samuel went into a rapid-fire tirade in the visitors' locker room as his mesmerized teammates looked on.

"Ain't he the best coach after the bye week?" he asked near the end of his session. "False. Next question. They got a lot of issues over there. I'm happy to be away from all that controversy. You all know what I screamed when I was over there. I'd say what we need to do to win. We run the ball over here."

It did not take much to find Samuel's trigger. Somebody asked the four-time Pro Bowl cornerback if he thought quarterback Michael Vick would be the fall guy after the Eagles slipped to 3-4 without putting up much of a fight.

"You can't always blame somebody," Samuel said. "Sometimes you have to take the fall on yourself."

It was then that Samuel revealed his injured feelings.

"Andy Reid, why you didn't speak to me?" he asked as he went in for a close-up with one of the television cameras at his locker. "What did I do to you, man? I have nothing but love for you, Big Red. What I did? Come on man, call me. Hit me up."

For now, it's a one-sided story because Reid had finished with the media by the time Samuel went off.

Here is Samuel's side: "He wouldn't speak to me, man. Can you believe that? As much as I've done, as happy as I am. He wouldn't even tell me, 'Great game, Asante, I love you, man.' I thought every coach was supposed to have a first-class mentality. I don't think that was first class. I don't know why. I was like, 'Hey coach, what's up? I got nothing but love for you.' "

Samuel said the response from Reid was silence.

"So I just hit him on the belly a little bit," Samuel said. "That big belly."

More jabs followed.

"Didn't you hear the crowd? They were chanting something," Samuel said. "What were they saying?"

"Fire Andy" was the chant du jour and probably will be in some future du jours at the Linc, too.

"I don't wish that on nobody," Samuel said. "Even though I got done pretty bad, I don't wish that on nobody . . . but I don't know. Maybe something has to be done. Nothing personal. It's always business. That's what they always told me when I was working my [contracts] out. [General manager] Howie [Roseman], Andy [would say], 'It's nothing personal.' So I don't know why you wouldn't speak to me. It's nothing personal. It's all business."

Samuel said the Eagles would not be in such an awful predicament if they had kept No. 22 around.

"Maybe if you had 22, all that talk wouldn't be going on," he said. "We're 7-0 over here, baby. There wouldn't be no struggle . . . It would be victory Monday if I was over there. Now, they've got to go to work on Monday and we're off."

Samuel may have performed the postgame dance in the Falcons' locker room, but it was Ryan and some other Atlanta players who delivered the most gut-wrenching punches to Reid during the game. The former Penn Charter star was a surgical 22 for 29 for 262 yards and three touchdowns.

Undeterred by the Eagles' change in defensive coordinators, the Falcons scored on each of their first six possessions to build a 30-10 lead three seconds into the fourth quarter. Ryan's three touchdown passes all came in the first half, with the most impressive being a 63-yard strike to Julio Jones after he sprinted by struggling cornerback Nmandi Asomugha.

That score came after the Eagles had cut Atlanta's lead to 14-7. By halftime, it was 24-7 and it was clear that Reid's streak of bye-week victories was going to end on this dark afternoon.

Ryan, in his fifth season with the Falcons, won for the first time as a professional at Lincoln Financial Field.

"It's very nice," he said. "I've been up here twice before professionally and going out to see [my family] hasn't been the same after a loss. It will be good to see them and it's always good to be back in Philadelphia. I'm just happy we won."

Those were Asante Samuel's sentiments, too. He just expressed them a little differently.