If for no other reason than it is required by the Official NFL Coach's Handbook following a lopsided win, Andy Reid did remind everyone that teams aren't as good as they look when winning or as bad as they look when losing.

For their sake, the St. Louis Rams better hope so.

The Eagles opened the new season with a resounding victory, a 38-3 walkover against the Rams that left room for improvement only to the pickiest of nitpickers.

If this were college, you would congratulate the athletic director for selecting a tasty cupcake at the top of the schedule, the sort of opponent that sends the alumni home happy and ready to contribute to the scholarship fund.

"Things snowball in this league," Reid said, explaining the Rams' unsightly performance as a product of the game's momentum. There's probably some truth to that, but the Eagles didn't meet much resistance on their way to taking control of the afternoon, either.

"They dominated us in all three phases," St. Louis coach Scott Linehan said. In fact, aside from getting off the bus, finding the locker room and properly donning their equipment, there wasn't the Rams did right.

So it was a stress-free day for the Eagles. No injuries, no lapses, no fresh controversies to lap over the gunwales of a smoothly sailing ship.

"Winning handles and controls everything," said right starting cornerback Sheldon Brown.

He said that in the locker room after the game, standing next to the empty locker of former left starting cornerback Lito Sheppard. For whatever reason, and maybe it was something unrelated to the game or his current situation, Sheppard had dressed and left the stadium before the locker room doors opened to the media.

The new starting left cornerback, Asante Samuel, had an uneventful debut with the Eagles. He didn't make a tackle, but did defend the three passes thrown his way well enough that he had an outside chance at an interception on all three. On one of them, he definitely should have picked off the ball and might have taken it back for a touchdown.

"I kind of took my eyes off the ball," Samuel said. "Man, I should have had that one. If I did, you all would be loving me right now."

Well, let's not get carried away. The reverse is certainly true, however. If Samuel keeps dropping interceptions, his friends in the stands are not going to be happy, but that is meat for another meal.

All that can be said today is that Samuel, Brown and Sheppard co-existed well enough and that there is no whining allowed after a 38-3 win.

Because the Rams have big running back Steven Jackson at their disposal - and probably because quarterback Marc Bulger didn't scare them - the Eagles played a lot of three-linebacker defensive sets, particularly in the first half.

That limited the number of plays for Sheppard and the other members of the Eagles' nickel and dime coverages. Defensive coordinator Jim Johnson, trying to defuse the whole cornerback thing, said previously he expected Sheppard to be on the field 65-70 percent of the time. Yesterday, it was barely 50 percent, and that's including a handful of plays in which he subbed for Brown on the right side while Samuel played the entire game on the left.

Later this season, perhaps as soon as Monday night's game against Dallas, the percentages will change. When the opposition is playing run-and-shoot with multiple receivers, there will be more playing time for defensive back and less for the linebackers.

Whether that will mollify Sheppard, who thinks he should be starting and should be paid as a starter, is difficult to say. Getting more playing time might just add ammunition to agent Drew Rosenhaus' armory. Rosenhaus, hoping to get the Eagles to either trade his client or upgrade his contract, said that Sheppard should be starting, if not ahead of Samuel, then certainly ahead of Brown.

That's not the sort of dialogue that helps a situation, and it didn't do much for Brown's mood, either.

"It doesn't matter what the [playing] rotation is. Nobody can complain when you're winning," Brown said yesterday. "And it's important to understand that we're here in a football season trying to accomplish something right now, and all that other bullcrap can be handled at a different time."

In other words, this is game time, not contract negotiation time. In other words, cut it out.

Brown made his own case yesterday, leading the defensive backfield in tackles. One of them was a massive hit on Jackson that knocked the helmet from the running back's head and left Jackson rubbing his dreadlocks to see if those were still intact.

"Coach always says that little guys have to go low, but I saw an opportunity to go high," Brown said. "It was a pretty good hit."

No, not bad at all. The Eagles have a defensive backfield capable of those moments and a versatile unit that can play well together. There will be playing time for all of them and everyone likes to say that, really, it doesn't matter who is starting.

And it doesn't, except to the guy who isn't.

That guy is Lito Sheppard and yesterday his playing time was cut in half compared to when he was healthy last season. Does winning really cure all ills?

Unless the Eagles go 16-0, we'll probably find out eventually.

Contact columnist Bob Ford at 215-854-5842 or bford@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/bobford.