The Philadelphia Eagles have been sending mixed messages about the state of their season and locker room in the wake of Sunday night's blowout loss to the Dallas Cowboys, their second straight defeat.
Some players have suggested teammates need to be held accountable for being late to meetings. Others have said there are no such issues. Others have hinted there may be, but that they should've been kept in-house. And even more have fought off questions over anonymous quotes from inside the team that questioned everything from coaching to front-office performance.
All that to say, priority No. 1 for the Eagles just might be squashing whatever is happening behind the scenes. Or at least that's according to former Eagles Pro Bowler Brian Westbrook.
"It's going to take an awful lot of pulling together," says the former running back, speaking with CBS Sports while promoting a partnership with Pampers. "The first priority is coming together. The guys that have been around, that have been in the league, they have to step up and stop the nonsense and show everyone how to be professionals."
Westbrook's mission with Pampers, along with six other active and retired NFL dads, is to get 5,000 changing tables installed in bathrooms across the country by 2021. He's involved, in part, because one too many times, as a dad of three, he's encountered some anxiety with messy diaper situations out in public. But the Eagles' current predicament, as a once-hyped Super Bowl contender reeling at 3-4, is probably even messier, he says.
"I'm a little bit concerned," he explains, "because they have some problems on the field -- lack of talent, lack of energy, lack of effort on some levels. The best players didn't play well. They were beat in the trenches on both sides of the ball ... But then the bad part that you can't do anything about is the lack of talent."
There are a couple positions, in particular, Westbrook says, where the depth has been revealed to be straight-up bad. Like most Eagles fans, he counts wide receiver, cornerback and the defensive line as the weakest links. He admits it's certainly not too late for the Birds to turn it around, starting with a Week 8 road game against the Buffalo Bills, but hesitates to crown the current makeup of the team as strong enough to rebound over the long haul.
"You go into the season saying they've got one of the deepest rosters in the NFL," he says, "and we've seen, with injuries, that's been exposed."
