He is prompt. Give Big Red that.

At noon sharp, Andy Reid lumbers into the media den, climbs a few stairs, sits in a too-small chair, clears his throat, adjusts his glasses, looks at a white piece of paper and says, "Injuries."

The coach is always on time, but he's not much else. Not particularly informative. Definitely not revealing. Not funny. Not enjoyable. And certainly not long-winded.

Mondays with Andy. It would be a short book.

The day after games, Reid is the primary source of Eagles information, and he guards it like a kid protecting his candy stash. It is for him to know, and reporters to find out, but not necessarily from him.

Reid isn't mean or rude, though he can be snide when pestered with the same question asked 10 ways by reporters trying to glean information or clarify Reid's non-answer answers. Local reporters have been through nine seasons of Mondays with Andy, nine long seasons of hearing "time's yours," even if it really isn't.

We've tried to pry information from a man who views the exercise, at best, as a necessary evil, but after years of being stonewalled, there's a healthy frustration among the reporting corps about how little Reid reveals.

"We need to do a better job." How many times has Reid said that when asked a detailed question about the run-pass ratio or the team's execution in the red zone? That's his reflexive, bank response for "I'm not answering that." It reveals nothing other than his strategy for answering questions, which boils down to less is more.

He's got a bunch of vacuous pet phrases. "It starts with me" is a favorite.

So are, "We'll see what happens there," "He's doing a real good job with that," and "I'm not getting into all that stuff."

Then there's my personal favorite: "I've got to do a better job of putting the guys in the right position." What does that mean? How does that matter? If you're so smart, why are players out of position?

Reid can turn even a direct, specific question - and in journalism, those are the best kind - into a non-answer. He doesn't flat-out lie, but he redirects into those vacant answers that serve only to frustrate reporters, and by extension, the fans.

Question: Andy, I saw Donovan leaving the Linc on crutches last night. What happened?

Answer: It's my responsibility to make sure that I put the guys in the right position where we don't make mistakes and we have a better opportunity to achieve.

Q: But he was on crutches, Andy.

A: It's not all Donovan. Everybody has a little piece of the pie on this thing, I've said that before. Starting with me, we can all do a little bit better.

Q: But Andy, Donovan couldn't walk on his own.

A: Donovan's the quarterback right now, yes.

As is the case with most coaches in the NFL, Reid typically is more forthcoming in the days after a win, and has a tendency to get snippy after a loss, particularly if the losses are mounting.

Last season, after the Eagles lost to New England and then Seattle, in a game in which A.J. Feeley misfired on 23 of 42 passes and threw four interceptions, Reid was asked how close McNabb had been to playing in the game - and if he had wanted to. Then, in a follow-up, someone asked whether McNabb was disappointed that he didn't get to play.

"Why does that matter?" Reid said. "I just got done telling you that he wanted to play."

The Eagles sat at 5-7 that day.

There also was the special-teams disaster in the opener in Green Bay last season, when Greg Lewis muffed one punt that the Packers recovered for a touchdown and J.R. Reed muffed another that led to Green Bay's game-winning field goal. After that game, a report surfaced that the Eagles had called former punt returner Reno Mahe. When asked on that Monday whether the report was true, Reid said, "not necessarily."

Mahe signed with the Eagles the next day.

And so it goes.

The confounding part is that Reid can be spectacularly informative and entertaining away from the podium in the NovaCare Complex auditorium, where large portraits of past Eagles greats hang on the walls. Once in Maui at the NFL owners' meetings, Reid sat with a handful of reporters and told a funny story about trying to escape to a secluded Caribbean beach in the off-season and getting noticed, then serenaded, by a gaggle of Eagles fans.

Even in his sprawling office at the complex, Reid will relax and often poke fun at himself and the insane hours he keeps.

But Mondays with Andy aren't the same. They're mind-numbing, by design.

Maybe it's the chair.

at 215-854-5064 or afox@phillynews.com.