Coming out of a prolonged labor stoppage that forced the cancellation of all offseason activities, the Philadelphia Eagles nevertheless proceeded with their plan to rebuild the roster and forge ahead when the NFL Lockout finally ended in July.

During a hastily assembled training camp at Lehigh University, two particular catch-phrases quickly came to symbolize what the 2012 Eagles were supposed to be all about: “Dream Team” and “All In.”

What unfolded instead was a nightmare that left them all out of the playoffs for the first time since 2007.

The Eagles’ epic failure to live up to expectations is The Morning Call’s No. 3 regional sports story of the year.

After winning their opener with a blowout victory at St. Louis, the Eagles dropped their next four. Three of the losses came when the defense, under first-year coordinator Juan Castillo, failed to protect fourth-quarter leads.

Castillo and the defense would come under further fire after the Eagles failed in consecutive November games to protect fourth-quarter leads at home, against the Chicago Bears and Arizona Cardinals, to fall to 3-6.

The 21-17 loss to Arizona served as the flashpoint of the season, not only because the Eagles squandered another lead, but because wide receiver DeSean Jackson was held out of the game for disciplinary reasons while so many of their other key players were injured.

Quarterback Michael Vick missed the next three games, two of them losses, with cracked ribs. Cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie also sat out the next three with an ankle sprain. King Dunlap, a valuable reserve offensive lineman and special teams player, suffered a concussion and missed three games as well.

Those next three games all but mathematically knocked the Eagles out of playoff contention. Although they haven’t lost since, they were officially eliminated shortly after taking the field against the Dallas Cowboys last Saturday, when the New York Giants wrapped up a victory over the New York Jets.

For the Eagles (7-8), the first three-game winning streak of the season thus means very little because they took too long to put everything together.

Nine new starters, including six on defense, and 24 players overall who weren’t on the team last season are among the current 53-man roster. What’s more, the Eagles have new offensive and defensive line coaches, who have introduced radical alterations to the team’s previous methods.

Their offense and special teams have faltered to the tune of an NFL-high 36 turnovers and the league’s second-worst turnover margin (minus-12).

Quarterback Michael Vick, so brilliant in becoming the league’s comeback player of the year in 2010, has been a fragile interception machine who wasn’t available for, or has been unable to, finish four of the Eagles eight losses.

As a result, a potential record-breaking season by running back LeSean McCoy (1,309 rushing yards, 20 total TDs, 48 runs of 10 yards or more, franchise-best 4.8 yards per career rush) has turned bittersweet.

Coming Thursday: The No. 2 Regional Sports Story of the Year.

nick.fierro@mcall.com

610-778-2243

Coming out of a prolonged labor stoppage that forced the cancellation of all offseason activities, the Philadelphia Eagles nevertheless proceeded with their plan to rebuild the roster and forge ahead when the NFL Lockout finally ended in July.

During a hastily assembled training camp at Lehigh University, two particular catch-phrases quickly came to symbolize what the 2012 Eagles were supposed to be all about: “Dream Team” and “All In.”

What unfolded instead was a nightmare that left them all out of the playoffs for the first time since 2007.

The Eagles’ epic failure to live up to expectations is The Morning Call’s No. 3 regional sports story of the year.

After winning their opener with a blowout victory at St. Louis, the Eagles dropped their next four. Three of the losses came when the defense, under first-year coordinator Juan Castillo, failed to protect fourth-quarter leads.

Castillo and the defense would come under further fire after the Eagles failed in consecutive November games to protect fourth-quarter leads at home, against the Chicago Bears and Arizona Cardinals, to fall to 3-6.

The 21-17 loss to Arizona served as the flashpoint of the season, not only because the Eagles squandered another lead, but because wide receiver DeSean Jackson was held out of the game for disciplinary reasons while so many of their other key players were injured.

Quarterback Michael Vick missed the next three games, two of them losses, with cracked ribs. Cornerback Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie also sat out the next three with an ankle sprain. King Dunlap, a valuable reserve offensive lineman and special teams player, suffered a concussion and missed three games as well.

Those next three games all but mathematically knocked the Eagles out of playoff contention. Although they haven’t lost since, they were officially eliminated shortly after taking the field against the Dallas Cowboys last Saturday, when the New York Giants wrapped up a victory over the New York Jets.

For the Eagles (7-8), the first three-game winning streak of the season thus means very little because they took too long to put everything together.

Nine new starters, including six on defense, and 24 players overall who weren’t on the team last season are among the current 53-man roster. What’s more, the Eagles have new offensive and defensive line coaches, who have introduced radical alterations to the team’s previous methods.

Their offense and special teams have faltered to the tune of an NFL-high 36 turnovers and the league’s second-worst turnover margin (minus-12).

Quarterback Michael Vick, so brilliant in becoming the league’s comeback player of the year in 2010, has been a fragile interception machine who wasn’t available for, or has been unable to, finish four of the Eagles eight losses.

As a result, a potential record-breaking season by running back LeSean McCoy (1,309 rushing yards, 20 total TDs, 48 runs of 10 yards or more, franchise-best 4.8 yards per career rush) has turned bittersweet.

Coming Thursday: The No. 2 Regional Sports Story of the Year.

nick.fierro@mcall.com

610-778-2243

The Philadelphia Eagles have inspired doubt about Andy Reid’s future for weeks. However, Eagles fans like myself who have called for Reid’s departure are now prepared for disappointment, since winning the last two games should be enough to keep him around.

Yet while “improving” to 6-8 and being an extreme long shot for the NFC East crown should save Reid, another NFC East coach with a 7-7 mark and more realistic playoff hopes is on thinner ice. In fact, should the New York Giants lose to the New York Jets and/or the Dallas Cowboys in the next two weeks, Tom Coughlin may be gone much sooner than Reid.

Coughlin has been around for years just like Reid, albeit not for 13 seasons. The bigger difference between them is that Coughlin has actually won a Super Bowl and didn’t need to lose four NFC title games first. Yet Coughlin has been even closer to wearing out his welcome than Reid, especially as the Giants have fallen from 6-2 to 7-7 in 2011.

Coughlin is more expendable for the Giants than Reid is for the Eagles, since he doesn’t have as much power and has been much more volatile. But it is still funny that he might be closer to being fired, even though he actually started 6-2 and the Giants have actually been able to win in the fourth quarter, and that he wasn’t consumed by “Dream Team” hype or free agent disappointments.

Yet in the NFL, how one finishes is more important than how one starts. While both the Eagles and Giants seem destined to end the year in a rotten fashion, they are getting there in different ways. Philadelphia is at least making one more effort at a division title with two straight wins, while New York is falling down with a 1-5 mark in the second half. But the Giants are used to coming apart in the second half – with the exception of that closing run in 2007 – unlike Reid and the Eagles.

Philadelphia has already pushed one head coach over the edge this season, as Miami’s Tony Sparano was fired after losing to the Birds on Dec. 11. Now the Eagles can help push Coughlin out by losing, as a loss to the Cowboys on Dec. 24 and a Giants loss to the Jets would give Dallas the NFC East and eliminate New York and Philadelphia. Such a fate might put Reid back on the hot seat, but he would still have a better chance to stick around than Coughlin.

Through all his year of annoying the Eagles fan base and falling just short of glory, Reid keeps finding a way to stick around a while longer. Coughlin has been doing that for years as well, yet unlike Reid, his luck may have a shorter shelf life – which didn’t seem likely about six weeks ago.

Robert Dougherty is a life-long Philadelphia resident who has followed the Eagles since he was eight years old.

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Note: This article was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Sign up here to start publishing your own sports content.

The Philadelphia Eagles and San Diego Chargers are incredibly similar in many ways. Eagles fans like myself have ranted about their Super Bowl near-misses every year, yet the Chargers are just as much of a near-miss franchise. This season, it looked like the bottom had fallen out for both Philadelphia and San Diego, as they completely collapsed even before the postseason.

The Eagles and Chargers were both 4-7 a few weeks ago, and looked ready to get their long time frustrating head coaches run out of town at last. Yet Andy Reid and Norv Turner may have saved their jobs with a few December victories that have kept Philadelphia and San Diego improbably alive. However, this is nothing new for the Eagles and Chargers, as they are once again red hot in December when it is too late to really do any damage.

Both Philadelphia and San Diego are experts at winning big in the final weeks of the regular season. They always go into January with major momentum and fuel hopes that this is finally their year to win the Super Bowl, only to get cold when it counts in the postseason. Last year, the Eagles were both hot and cold in the final month and stayed cold in the playoffs, while the Chargers recovered from a 2-5 start and got to 9-7 when it was too late to save their season.

That same scenario is happening again for the Chargers, as they are once again rallying back from a terrible first half of the year and are getting scary again. But for the second straight season, it might be too late to get them into the playoffs, in spite of how they destroyed the Baltimore Ravens by 34-14 on Dec. 18. At 7-7, San Diego still needs a great deal of help to win the AFC West and overtake the Denver Broncos and Oakland Raiders, even though the Chargers might be among the hottest teams in the AFC right now.

Over on the East Coast, the Eagles are trying to put together an impossible rally of their own. Like San Diego, Philadelphia humiliated itself by underachieving in the first three months of the season. But in December, Reid once again flipped the switch and put together two easy wins over the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets. And the Eagles were even more thorough in destroying an AFC playoff contender at home, as they throttled the Jets by 45-19.

Philadelphia is clinging to life even harder than San Diego, since it is still 6-8. But two more victories and key losses from the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants could get the Eagles into the playoffs in spite of it all. And even with their mostly embarrassing seasons and poor records, no one would want to play the Eagles or Chargers in the playoffs if they did find a way in.

These two teams were supposed to be this scary all year and finally get over the Super Bowl hump. Instead, they have waited too long to get good, as usual, and now have to be utterly perfect for two more weeks just to make the postseason. Even if they do find a way, they are still long shots to actually make the Super Bowl and win a ring at long last, which is the goal they have fallen short of for over a decade already.

Philadelphia and San Diego are two of the cruelest franchises in the NFL, as they are major letdowns at the beginning and end of a season without fail and still get everyone’s hopes up in the middle. Right now, they are raising hopes for redemptions and miracle Super Bowl runs right on cue – yet this also means the Eagles and Chargers are on cue to let everyone down worse than ever any moment now.

Robert Dougherty is a life-long Philadelphia resident who has followed the Eagles since he was eight years old.

Other stories by this contributor

Eagles save Reid’s job by destroying Jets

Eagles, Jets matchup of big disappointments

Cowboys push Eagles to absolute brink

Jets to keep having their way with NFC East?

Eagles reduced to rooting for Bucs over Cowboys

Note: This article was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Sign up here to start publishing your own sports content.

The Philadelphia Eagles have established a typical pattern for the season. Ever since their 1-4 start, the Eagles have gotten into the habit of teasing us fans that they have turned it around for a week or two. For at least one game every couple of weeks, it looks like Philadelphia is the team that it was supposed to be when Super Bowl and “Dream Team” hype built up. But after that brief tease, the Birds spend the next few weeks falling further than ever and making us look foolish for believing in them again.

With that kind of formula leading to a 4-8 start, we should be immune to the false hope that a good victory can bring. At the least, that is what we will have to tell ourselves after a 26-10 win over the Miami Dolphins on Dec. 11 and after the deficit in the NFC East went down to two games.

The good Philadelphia team returned by dominating Miami on defense, forcing three turnovers and not getting tripped up by mistakes from Michael Vick or DeSean Jackson. Although Vick completed just half his passes, LeSean McCoy only ran for 38 yards and the Eagles only beat another 4-8 team, this still looked like a club that was better than its 4-8 mark. Of course after the last two horrific games against the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, the standards for looking better were a bit low.

But right on cue, Philadelphia showed enough promising signs to make us wonder why it couldn’t be this good more often. It also has to make the most masochistic of us wonder if the Eagles can finally be good more often and take advantage of its one last slim chance. After the New York Giants rallied back over the Dallas Cowboys and made 7-6 the best record in the NFC East, the Eagles still can’t say that an 8-8 finish wouldn’t be good enough this season.

There are few logical reasons to think that, yet logic has not played a part in the NFC East this year – otherwise New York, Dallas and Philadelphia would have much better records. Otherwise every time the Eagles have had an opportunity to make some noise when it really counted, they would have actually done it. They would have kept momentum going after two straight wins over the Washington Redskins and Cowboys following that 1-4 start, or when they upset the Giants last month as well.

But just as the Eagles show signs of life right on cue, they give it back on cue a short time later and bring us down worse than ever. Even if they beat the New York Jets on Dec. 18 and look ready to finally put it together, it could just be a set up for the biggest letdown of all. That pattern is far more consistent and reliable than Philadelphia has been as a whole; yet until the Birds are officially eliminated, we are hard wired to keep wondering if it can finally be broken.

Robert Dougherty is a life-long Philadelphia resident who has followed the Eagles since he was eight years old.

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Note: This article was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Sign up here to start publishing your own sports content.