COMMENTARY : Will the Eagles Soar or Dive?

For five years now the Philadelphia Eagles have been a promise unkept. Randall’s going to do this, Reggie’s going to do that, Buddy’s going to lead them here, Kotite’s going to take them there. Occasionally, when their stars are all aligned, they play a game that takes your breath away. But mostly, the Eagles fail to deliver.

Which brings us to Sunday’s game against the Redskins in Philadelphia. Dear Eagles: Put up or shut up. Play when it counts or turn off the lights on your way out.

A season that started with the Eagles 4-0 and looking like the early Super Bowl favorites has degenerated into the usual Philly soap opera and the same old underachieving. If they can’t win a game at home, against an archrival, with a playoff spot at stake, then somebody, please, take the Eagles and their tired act away from us.

We’re talking about a team that anointed itself great, despite the fact that the franchise hasn’t won a playoff game since the end of the 1980 season. Yes, 12 years, 0-for-Buddy, 0-for-Kotite, 0-for-Randall.

Rarely in sports has there been so much noise accompanying so few results. The team fight song should be, “Be half what you can be. You can do it, with the Ee-eeeagles.”

It just doesn’t make sense. Champ one week, chump the next. Clinical one week, 17 penalties for 191 yards the next. Randall was great for four weeks, terrible for four, and now has been wonderful again the last three. But just as Randall was returning, the vaunted defense allowed 410, 345 and 425 yards in successive games.

Now, the defense is back, and Herschel just rushed for 111 yards, but you know a leak is about to spring someplace. In Seattle Sunday, the Eagles gained a season-high 466 yards and allowed an astonishingly low 87, but needed to kick a field goal in overtime to win. That’s what 17 penalties and 10 sacks will do for you.

“It’s disturbing to go out and perform at that (championship) level one week, then the next week go out and have inconsistency like we had last week,” Pro Bowl cornerback Eric Allen said. “We’re still looking for that one game where the offense, defense and special teams all reach their potential at the same time. ... “

It’s always something. For a team with this much talent, you might suspect it isn’t very smart. But not only is this a team composed of smart players, it’s a team of exceptionally smart players, right down the line, locker to locker. Allen, injured safety Wes Hopkins and tackle Antoine Davis are three of the brightest men competing in any sport.

It’s virtually impossible to study any harder and understand any more about offensive football than do Allen and Hopkins. If you’re drafting on defense, you take Reggie White, Seth Joyner, Clyde Simmons, Mike Pitts and Mike Golic, largely because they’re so talented, but also because their minds are every bit as strong as their bodies. Same thing with safety John Booty, tackle Ron Heller and guard Mike Schad on offense, and Vai Sikahema on special teams.

You assemble this group and you say to yourself, “Not a knucklehead in the bunch.” Many of them were big-time scholars in college. A couple were downright double-majors who graduated in four years. You wonder how a team with those individual IQs can amass 17 penalties in one game. Teams that play dumb have two opponents in critical games.

Maybe Seth Joyner erupted (and not for first time) because he knows this team has the resources but somehow isn’t putting them to good use. He may have lacked tact, but maybe it’s time for some high-level impatience in the Eagles’ locker room.

The key word Wednesday was preparation. Allen used it five times in one conversation. Reggie White said, “Look, we’ve got to be prepared mentally more than anything else because we always get beat on mistakes.”

Keith Byars said, “The majority of the games against Washington are won from the neck up. You’ve got to outprepare those guys.” And Cunningham, asked whether there’s a lack of leadership on the team, said, after carefully weighing his words, “No. There may be a lack of preparation at times, but not a lack of leadership.”

So it’s pretty clear that the Eagles understand the mission. The question now is whether they can carry it out. That Hopkins (knee) and Waters (leg) are both still sidelined won’t help. But as Byars said, “There are no built-in excuses. We can’t say, ‘We don’t have our number one quarterback.’ We’re pretty much healthy. We’ve got to go out and do a job on Sunday, not get out there wondering.”

It’s hard to imagine the Eagles thinking for more than one moment about the Joyner controversy, because the Eagles always have something up, whether it’s Kotite’s benching of Jim McMahon or Keith Jackson’s fleeing for Miami. In fact, the weekly dramas in the Eagles’ locker room are remindful of the ‘84-88 Bears except for one little thing: these Eagles haven’t won anything yet, not even a single playoff game.

Of course it shouldn’t have come to this. You figured the Eagles to be worrying about home-field advantage at this point of the season, not making the playoffs, not fretting over being outsmarted by the Redskins (again). You wonder if anything has rubbed off in all those meetings with the Giants and Redskins, the teams that do deliver.