Eagles sources say Shawn Andrews is really hurt

Left behind in Philadelphia are his teammates, including his older brother, Stacy, and college friend Jason Peters, and a long list of questions about one of the most enigmatic sagas in Eagles history.

At the top of that list of questions is this one: How could everything have gone so wrong for such a promising young football player?

That one may actually have the most simple of answers. While all sorts of speculation has swirled about Andrews' desire to play the game of football, the Eagles say that a severe back problem is the only reason the two-time Pro Bowl guard's career is now in jeopardy.

"He had surgery," a team source said last week. "You don't just do the surgery to do the surgery. There was obviously something in there and it was flaring up."

Another team source indicated that the Eagles thought that Andrews would play in the season opener against Carolina last Sunday even as late as Thursday afternoon after he had sat out practice and the Eagles brought in Jon Runyan for a workout at the NovaCare Complex.

"When it first happened and he wasn't at practice, I talked to him and I thought he might be at practice the next day," the source said. "The next morning I saw him and he was walking like he was in a lot of pain."

The source admitted that Andrews is difficult to read.

"Some guys you say, 'How are you feeling, how long are you going to be out?' and you get very clear answers," the source said. "Shawn could be a little bit all over the place and hard to read. That made for some complicating factors."

Andrews was unavailable to comment for this story.

Though Andrews' answers may have left the Eagles confused at times, the source said it was the results of Andrews' last magnetic resonance imaging examination that led to Tuesday morning's decision.

"We tried to treat it again and it didn't get better, so he had an MRI and several doctors looked at the MRI and saw some irregularities," the source said.

One of the doctors that looked at the most recent MRI was Robert Watkins, the Southern California-based surgeon who operated on Andrews' back last fall.

"The conclusion was they didn't think he was going to be able to play," the source said.

And so Andrews landed on injured reserve.

The complexity of Andrews' situation and personality has fueled speculation about the former first-round pick's willingness to play in pain. All you have to do to find skeptics is log onto an Eagles fan site or read many of the comments online after a story is written about the tackle.

Some of that doubt was born a year ago, when Andrews did not initially report to training camp and then said it was because of a bout with depression, a very real disease that is invisible to anyone who sees Andrews only as a professional football player.

It also probably doesn't help Andrews that he was replacing Runyan, whose off-the-chart pain tolerance allowed him to line up for every game during his nine-year Eagles career.

Runyan had off-season knee surgery. Besides the Eagles, he has met with Kansas City and Buffalo, but he remains unsigned.