Eagles’ Rhodes Counting the Days

Ray Rhodes’ voice is barely above a whisper. He stares blankly as he mechanically answers questions about tackles and missed tackles, field goals and missed field goals.

He tries, because that is the only way this proud man knows. But it’s easy to see that his heart has been ripped out by all the losing.

“Losing takes a lot out of everybody,” said Rhodes, widely believed to be preparing for his final two games as coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. “When it comes to taking emotion out of me, it’s a combination of a lot of things. And losing’s definitely at the top of the list.”

The fiery, combative man who won coach-of-the-year honors only three years ago is going out with barely a whimper. The Eagles (3-11) are enduring one of the worst seasons in team history, and Rhodes is not expected to make it past the final game against the New York Giants next week.

Apparently, all that is left to do is count the days. Rhodes, preparing for today’s road game against the Dallas Cowboys in his home state, has deflected questions about his future for months. But players say he has all but admitted to them that he’s finished in Philadelphia.

“He hasn’t come out and said that, but he’s come up and said, ‘If anything, put stuff down on film,”’ center Steve Everitt said. “Because if in fact it does happen at the end of the season, who knows what happens when a new staff comes in? There’s always a lot of turnover.”

Rhodes, who earned five Super Bowl rings as a defensive coach with San Francisco, was 20-12 and made the playoffs his first two seasons with the Eagles. Since then, Philadelphia is 9-20-1, a decline so swift that it’s difficult to imagine that blame rests with one person.

The Eagles haven’t won an NFL championship since 1960, and they appear even further from contending for one than when Rhodes was hired in 1995.

“When I came here, we all felt like this was just the beginning and better things were going to happen,” said cornerback Troy Vincent, who signed as a free agent in 1996.

Rhodes, who played seven years with the Giants and 49ers, guided a team with minimal talent to the playoffs in his first season. He quickly won the loyalty of his players -- selling them on his way, yet treating them fairly and speaking like a player, not a coach.

Rhodes, who became only the third black head coach in NFL history, handled the pressure with dignity--and success.

“It’s kind of sad, because we’re losing a good coach,” defensive end Hugh Douglas said.

In the early days, Zhodes could barely contain himself during news conferences. His sound bites sang with the country speech he grew up with in Mexia, Texas, where he became one of the first minorities to integrate the high school in the 1960s.

“My parents would tell me, ‘Ray, you’re no better than anybody else, but nobody is better than you, either,”’ Rhodes once said.

It was easy to see he loved the job, but his emotions often steered him out of bounds. Producers always had to keep a hand close to the “bleep” button when Rhodes was talking football.

But the coach is now monotonous, sometimes dispirited in public appearances. He has admitted being ashamed of what the Eagles’ decline has done to his reputation. In one rambling explanation of his plight, Rhodes described waking up in the middle of the night and wanting to “get up and just ride, just go somewhere, just ride, just get away.”

“I guess this is hell,” Rhodes said when his team was 2-9. “It’s tough. You go through a year like this one, man, and if hell’s any worse than this, hell is something.”

Vincent and others agree on what the problem was: Rhodes didn’t have enough good players.

“It’s like sending someone out to war, to a gun fight, and he doesn’t have a gun,” Vincent said. “You got a bunch of tanks surrounding you, and you got a water gun, a couple of pistols to fight with. He’s proved that he can win. He’s been a winner, even here.”

Despite the respect players have for Rhodes, the argument doesn’t tell the whole story. Rhodes also had a hand in the team’s personnel decisions that left the Eagles so bereft of talent.

His supporters argue that Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie never gave him the help he needed in the front office. That changed this year with the hiring of Tom Modrak, the longtime Steelers scouting director, as the Eagles’ director of football operations. It might have been too late to save Rhodes.

Modrak has declined interview requests all season as he plans for what could be the most crucial draft in team history. Executive vice president Joe Banner was on the road and couldn’t comment, Eagles spokesman Ron Howard said.

If Rhodes resigns or is fired--as expected--after the final game, his players believe he will succeed elsewhere as a head coach or assistant.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Everitt said. “I hope he’s here. He’s the reason I’m here. He wasn’t out on the field laying an egg early in the season. Those were the players. I don’t fault him at all.”