Week 2 wrap

After the Eagles stunning collapse against the Giants, Eagles coach Andy Reid took full responsibility for his team's loss. This wasn't a case of a veteran coach covering for his players -- Reid's decision to shrink the playbook and slow down the Eagles' highly effective West Coast offense in the middle of the third quarter was what cost the birds the game.

Yesterday, still reeling from the loss, I foolishly subjected myself to a bunch of the Monday Morning Quarterback shows. The Eagles-Giants game was the first topic of discussion and a few analysts trotted out the old you-can't-be-a-Super-Bowl-contender-without-an-effective-power-running-game bugaboo in reference to the Eagles' inability to run out the clock.

Let's forget two of the Eagles' late game possessions ended on badly dropped passes and a third on a fumble by a running back who had put the ball on the carpet exactly once in the previous three years and acknowledge, generally, the Eagles ability to run between the tackles is average at best. Does that really prevent them from being contenders?

Or is it one of those sports axioms-- like the team with the superior starting pitching wins the playoff series -- that is always true until it's false.

I'm not sure if it even reaches that standard. Of course it's nice to have a power running game. Just like it helps to have very good quarterback and an upper echelon defense-- two other attributes a Super Bowl contender "needs."

And if your team has all three and isn't led by Peyton Manning you will have a great chance of winning it all.

But recent history shows two out of three ain't bad. One just has to look at the Patriot dynasty. They won 2001 with a rookie quarterback who certainly came into his own in the Super Bowl, but was far from dominant before that. They took the title in 2003 without a 650 -- let alone 1000 -- yard rusher. In 2004 they were firing on all cylinders and still barely beat an Eagles team that ranked close to last in the league in rushing.

Maybe the lesson of the Patriot's success is that having a great coach is key to winning a Super Bowl. I can only hope Andy Reid -- generally one of the better coaches in the NFL -- hasn't decided this is the year to try to prove that one wrong.


Picks -- I finished 10 - 6 against the spread last week. Not bad for my first time out. Although there were a lot of clear mismatches and all those favorites covered, so it was probably a profitable week for gamblers and a bad one for Vegas. I'm sure they'll make up for it.

NFL coaches get bigger and bigger

Tis the season of the fashion week. And, no matter if it's New York, Paris or Milan, you can't spell catwalk without a little bit of cattiness.

Not surprisingly much of this year's acrimony is focused on the weight of the models. Although, in an intercontinental twist, opinions in different countries diverge on whether it's fat or thin that's in.

Fashion week organizers in Australia have threatened to ban a designer for staffing her show with normal-sized "everyday Australians --" a group that happens to include a couple former Miss World contestants. While over in Spain we have further proof that socialism has no bounds when pressure from the government resulted in the organizers of Madrid's fashion week to ban all models who fell under a certain body mass index.

The fashion world isn't the only one dealing with issues of mass as they unveil their latest season. Those of us who were glued to the television yesterday for NFL week one were subjected to a rolly-polly horror-show courtesy of the men who wear Starter Athletic couture and walk the sidelines, clipboard in hand.

Among the lowlights for me was Eagle coach Andy Reid, a former offensive lineman who has only grown since, running down the sidelines to follow a play with superfluous body parts flying in every which direction. I'm sure I wasn't alone in fearing an on-camera cardiac incident.

But that fear was nothing compared to my horror when, later in the game, the camera caught a famished Reid eying scatback Brian Westbrook like he was a chocolate chip. To protect himself and his smaller players from his most primordial of instincts Reid needs to wear a Hannibal Lector-like mouth guard during the second half of all future Eagles games.

Bill Parcells got into the act during the four o'clock television match-up. Last year the Cowboy coach debuted an improbable blonde dye job, but this year it was a low hanging gut which protruded hideously from an already rotund frame. In fact, if Parcells were to sit his stomach would provide him with a table large enough to set one of the multi-coursed meals he has clearly been eating more than three times a day upon.

I didn't even get a look at new Jets coach Eric Mangini but the rumor is, at a young 35, the formally slim Mangini is on course to make Reid and Parcells look like the after picture in a dexatrim ad.

It is often said that anorexic-seeming runaway models set a bad example for girls to follow. But what about all the boys who, because of the Parcells and Reids of the world, think the best way to be the guy in charge is to eat everything in sight?

I'm generally opposed to legislating how people behave or chose to look but if the NFL can be the no fun league and ban excessive celebration for the good of the game, it can also be the no fat league and ban excessively large head coaches for the good of common decency.

I'm sure there are a lot of current and former football players who would like nothing more than to see Bill Parcells sweat through two-a-days in the August sun as he tries to make weight.