True to character, Andy Reid's message to his players on Friday during the first official meeting leading to the 2006 season was simple and direct.The 2005 season is history. There will be no more discussion of it. We're moving on, and here's how we will be successful once again.The Eagles coach explained the reasons behind his personnel decisions. Reid said he would change his play-calling. He stressed the importance of hard work, of dedication, of attention to detail during the remaining months of the off-season. And most of all, Reid said he felt confident that the results in 2006 would be vastly different from the ones in '05.Finishing with a 6-10 record in 2005 after four straight NFC championship-game appearances isn't enough to deem 2006 a make-or-break season for Reid. But it will tell us whether last season was an anomaly in Reid's otherwise successful tenure here or the beginning of a downward spiral that ultimately will usher the coach out of town.One sub-.500 season Eagles fans can endure. Two straight for people craving a Super Bowl win? That will be hard to justify.If Reid is feeling the pressure, he certainly didn't let on during a one-on-one interview after the three-day minicamp concluded yesterday afternoon.Reid acknowledged that some things must change. He said that the Eagles' run-to-pass ratio got out of hand as last season progressed, and that he will be more committed - has to be more committed - to giving Brian Westbrook an opportunity to run the football.Without saying so, Reid essentially acknowledged through all the off-season moves to improve the defense that last year's pass rush was unacceptable.And he admitted he has done some serious soul-searching. Enduring the failed Terrell Owens experiment and finishing in the NFC East cellar will lead even the least introspective of coaches to reevaluate his modus operandi."I think you reach down a little deeper," Reid said. "You kind of go through and analyze things, and you come out a better football coach. You come out a better player, from a player standpoint. The ones that do the soul-searching, if you're willing to do that as a player and as a coach, good things can happen."Asked what he found when he searched his soul, the dieting coach made a quip about finding a skinnier version of himself. Then he asked for a retraction and began to start again, when he stopped."I don't want to get into that," Reid said. "That's too philosophical."Reid's approach to the business of football is pretty simple. You have a plan and you stick to it. If each person does what he is supposed to, everything will work out. Reid is as straightforward as they come, but even he admits that everyone, including himself, needs to work a little more diligently to climb back to the top."We're just trying to work through it, work harder," he said. "As players and coaches, we all come back to the idea that if we work a little harder, we'll do a little better. I think I'm surrounded by people who feel that way. And as long as you have that, good things happen."Considering the glaring absence of a Lombardi Trophy at the NovaCare Complex, it's hard to totally buy into Reid's philosophy. But some of Reid's most respected veteran players maintained yesterday that the coach has a firm grip on the locker room.No one is better at detecting baseless rhetoric than players. If and when they find it, it's over for a coach. That definitely hasn't happened here."He kind of reminded us in the team meeting on Friday that this is what happened, and this ain't happening again," defensive end Jevon Kearse said. "He said with the guys that we have here, there's no way in the world that some of that should have happened. What happened happened last year, and boom, it's done. Now the new season starts today. You want to hear that, because you want to put it behind you.""As far as what he's presented to the team, he's the man in charge, and he said this is how we're going to get back to where we used to be," safety Brian Dawkins said. "He said the past is the past; this is how we're going to move on. In so many words, we're not discussing that stuff in detail. That stuff is gone; let's move on... ."That finally puts that period on [it] for us. That's it. We're moving on. If the head coach continues to talk about that stuff, it'll never leave. But if he says, 'That's it,' then you know that's it. We can move on."The message has been delivered. Soon it will be time for Reid to prove 2005 was a fluke.
Save the English lesson, guy, we're discussing football here.
