But that's all it took for Lombardi to become the template for the modern NFL, the first coach to win a Super Bowl. He was dying of cancer his final year with the Redskins, so the body of his work remained in the small Wisconsin city he turned into a Football metropolis.

For the record, Lombardi had a .738 winning percentage. His first shot at winning the NFL title was thwarted by Buck Shaw's 1960 Eagles. That would be his only playoff loss. The Lombardi Pack was 9-1, while winning three NFL titles, then the first two Super Bowls.

By the calendar, Andy Reid's career is just about where Vince Lombardi's ended. He is 11 games into what should be his 10th and final season as the head coach here.

Reid has this in common with Lombardi: Both coached in Green Bay. As an assistant under Mike Holmgren, the former Brigham Young offensive lineman coached the quarterbacks, including the young Brett Favre. I never have quite understood how a no-neck O-lineman whose primary job at a pass-happy program was protecting QBs wound up coaching them. It's not quite the same dynamic as a catcher becoming an outstanding pitching coach. At least a catcher has a feel for the baseball.

But extreme absorbability is the genius of Andy Reid. He is an information sponge who blew away Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie with the totality of his organization, preparation and ability to compile it all in encyclopedic detail. He was a coaching version of an NFL combine Workout Wonder.

You can believe in a miracle if you wish, but this is a lock to be the Eagles' second straight

January vacation, and third in 4 years. Since the 2004 Super Bowl, the Eagles are 29-29-1.

Unfortunately, the Fed has not yet mandated bailouts for NFL coaches who have run out of mojo. There is no taxpayer relief for a man who has reached the bottom of his bag of tricks. Who has just turned onto the final page of his Oxford Dictionary-thick playbook, pried out the final blade of Football's most intricate Swiss army knife.

OK, the Lombardi parallel is unfair. You don't compare Pvt. Francis Ryan to Gen. George Patton. So let's look at some other NFL coaches with 10-year pins.

A cult of coaches has sprung from the litter of assistants fathered by Bill Walsh, father of the so-called West Coast offense - so-called because defensive coordinators have forced countless mutations on the Walsh original, the almost balletic attack in which a nimble and accurate quarterback was the trigger. Walsh put great weight on a big back and agile tight end as primary reads in a short-to-medium-to-long passing attack that was executed by Joe Montana with almost military precision. Run after catch was holy writ. Under McNabb here, it has been mostly dive and scratch.

So, here is Andy Reid, 10 years into his West Coast version, and his big, pass-catching back is a converted defensive tackle, his primary tight end a week-to-week rumor.

Again, it seems as if Bill Walsh coached the 49ers - a real gold standard, Mr. Lurie - longer than a decade. But there it is in black and white: 10-4 in playoff games on the way to three Super Bowl titles. Reid's loss-day mantra has been how it's up to him to put his players in better position to win games. However, even his harshest critics never expected that one of those "positions" would be to order his franchise quarterback to the sideline during halftime of a game in which the Eagles trailed by a mere field goal. The benching of McNabb was the biggest Eagles shock since owner Leonard Tose announced he was moving the franchise to Phoenix.

Andy, you're no Bill Walsh . . .

In 1956, New York Giants coach Jim Lee Howell's offensive coach was Vince Lombardi. His defensive coach was a recently retired Giants cornerback named Tom Landry. Eleven years later, Landry's Dallas Cowboys lost the fabled Ice Bowl to Lombardi's Packers.

Landry didn't have a winning season until 1966, his seventh year as Cowboys coach. He was 0-11 in his first season. But for the next 2 decades of his Hall of Fame career, the trim, poker-faced man with the fedora established the Cowboys as a national brand - America's Team.

Andy Reid is no Tom Landry . . .

Right now, the Eagles aren't even Philadelphia's Team, and won't be again until Lurie is able to deal with the indisputable evidence that the Andy Reid/Donovan McNabb era is history and order a grand-scale flushing.

Eras rarely end with a cataclysmic collapse. What happened in the 13-13 Bengals tie and the Ravens no mas belly-up were dead-cat bounces. The real bottom came with America watching - or so NBC would like to think - 3 Sunday nights ago, with that rumor of a running game unable to gain key inches, let alone a yard, and the Giants relentlessly moving the sticks with a three-headed ground attack. Let the 36-31 defeat stand as a gallant last hurrah for this flawed and fading assembly of rusting Andy Reid parts.

He has finally reached the last page of that stupendous volume of Football work he lugged to town. There are just two words there . . .

"The End." *

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