Little evokes the unsatisfying spirit of Jimmy Carter like a tie in professional football.  Ties are so rare in the NFL that, league wide, the stretch between ties is measured in years.  A certain number of NFL players didn’t know of the possibility of the tie as recently as last week, that number being either fifty percent or Donovan McNabb.  The tie seems to exist in the NFL rulebook as a contingency foreseen but hardly expected, perhaps the NFL rule makers wrote the tie into the book to mock the frequency of draws in that other, un-American football.

Last week’s tie feels to Eagles fans like the epitome of a season with little resolution or clarity.  The Eagles rank near the top of most statistical categories revered and recent.  They have a mix of Pro Bowl veterans and bright young talents in the linebacking core and a punt returner.  The team has so far come up maddeningly short of getting over the hump of expectations, losing close contests to then NFC favorite Dallas Cowboys and current NFC favorite NY Giants.  Despite the close score and back and forth play of both games, talk radio and journalists out to make their mark have been unyielding in their belief that the coach has spent his last ill conceived challenge in Philadelphia.

The harshness of the radio, and therefore of the frustrated fan, may surprise outside spectators.  The city is barely a month removed from a raucous championship celebration.  The coach and quarterback have won more games for the franchise than anyone else.  These facts are mash for the mill in the Eagles’ news cycle, feed me wins or feed me bodies now!

The easy cliché runs: the Eagles’ news cycle is Zen like, looking neither back nor forward to concentrate on the ineffable rage of the now.  Change must come, and the new coach offers the same promise any new roll of the dice does.  “Horses for courses” a man who knows colorful analogies once told me.  I wonder what horse could possibly survive the run through this course.