Marcus Hayes: Five tough questions on the Eagles

THIS SEASON, more than any other in more than a decade, the questions seem bigger and less answerable entering the season. That won't keep us from trying.

referendum on the Reid/ Banner/Lurie consortium?

It's fashionable to say yes, but, really, that is absurd.

It will take 2 or 3 years of mediocrity, or worse - mediocrity that isn't likely to occur. Six wins, seven wins, eight wins - this is a season of rebuilding. A playoff spot is a bonus.

Everyone will be fine with that - including coach Andy Reid, puppetmaster Joe Banner and owner Jeffrey Lurie.

Abandoning quarterback Donovan McNabb, the most significant player in franchise history, in favor of Kevin Kolb, whose name most Philadelphians still mispronounce, seemed like madness. With so many unknowns, from the offensive line to the rehabilitated defense, willfully choosing to trade the most constant entity on the team made little sense.

That won't matter.

Lurie and Banner hired Reid on a hunch, and that played out into five NFC Championship Game appearances, a new stadium and legitimacy in the New Age NFL of corporate image-making.

Reid and his brain trust at the time drafted McNabb and built a team around him, and that played out into the greatest era in Eagles history.

Those two decisions hardly could have been less popular when they were made.

Giving Kolb the keys isn't exactly unpopular as much as it is unwise. Regardless, considering the recent success - not dizzying, but remarkable - of RBL, it can fail for a season or two before any real repercussions are felt.

Besides, it isn't all about McNabb and Kolb.

McNabb, who knows Reid's offense as well as anyone, spent the past few seasons grooming a new corps of weapons. Every offensive starter recently has been replaced. Every one of them had at least one season with McNabb, and Kolb spent three seasons as McNabb's understudy.

McNabb leaves center Jamaal Jackson to run the line, wideout Jason Avant to run the receivers, and tight end Brent Celek, perhaps the best weapon on offense.

If McNabb was going to leave, this probably was the best time for it.

So, no, Reid, Banner and Lurie won't be castigated after one sluggish season.

Now, eight wins in 2012 might be their demise. And that's not out of the question, considering the amount they're gambling on rookies this season.

on 11 rookies?

. . . especially when two will start in key defensive positions?

Remember: These are burning questions, not concrete answers. So . . .

Yes, first-round defensive end Brandon Graham's combination of commitment, intelligence, speed and power (not to mention personality) made him a preseason sensation.

However, who knows how effective Graham will be 5 minutes into the third quarter? Or five games into an NFL season? He's 6-2, 268 pounds, and, from the looks of things, he often will be asked to rush up the middle.

Now, that's not to say that Graham will fail. He's about the same size as Dwight Freeney, who has been hyperproductive with the Colts. Besides, the defensive scheme is geared to offer Graham as much success as possible, usually by putting pressure on the back end of the unit.

And therein lies the real problem.

Asking a rookie to start at free safety for a blitzing defense seems cruel. Remember, Brian Dawkins was not asked to do it. As a young player, Dawkins played in Emmitt Thomas' relatively unaggressive scheme. By the time Reid arrived with vice-coach Jim Johnson, Dawkins was ready for anything, including Johnson's ingenious scheme.

Is second-rounder Nate Allen?

Come Sunday night, you'll know. Aaron Rodgers can slice up a secondary the way a poissonier fillets sole.

Allen's athleticism is expected, but his patience and intuition have been revelations. Playing alongside a more ordinary sort, strong safety Quintin Mikell, and in support of risk-taking interceptor Asante Samuel, he will need to trust that patience and intuition as the last line of Sean McDermott's bloodletting defense.

Because, if backup rookie tight end Clay Harbor drops a pass, it's a dropped pass. If Riley Cooper or Kurt Coleman mess up a special-teams tackle, there are 10 other guys right there. And if Graham gets stuffed all season, so what?

If Allen makes a mistake, it's six points.

And a lot of explaining for McDermott.

It could not be bigger.

As such, it could not be bigger for the defense as a whole.

An avalanche of injuries combined with the loss of star safety Brian Dawkins to free agency supplied a slew of reasons why the defense dropped off from 2008 to '09.

Working in the chill shadow of the ghost of Jim Johnson, who succumbed to cancer last summer, certainly didn't make McDermott's job easier.

It will be easier this season. The defense is healthy, seems improved, and now McDermott can operate without distraction.

Except his new defensive-backs coach is Dick Jauron.

Jauron is Yale-educated, a former NFL safety with a defensive coaching pedigree that began in 1985 - when McDermott, now 36, was 11 - and includes three head-coaching stints.

It's a fresh shadow, at least.

If McDermott - a La Salle High success story who never coached anywhere else, at any other level - can survive this season, it will be because he is able to focus on his agenda. Besides, the defense now is more his than it is his mentor's.

It also will be because Graham becomes a worthy complement to Pro Bowl end Trent Cole.

It will be because Allen is not a victim too frequently, and the team does not miss corner Sheldon Brown too badly.

It will be because Cole consistently performs as a leader, as he has done so far this year, and not as a bystander, a role in which he finds himself more comfortable.

It will be because low-level assistants Mike Zordich and Mike Caldwell, both relatively recent Eagles standouts, serve as competent liaisons and buffers for McDermott.

More than anything, though, if McDermott's defense works it will be because he has linebackers.

It will be because middle linebacker Stewart Bradley not only has recovered from knee surgery but also builds upon a promising, if mistake-addled, second season in 2008. Similarly, Akeem Jordan, who can play all three linebacker spots, will have to become the big-play man in the scheme - interceptions, sacks, tackles for loss. It is Jordan's year.

And McDermott's.

Or else.

Seldom during McNabb's tenure did the Eagles' offensive line provide him the sort of protection warranted by such a decorated, high-salaried player.

The magic of McNabb lay less in his evasiveness than in his strength. Like Ben Roethlisberger and Steve McNair, McNabb is built more like the linebackers who attack him than like the typical quarterback. He shrugged off arm tackles like Earl Campbell (and occasionally threw like Campbell, too).

McNabb's 6-2, 240-pound frame and his maneuverability caused many a coordinator to pause before blitzing. McNabb had a pair of very good tackles, Tra Thomas and Jon Runyan. When healthy and younger, McNabb also warranted a spy - a defender whose job it was to keep McNabb in the backfield if a passing play broke down.

Finally, in Duce Staley and Brian Westbrook, the Eagles had a feature back who could recognize a blitz and either time his release or pick up his man, whichever the play called for.

All of that made dealing with blitzes a bit easier.

None of that applies to Kolb's situation.

Kolb is nowhere near as mobile as McNabb. Kolb is about 20 pounds lighter, and nowhere near as solidly built.

Kolb's feature back, LeSean McCoy, did little last season to earn trust as a blitz buster.

The line is a huge question mark: Jason Peters coming off a subpar year, Todd Herremans' continued lower-leg issues, Jamaal Jackson's knee surgery, the trade of Stacy Andrews, replaced by Nick Cole, who fought a knee injury this preseason.

Sure, Kolb has weapons in speedy youths DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin on the outside and Jason Avant and tight end Brent Celek on the inside. Defenses know that, too; expect Celek to be blanketed, as he was in the preseason.

Defenses also know that young QBs like to hit the hot, short routes, too quickly sometimes, and those sorts of easily anticipated passes often lead to six points the other way.

Then again, if the QB doesn't get rid of the ball, he gets hammered.

In preseason Game 3, Kolb sputtered against a sorry Kansas City blitz package.

Can he stand up to the real thing?

a McNabb hangover?

Probably not.

The biggest distraction in years, perhaps the biggest of the Reid era besides Year 2 of Terrell Owens, was the Brian Dawkins hangover last year.

Why?

None of Dawkins' replacements worked.

Injuries decimated the linebacker corps that was supposed to hide the dropoff in the secondary.

Dawkins, miffed and righteous, starred in Denver.

But Dawkins was always beloved and respected throughout the organization, from locker room to Lurie's box. He is, arguably, the most popular living Eagle, but was perfectly positioned to be so:

A defensive player, a hitter, a man who embraced accountability without condescension, who played hurt, who played with anger and intensity.

McNabb was many of those things, though less than Dawkins in some of the categories.

It is their difference of personality.

It will make all the difference now.

McNabb this year could take the Redskins to the Super Bowl and win it, but there never will be a general sense that he might have done the same for the Birds.

There should be that general sense - Dawkins himself considers trading McNabb incredible folly, perhaps Reid's worst move yet - but there will not be.

McNabb was respected. He was cheered. He was a man on whom the region pinned its hopes . . . but he never was loved.

He never was a part of Philadelphia, no matter how much Philadelphia became a part of him.

Dawkins? He's got little pieces of Veterans Stadium's artificial turf embedded in his forearms, microfractures in his spine from nailing Cowboys and Redskins with semilegal but ultrapopular hits. He owns McNabb's era.

It's unfair. It's true.

It's why McNabb's legacy is a decade from flowering, and why Dawkins' remains in constant bloom.

Send e-mail to hayesm@phillynews.com