The Eagles are 2-1 heading into their bye week, which is exactly where I thought they’d be even before they looked like a M*A*S*H unit. Next in line is a week of healing, followed by a home game against the putrid Tampa Bay Buccaneers, a dangerous west coast game against the bad but feisty Oakland Raiders, and another road game down I-95 against the suddenly inept Washington Redskins—all very winnable games.

If the Eagles aren’t 5-1 by the time they enter the real portion of their schedule against the New York Giants on November 1, something has gone horribly wrong.

The Birds managed to clobber a pretty bad opponent yesterday without their starting quarterback or running back, giving them an extra week to heal without sacrificing a victory over a Kansas City squad they could have beaten with their scout team. More on that later.

First, let’s look at what the Eagles did well, which was pretty much everything. Kevin Kolb cemented his role as Donovan McNabb’s backup, meticulously carving up the Chiefs defense. LeSean McCoy held on to the ball and put out some nifty runs, proving himself a competent replacement and potent compliment to Brian Westbrook. The offensive line gave Kolb all day to throw, while the defensive line made mincemeat of Kansas City’s OL, harassing Matt Cassel endlessly and snuffing out Larry Johnson (though they had more trouble with my fellow Texas-alum Jamal Charles).

Here’s what I didn’t like about the game: It was too easy.

What do I mean by that? For example, the Chiefs were trailing by three touchdowns most of the game, but the way they played, you’d have thought they were trying to run out the clock with a big lead. In the second half they ran the ball 20 times and threw it only eight; and when they did throw it, it was never downfield. If you tried to argue that coach Todd Haley and his team simply quit in this game, you could make a very convincing case (as does the great Jason Whitlock in today’s Kansas City Star).

So before the Eagles and all the McNabb haters disguised as Kolb supporters get too big for their britches (to use an expression from down Kolb’s way), keep in mind who they played on Sunday and how their opponent half-assed it. The Eagles clobbered a lousy team, which they should; but they better not let their guard down on the next three lousy teams they play.

Let’s not mince words: The Phillies are screwed.

If it wasn’t clear before Brad Lidge’s 11th blown save of the year two nights ago in Miami, it should be crystal clear to everyone now. Throw in Ryan Madson’s six BSes, and that’s 17 potential wins out the window. Now, despite last year’s abnormality of never losing a game when leading after eight innings, I don’t think anyone expected this kind of regression from the bullpen, especially those two guys. Let’s pretend they only coughed up a normal six or seven games this year: The Phillies would have 100 wins already and be cruising to home field advantage and most likely another National League pennant.

There is no easy solution to this problem, or more accurately, no solution at all. J.A. Happ has never closed games, and even if he could, would you want to eliminate of your most effective starting pitchers? Brett Myers can’t be relied upon because of health and rust issues. Pedro Martinez is an intriguing option—he has the stuff and mentality to do it, but how is a guy his age supposed to suddenly adjust to getting up and down in the bullpen on consecutive nights? If J.C. Romero returns in time for the playoffs, would you toss him right into the ninth-inning fire at 80 percent? Who does that leave? Tyler Walker? Egad.

The reality is that there is simply no way the team will survive the NL playoffs. All the teams in the playoffs are of similar caliber, therefore there are just too many close games in which this bullpen will be required to hold a lead; and we’ve all seen how well that usually goes. I give them a 50/50 chance of squeaking past the Rockies in the best-of-five divisional round, but I simply can’t envision a scenario in which they beat the Dodgers or Cardinals in a seven-game series.

In the clip below (NSFW: put on your headphones, unless your boss is a fan of David Mamet’s colorful use of the English language), you can watch last year’s Brad Lidge (Alec Baldwin) giving the riot act to this year’s bullpen—Lidge, Madson, everyone else who’s blown a save (Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin).

Tell me that isn’t the perfect metaphor for the ultimate downfall of the 2009 Philadelphia Phillies a few short weeks from now. I don’t think showing this clip to Lidge would help in any way; it would probably have the opposite effect at this point. And I don’t know if Charlie Manuel has ever seen Glengarry Glen Ross either, but I promise you he’s sitting up nights asking himself some variation of this question: “What happened to my Alec Baldwin?”

This just officially got ugly. Already up 31-13 and Drew Brees just completed a 1-in-100 pass to Devrey Henderson on route to what looks like another TD. The final score will look like a blowout, but there may actually be some encouraging things to take from it.

Kevin Kolb looked pretty good in the first half of his first NFL start. He kept drives alive with smart throws under pressure while also making way for a boatload of wildcat plays. It started to unravel with under two minutes left in the half when the Saints picked up a huge play on a blown non-holding call seen by everyone in the stadium except for the official looking right at it. They scored a TD on the next play when they should have been 40 yards back from where they started.

Kolb showed good resolve driving the Eagles down the field in very short time for a field goal to bring the score to 17-13 and the Eagles receiving the kickoff in the second half.

Then it really went sour. Ellis Hobbs coughed up the kickoff, and the Saints marched in for an easy TD, followed by another easy TD after Kolb threw a truly awful interception on the next possession. Just like that it was 31-13: game over.

The most positive thing about this game is how well the Eagles moved the ball without Donovan McNabb. Imagine the scary plays they’re going to be able to run with him, Michael Vick, Brian Westbrook and DeSean Jackson all on the field at the same time. Even more important to this game, there’s no way in the world McNabb throws that same interception (he is so undervalued in this way), which takes seven points away from the Saints and keeps the Eagles right in it.

The point being that it looks like the Eagles should be able to run with anybody in the league as long as McNabb is at the helm. The defense looked bewildered at times, but the Saints unquestionably have the NFL’s best offense, and three times they started drives around midfield or closer. In order to have any chance at winning this game without McNabb, the rest of the team was going to have to play flawlessly, and that was far from what happened.

I didn’t really expect the Eagles to win this game, even if McNabb had played; but I did expect better than this without him. Bad special teams play and stupid penalties compounded everything that went wrong today.

It’s only week two, and what looked like a bad fourth-week bye before the season now might turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Even without McNabb, Kansas City is very beatable next week, and the Eagles can come out of the bye week 2-1 with a healthy football team ready to take on the meat of the schedule.

Update: Hopefully Westbrook and Asante Samuel aren’t seriously hurt and just have no reason to risk further injury in a 41-22 game.

After the Panthers opening drive today, which left most of the Eagles defense on its back, it was fair to wonder if DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart were going to steamroll the Birds all day. Then Jake Delhomme dropped back to pass on the Panthers second drive and everything changed.

Sean McDermott picked up right where his mentor left off, throwing everything and everyone at Delhomme, who looked like a World War I veteran out there. Four interceptions and a fumble (returned for a TD) later, Delhomme was yanked. Clearly he hasn’t gotten over the five picks he threw in the divisional playoff game last year, and what happened today isn’t going to assuage the football version of shellshock he’s going through.

His replacements fared no better, battered by a sea of green jerserys that continued to rack up sacks and turnovers. Even more promising, Carolina never gave up on the running game, rushing 30 times, and the Eagles shut that down, too. There was even a nifty moment near the end of the blowout when Carolina faced fouth-and-goal on the 1-yard line and called timeout with forty-odd seconds left, which peeved McDermott enough to send in the first team defense to stop the TD.

The final line: five sacks, five interceptions, 2 fumbles recovered (one for a TD), and 10 points and 169 net yards allowed.

That was the good news (along with DeSean Jackson’s TD punt return).

The bad news isn’t as bad as it looked when it happened, but it’s still bad. After scoring on a three-yard run, a Panthers lineman plowed into McNabb on an unflagged late hit and cracked one of his ribs. He probably won’t play next week, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we didn’t see him again until week five after the bye week. Then again, his pain tolerance is pretty high, so it could be sooner.
While McNabb was out there, the passing game had fits and starts, including some dropped passes early. The running game had its moments, especially heading left behind Jason Peters, but it too was hit or miss. It was nice to see the potential behind the duo of Brian Westbrook and LeSean McCoy, with the added wrinkle of Jackson in the wildcat.

Yet for all its unevenness, McNabb and the offense did do one thing today we all gave them hell for in the past: three trips to the red zone ending in three touchdowns. The total stats might not look great for anyone, but they found a way to score points.

What can we take from all this? Either the Panthers really suck or the Eagles defense isn’t as weak as some of us feared. That’s good. We also saw for most of the second half that Kevin Kolb officially stinks. That’s bad, especially if we’re stuck with him at QB for the next two weeks. They might have lost to New Orleans next week even with McNabb, but their 50-50 chance of winning that game has plummeted. Kansas City in week three, however, was supposed to be a sure win, and now that is in jeopardy as well.

A 38-10 win is a great way to start a season under almost any circumstances, but losing great players to injury is about the only way to mar it. Let’s hope McNabb won’t be out too long because of it.

About a month before the draft, when the Eagles off-season plan looked as well thought out as the Bay of Pigs invasion, I had a half-written column excoriating Andy Reid & Co. for their desultory personnel decisions on a team that was one TD from the Super Bowl.

The humble pie I never baked has been soured considerably by injuries, but that’s not Big Red’s fault, so I’ll still eat it.

But before I do that, let’s review the ingredients in that unbaked pie:

• Donovan McNabb, seeking a new contract (an extension that guarantees his future with the team), finally used some leverage to make another plea for more offensive weapons and make it clear that his remaining time in Philadelphia is getting short. He ended up getting a raise instead of an extension, but that effectively accomplished the same goal: Donovan McNabb is the quarterback for the next two seasons. Thank goodness.
• The Eagles low-balled Brian Dawkins so badly in negotiations, their longtime defensive captain reportedly didn’t even bother to come back and hear the Eagles counteroffer to the contract he signed with Denver. Of course, the team would have been nuts to match that deal; but maybe if they had started with something reasonable it never would have come to this, and Weapon X might still be wearing green. We’ll all miss Dawkins on the field, the team might miss his leadership off it even more.
• Both William Thomas and Jon Runyan, the men who have protected McNabb’s front and blind sides for his entire career, were told to talk a walk, leaving both offense tackle positions open without an apparent plan to fill them.

At this point, any Eagles fan worth his salt pretty much threw up his hands in frustration and disbelief at what seemed like complete disorganization. It certainly didn’t seem like Reid was trying to make the necessary moves for a team that came just short of the Promised Land.

But it turned out Reid did have a plan after all—a hell of a plan really. It just didn’t play out exactly like it was supposed to.

The Eagles boldly addressed the offensive tackle vacancies, signing Shawn Andrews’ brother Stacy to play the right side, and trading their extra first round pick to Buffalo for left tackle Jason Peters, who also happened to be Shawn’s college roommate. So not only did they plug the holes on the O-line with two pretty good players, those guys could presumably keep the notoriously flighty Shawn on the straight-and-narrow, focused on football.

Well, one out of two ain’t bad. Shawn has effectively lost his job to Winston Justice, who will start at right tackle in tomorrow’s season opener. Add in Todd Herremans’ foot injury, and two of the five projected starters in Andy Reid reconstructed offensive line aren’t going to be on the field for at least the first few weeks of the season, if not longer.

On the defensive side of the ball, things were a bit more undetermined. The loss of Dawkins was huge, more in terms of his leadership than his playing skills; and Sean McDermott replacing his mentor, the late Jim Johnson, was also a mystery in terms of impact. What was no mystery was the huge blow Stewart Bradley’s ACL tear dealt the defense. Suddenly the Eagles look like a team that won’t be able to stop the run or cover tight ends in a division full of great ones. If the offense doesn’t score early and often, the defense is going to have a hard time keeping the Eagles in games.

Scoring isn’t going to be a problem for this team for the most part, thanks to some slick drafting by Reid, picking up Jeremy Maclin and Brian Westbrook’s heir apparent in LeSean McCoy.

And then came the night of August 13, which was so shocking, I had to do a double-take at the news scroll on ESPN.

Donovan McNabb wanted weapons: He has an arsenal now.

Michael Vick might spend most of the season on the sideline holding a clipboard, but the thought of him coming in and out of games has the potential to terrify opposing defensive coordinators. Including Westbrook and DeSean Jackson, both of whom have some high school quarterback experience, the Eagles could run formations with four guys on the field who could potentially throw the ball. Try game planning for that.

So what does all this mean for the Eagles in 2009? Can they win their division? Maybe. Can they get to the Super Bowl? Probably not.

McNabb has the best group of skill players that he has ever had at his disposal. They’re going to score a lot of points in a lot of games. However, what happens in those games when the offense isn’t clicking, probably because of the amorphous offensive line? Unlike last year, the defense won’t be able to keep it close and give the offense a chance to get in sync. That could spell trouble in a division as tough as the NFC East.

My prediction: A 9-7 season and a wild card berth. The Cowboys and Redskins might make decent teams in other divisions, but they’re a joke compared to the Eagles and Giants. It’s possible the Giants could struggle enough on offense to bring a division win for the Eagles into the picture, but their defense is much better than the Birds, and that gives them a huge advantage. When you have a team with great offense and mediocre defense versus one with a mediocre offense and great defense, I’ll take the great defense.

Of course, the NFL is an almost completely unpredictable entity these days, so I could be wrong. Let’s hope I am, and the Eagles are better than I think they are.