Eagles coach Reid rebuilds his message after playoff loss

TURNS OUT IT was a rebuilding season after all.

That seemed to be Andy Reid's message, or one of them, in the coach's season-wrapup news conference yesterday.

Of course, many of us figured as much from the time Donovan McNabb was traded last April, but Reid always steadfastly avoided acknowledging anything like that. And in the weeks after Reid made his stunning Sept. 21 quarterback switch, from Kevin Kolb to Michael Vick, he seemed to have changed the dynamic. For a while there, in a wide-open NFC, the explosive Eagles seemed to have as good a shot as anyone.

That is, until really good defenses started strafing Vick with blitzes, while the Birds' young defense went from plucky and opportunistic to just plain hapless.

So, what did it all mean, an NFC East title but a second successive first-round playoff exit, with a roster now increasingly filled with young Eagles who have experienced nothing but losing in the postseason?

"We were able to play some young players that I think were able to get valuable experience, that ought to help their careers down the road and also help us as a football team," Reid said. "We've seen some great leadership out of some of the young players. We came from a position that most people didn't think we'd be able to do it at the beginning of the year, and that was to make it to the playoffs and to win the NFC East. My hat goes off to the effort of the coaches and the players. We were all greedy at the end, which you have to be, and we wanted to advance, and we just didn't play well enough there to do that."

Reid returned to the "greedy" notion - an interesting word choice, which implies you selfishly want more than you deserve - when asked whether the team met his expectations.

"That [greedy] is how I feel," he said. "I didn't want to be really sitting here doing this, and I didn't expect to be here doing this. I think if you talk to our players, they would tell you the same thing. I expected us to move on and take the next game and take care of that one and follow up and go all the way. That's how I felt."

So, in the end, expecting this bunch to win in the postseason was "greedy."

"Very few teams can retool the way that we retooled and still compete, put yourself in a position to compete for a championship, and we were able to do that," Reid said the day after the visiting Packers methodically hammered out a 14-0, second-quarter lead en route to a 21-16, wild-card-round victory.

If Reid wasn't completely honest about how he viewed his team until it was all over, yesterday he did acknowledge some of the problem areas moving forward. Reid affirmed his belief in defensive coordinator Sean McDermott, but when Reid talked about schemes being one thing that will be evaluated in the offseason, it seemed possible he was talking about a defense that seems to take years for players to fully master, resulting in repeated breakdowns in crucial areas such as the red zone.

"We know we need to get better in the red zone on both sides of the football," Reid said. "We know we need to do better on third down on both sides of the football, and we need to eliminate the penalties that we've had over the last few years."

Reid also noted the problems the Eagles experienced offensively down the stretch, and against the Packers.

"Obviously we were blitzed a little bit more than what we had been in the past," he said. "At times we handled it well, and at times we didn't. That's something in the offseason that we have to address and look at and get better at. You know that other teams are going to study that, like they have the last few games, and they're going to come out and show it to us next year. So we have to get better in that area."

Reid said he would like to retain both veteran quarterbacks, Michael Vick and Kevin Kolb. He would hardly be expected to say anything else. Reid confirmed he conducted a normal exit interview with Kolb yesterday, but indicated this was not the heart-to-heart sitdown they need to have over Kolb's future. Reid predictably said he was glad to hear Kolb wants to be a starter, he wouldn't want him to be content to be a backup.

Reid talked about how, in the offseason, Vick can "step back and now look at this body of work that he's had here, and he can go through a self-scout, the coaches can go through a self-scout, and so both parties can get to know each other even better and learn."

Reid said Vick "didn't obviously have as many reps in training camp or in the minicamps that Kevin had, and I think some of the things that you cover during that time were things he could have benefited from when he had an opportunity to start. But I'm not going to take away from the fact that he did a phenomenal job. I mean, he stepped in and really was a huge part of why we were still able to play after the regular season ended."

With Vick's contract up, Reid refused to say anything about the future there; asked if he thought Vick would be the starter when the team reconvenes, Reid said, "We'll see."

One problem there is knowing when the team will reconvene. Normally it's at the end of April, the weekend after the draft, for minicamp. But with the collective bargaining agreement expiring in March and little progress evident, no one seems to expect a normal offseason. You want the Eagles to sign a particular free agent? Right now, there is no free agency, it's all in limbo, and will be until a new CBA occurs. One agent with Eagles clients said yesterday he figures the fight will drag on until training camp. How teams would sign and assimilate free agents at that point is anyone's guess. Could rookies be of any use whatsoever this coming season without the spring minicamp and OTAs?

Reid didn't want to speculate about any of that yesterday. He said he won't change his offseason routine for now.

"I'm going to take this offseason just like any other and going straight ahead until, or if, something happens. I don't care about that right now, and that's how we're going to approach it," he said.

None of that uncertainty seemed to cloud Reid's outlook on his team.

"I'm not satisfied at all," he said. "But at the same time, we feel comfortable going forward that we have some good young football players on this team, some good veteran players and a good mix right there to go compete for a championship."

For more Eagles coverage and opinion, read the Daily News' Eagles blog, Eagletarian, at www.eagletarian.com.

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