The funny thing is that it wasn't even the Eagles' season-opening destruction of the St. Louis Rams that put the rose color in my glasses.

"First and foremost is the fact that if the Cowboys truly are the Super Bowl favorite in the NFC, as virtually everyone has picked them, the Eagles aren't that far behind."

That's what I wrote after the Eagles slugged it out with

the Cowboys in a 41-37 loss at Dallas in

Week 2.

That loss and the Eagles' subsequent dominating defensive performance in a 15-6 victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers had me looking at the Birds in a different light.

I thought perhaps I had rushed to judgment when I proclaimed at the start of training camp that this team didn't look like a legitimate Super Bowl contender.

The Eagles were 2-1 and easily could have been 3-0.

Now, they are 2-3 after Sunday's beat-down at home at the hands of the Washington Redskins. They are disjointed, beat up and in need of some serious re-evaluation.

They need answers, and it doesn't seem as if a lot of immediate solutions are coming out of the NovaCare Complex.

After reviewing film from the Eagles' disaster against Washington, coach Andy Reid yesterday still offered no specifics as to what went wrong and how he intends to fix it.

One take, the one Reid surely wants us to believe, is that he's purposely keeping things close to the vest, that he actually does have a handle on things, but doesn't want to clue us in.

I'm sticking with my assessment after Sunday's loss, when Reid rolled out every coaching cliché in the book rather than explain what is going wrong with his foundering football team:

He does not know what's wrong, and he certainly doesn't know how to fix it.

"The obvious thing is, I always go back to blocking and tackling on both sides of the ball," Reid said. "We have to do better there.

"Then, personally what I go back to is the playcalling on the offensive side and defensive side, and, then, blocking and tackling. Then, making sure that you're not being too fancy, that you're giving the quarterback and receivers and the other skill players there an opportunity to do what they do best."

What?

That answer was right out of the Sarah Palin school of talking points, only Reid doesn't have the charm to gloss over the fact that there was little substance in what he said.

The Eagles need to block and tackle better.

The skill players on offense need to be able to do what they do best.

Well, what if they can't?

What if the problem with the Eagles is that Reid and general manager Tom Heckert severely overestimated the talent base of a team that finished 8-8 last season and had only two victories over teams that finished with winning records?

What if Reid and Heckert were wrong when they determined that the Eagles' talent base was so strong, they could afford to trade out of the first round in two consecutive drafts?

What if Reid and Heckert were wrong when they decided their skill players were so good, they could ignore the pleas of quarterback Donovan McNabb, running back Brian Westbrook and tackle Jon Runyan to get more "weapons"?

What if Reid and Heckert were wrong in believing that so many of the young players they were counting on could become impact players without suffering some of the growing pains that come with a lack of experience?

I don't think the Eagles are a bad team.

I just think Reid and Heckert have been spinning their wheels a bit, while Dallas, the New York Giants and, now apparently, the Redskins acquired more talent.

"We're 16 points off," Reid said when asked whether he thought his team was close to being a winning one. "That's what we're off. It's such a small margin between winning and losing in the National Football League.

"These games come down to the wire. Ninety percent of them are coming down to the wire week after week, so you have to minimize mistakes and you have to maximize consistency. You just keep working and working and working, and as long as you stay aggressive here, I think good things will happen."

The problem is that those aren't really solutions.

"Keep working."

"Stay aggressive."

Those are phrases straight out of the Coaching 101 handbook.

The Eagles work hard, yet they are still 2-3 and looking extremely mediocre. *

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