Although he can be a blind loyalist at times (especially when it comes to Donovan McNabb), Jason Whitlock really drove home two points in his “10 truths” for FOXSports.com.
8. Marvin Lewis is learning the lesson Dennis Green learned in Minnesota: Don’t turn your team over to wide receivers.… Johnson and Houshmandzadeh are great players. You can win with them. But if you coddle them, they will undermine team discipline. If Lewis continues to allow Johnson to play by one set of rules and turn the Bengals into Chad’s personal reality show, the team will not come out of this funk….
6. Let me be the first to say it: Andy Reid is overrated.
Standing on the sideline and calling pass play after pass play while the Giants are hammering the franchise quarterback who built your reputation was one of the most selfish coaching acts I’ve ever witnessed…
The Bengals are a bigger disaster than people think and it’s not entirely the defense’s fault as some suggest. Houshmandzadeh is a terrific player, but if the Bengals are losing, there might not be a bigger crybaby in the league. Whitlock compared Marvin Lewis’s handling of Housh and Johnson to the way Denny Green coddled Randy Moss and Cris Carter in Minnesota. Great call.
As far as Reid, I would say he’s more stubborn than overrated. Whitlock has serious man-love for McNabb, so it makes sense that he would bash Reid. However, Whitlock’s underlining message is spot on. The Eagles started to have massive success after Reid handed over the play calling duties to Marty Mornhinweg last year. Mornhinweg made the Eagles more balanced and that was a big reason Jeff Garcia was able to advance the team to the second round of the playoffs. Yet Reid has taken over the play calling responsibilities again this year and it’s obvious his pass-happy ways are going to get McNabb killed again. As Whitlock pointed out in the article, why call 900 pass plays Sunday night when it was obvious the Giants were treating Winston Justice like a revolving door?
