At his Monday press conference following Sunday's 13-13 tie against the Bengals, head coach Andy Reid said there good things to take out of every game and there are things to be worked on in every game.
What he didn't say, though, was how many items were on either list.
Reid complimented his team's physical effort but then went on a diatribe of sorts, outlining all the things that went wrong in Cincinnati.
Execution, turnovers, third-down conversions, tipped balls, starting slow, abandoning the run, rules questions, play-calling, dropped passes.
Reid sat on the stage of the auditorium in the NovaCare Complex and once again faced the music.
"The execution needs to be better," Reid said. "As well as our defense played, there are things that we can do better there. As poor as our offense played, there are things that we can do there, obviously."
Reid said turnovers were a huge factor and while it's easy to blame quarterback Donovan McNabb, who threw three interceptions and fumbled once against Cincinnati, he said that it all isn't on just one person.
Reid said there were four tipped balls and several dropped passes that also contributed to McNabb's struggles. McNabb finished 28-of-58 for 339 yards, a touchdown and the three interceptions.
"You have to take care of the football and the easy person to point to is Donovan," Reid said. "I'm not saying that he isn't responsible in those, but there are other people that also have a piece of that and we need to get that straightened out."
Reid seemed taken aback by his team's third-down conversion stats. The Eagles converted just 3-of-18 attempts on third down and they didn't call a single running play in any of those tries.
"Third-down conversion percentage was just terrible," Reid said. "Some of those were short-yardage. We were 1-for-4 on the third-and-ones and we have to do a better job there."
Coming into the game, Cincinnati was ranked 25th in the NFL against the run which meant that it was probably going to see healthy dose of running backs Brian Westbrook and Correll Buckhalter.
Instead, the Eagles ran the ball just 18 times while opting to throw it a whopping 58 times.
"One of their weaknesses, we felt, was against the pass ... so obviously the pass game had to be a factor here," Reid said, "We want it to be a factor. And then, I will say that we weren't quite as successful in the first half running the football as we needed to be.
"Could we have dialed more up? Absolutely. We have to start off faster both in the pass and the run game in the first half no matter what phase of the ball you are picking there, you can criticize. The second half, we made some adjustments on some things and maybe we'll come out and get the run game going a little bit."
While he said it didn't affect the outcome of the game, Reid took responsibility for the fact that some his players didn't realize an NFL regular-season contest can end in a tie.
"I'll tell you that I'm sure there are plenty of rules that guys don't understand, but I don't think that has any factor whatsoever to do with the outcome of this game and how they played in the overtime," Reid said. "I think that's absurd. We obviously, you play to win in that time whether you think you have another overtime period or you don't. And you play your heart out to win it in that time, and that's how we approached it and that's how the players approached it."
