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Character counts for Lurie, Eagles (phillyBurbs.com) | Mike Sielski

excerpt:

The slightest smugness crossed Jeff Lurie's face the moment he heard the question, the Eagles' owner letting out a little “Ha!” at the thought that his franchise's core philosophies somehow have contributed to the Eagles' inability to win a Super Bowl.

“That,” he said yesterday, “sounds crazy.”

There are two ways to view that question. If viewed through the prism of football and football alone, then it's not so nuts to argue the Eagles' devaluing of certain positions (linebacker, wide receiver, tight end) hurt them in important moments in important games. After all, Barry Gardner didn't tackle Joe Jurevicius, did he?

Viewed another way, though, the question really is kind of crazy. The Eagles' fiscal discipline might frustrate their fans, the zealots who want the team to spend all it can to take one good shot at a championship. But the other side of that system — the Eagles' culling of players of good character — has kept the franchise a perennial contender, and kept it clean and free of the off-the-field scandals that have tormented NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and too many teams this off-season.

There are some around here who don't want to hear that, who would gladly have the Eagles sign a serial killer if he could stop the run. They forget that the two best Eagles coaches of the last 40 years, Andy Reid and Dick Vermeil, shared the same approach in evaluating players: The choice between a B-plus player who's an A person and an A-plus player who's a D-minus person is no choice at all. Go with the sturdier moral and professional fiber.

This is not to say every player under the Lurie-Reid regime has been an angel. Lurie pointed out that earlier in Reid's tenure as coach, two players — safety Damon Moore and running back Thomas Hamner — were cut because of the way they mistreated their pets. “It sets a tone,” Lurie said. “You just don't accept those attitudes.”

To which the natural response is, OK, but what about Terrell Owens? Yet even Owens, for all the chaos he created in the Eagles' locker room, didn't do anything that might lead to a night in the hoosegow. If anything, to Lurie and Reid, Owens' 20 months as an Eagle, the disruption he ignited and the 6-10 season that followed served as the best evidence that they should hold firm to their character-first philosophy, not break from it.

So Michael Vick is dodging these dog-fighting charges, Pacman Jones is using his year's suspension to pursue his pro wrestling career, and Eagles fans concern themselves with whether Donovan McNabb is his team's true leader. Meanwhile, the Atlanta Falcons and Tennessee Titans are left to answer for why they tried to put up with punks. It's easy to condemn the entire NFL as criminals, to argue that the ultimate responsibility for fixing this image issue falls on Goodell, but it doesn't. Everyone knew who Jones was, what baggage he brought, and short of banning Jones from the league before he was drafted, a commissioner can't stop a team from thinking that a certain level of talent is worth any amount of trouble.

“I can't say it's the league,” Lurie said at Lehigh, after his annual state-of-the Eagles address. “Individual teams have to be very diligent. You have to mold the 22-year-old, the 23-year-old, in a positive way. It's not foolproof, but if you're on top of them at 22 and 23, you may not have dramatic surprises at age 28 or 29. Be very disciplined.”

To that end, Lurie said, the Eagles' player personnel people take care to create a list of untouchables in preparation for each draft — players the Eagles simply won't select because their backgrounds are so questionable. Lurie wouldn't reveal who has the final say on those matters, if he tells Reid not to draft certain players or if Reid comes to him with a list of potential troublemakers. However their chain of command operates, the Eagles have won five division titles in six seasons and generally avoided drafting players who went on to embarrass them the way Jones and half the Cincinnati Bengals' roster have embarrassed their franchises.

“It's a mentality,” Lurie said. “If we had a player who was not acting very professionally, the other guys would pretty much say, "That's not the way we do it here.' It does take discipline, because the scouts will say, "This guy is by far the best cornerback. How do you want to deal with him?' Usually, and almost always, the answer is, "If he's a bad guy, no.' ''

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