Eagles’ Reid Feeds Off L.A. Roots

One day last year, Philadelphia Eagle Coach Andy Reid paused outside his office door, halted in his tracks by a familiar aroma.

“There was a box out there and I smelled this smell coming out of the box,” said Reid, who turned to his assistant, Carol Cullen.

“I go, ‘Carol, what’s in that box?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ And I said, ‘I bet you a million dollars it’s Tommyburgers.’ ”

So take that, Philly cheese steaks.

The coach who has guided the Eagles to first place in the NFC East is a native Angeleno, and he still has loyalties to Tommy’s Original World Famous Hamburgers at Beverly and Rampart.

His cross-country chiliburgers arrived at Veterans Stadium courtesy of an old friend.

“It was a girl I had gone to high school with; I hadn’t seen since my wedding reception,” Reid said. “Then I saw her again at the Arizona game. She sent a box of Tommyburgers. You freeze ‘em.”

It would be easy to mistake Reid, a burly former offensive lineman who talks a lot about the work ethic, for an Easterner.

But the former Green Bay Packer assistant coach grew up near Dodger Stadium and played at John Marshall High in Los Feliz.

After high school, Reid left Southern California for Brigham Young, where he played with Jim McMahon and met a young assistant coach named Mike Holmgren, who eventually hired Reid to coach the tight ends, offensive line and finally quarterbacks for the Packers.

It was also at BYU that Reid met his wife, Tammy. They now have five children--each born in a different state as Reid’s career took him from BYU to San Francisco State to Northern Arizona to Texas El Paso to Missouri to Green Bay.

Reid, 42, wasn’t very well known when Eagle owner Jeffrey Lurie hired him in 1999, after firing Ray Rhodes. He hadn’t been an offensive coordinator in the NFL, and had never been a head coach anywhere.

But with the Eagles at 9-4 in his second season, Reid is a coach-of-the-year candidate, along with New Orleans’ Jim Haslett, and this notoriously demanding sports town is giddy about its Birds.

The Eagles can clinch a playoff berth as soon as Sunday if they beat Tennessee, the defending AFC champion, and Washington and Tampa Bay lose.

Best omen: After a tough game against Tennessee, they play Cleveland, have a week off, then finish with Cincinnati.

They have done this despite an offense that lost running back Duce Staley to a foot injury in Week 5, surviving on quarterback Donovan McNabb’s ability, solid special teams and most of all, an attacking defense that gives up only 15.3 points a game, fifth best in the NFL.

Written off after Staley’s injury, they’ve won the cliche way--one game at a time.

“Myself, I take an offensive lineman’s approach,” Reid said.

“I told the team, as an offensive lineman, you are outmanned physically every week. You are playing a better athlete every week. You know that.

“So what you do is, you take that little 3 x 3 box that you’re in, and you master that box.

“So each guy doesn’t have to be an all-star, they just have to be able to master their little box on the field. Then you can master that big box which is the actual football field. You take that approach to it, you’ll be OK.”

Even though his parents are no longer living--Reid’s mother, Elizabeth, was a radiologist and his father, Walter, was an artist who painted backdrops for theatrical sets--Reid still returns to Southern California often.

His sports roots are vintage L.A.

He grew up idolizing Merlin Olsen and Deacon Jones of the Rams, Manny Mota of the Dodgers, and Jim Murray, the late Times columnist.

“Jim Murray, he was my favorite. My mom would always send me articles for years,” said Reid, who used to try to imitate Murray in a sports column he wrote for the Daily Herald in Provo, Utah, while he was in college.

Still, this might be Reid’s ultimate L.A. credential: He can eat a Tommyburger without dripping chili off his elbows.

“There’s an art to eating them,” he said. “I don’t lose a drop.”

PLAYING CATCH-UP

The NFL, caught with a toothless policy for penalizing salary-cap violations in the San Francisco 49er case, announced a new policy Friday that allows the league to suspend team executives up to one year, fine teams as much as $3.5 million and penalize them two first-round draft picks.

The $3.5-million figure, probably not coincidentally, is the same as the fine levied against the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Joe Smith case by NBA Commissioner David Stern, who also penalized the team five first-round draft picks.

The previous NFL maximum was $2 million.

The 49ers lost only third- and fifth-round picks and were fined $300,000 for cap violations involving former executives Carmen Policy and Dwight Clark, now of the Cleveland Browns. Policy was fined $400,000 and Clark was fined $200,000.

The new NFL agreement negotiated with the NFL Players Assn. also provides for individual fines of up to $250,000 for club personnel, agents and players.

Without strict penalties for violating the cap, the NFL put teams at serious competitive risk--and the 49er penalties were light enough that the argument could be made that it would be worth it to cheat.

NOT-SO-SUPER COLTS

The Indianapolis Colts, a preseason favorite to reach the Super Bowl, are in serious danger of not reaching the playoffs, and a loss to the New York Jets on Sunday would be devastating.

The Colts are 7-5, two games behind Miami in the AFC East and a game behind the Jets.

After Sunday, they still must play Buffalo, Miami and Minnesota.

The difference? Shortcomings by both the defense and the offense in close games.

Last season, the Colts were 9-2 in games decided by eight points or fewer.

This season, they are 3-5 in games decided by that margin.

“Last year we made plays in key situations,” quarterback Peyton Manning said. “This year we’ve made them at times. We just haven’t been as consistent.”

BABBLING BROOKS

It was clear enough that New Orleans Saint quarterback Aaron Brooks is a confident sort when he ran the final yards into the end zone against St. Louis with the ball extended in his right hand in a taunting pose.

But give him credit for keeping the Saints in contention in the NFC West after Jeff Blake’s injury on the heels of Ricky Williams’ injury.

After all, he will.

“We knew that we had some great backups,” Brooks said. “We’ve been doing a great job with that.”

Rookie Chad Morton from USC and journeyman Jerald Moore have taken over for Williams, and Brooks, a second-year player from Virginia who was acquired in a trade with Green Bay, has taken over for Blake.

Brooks is yet another product of the quarterback-rich 1999 draft class, although he was not taken until the fourth round.

“That was just something I just had to deal with,” he said. “I don’t think the guys did anything more than what I did, besides play a little longer. Some of the guys played four years; I started two years. So that was the only comparison.

“Coming into the league, [I had] a type of bitter feeling about the situation on draft day.”

That changed after Brooks was acquired by the Saints, partly because of the influence of offensive coordinator Mike McCarthy, previously a Packer assistant.

Nobody expected Brooks to play so soon.

And nobody imagined the NFC West title might not be won until St. Louis plays at New Orleans in the final game Dec. 24.

“I did feel the pressure of knowing the situation,” Brooks said. “I think the expectation of getting to the playoffs and winning the division, actually starting with the division, was really important to everyone. And I didn’t want everybody to know the hopes and dreams that we all thought about from the beginning would be diminished because the backup was coming in.”