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an interesting breakdown of Reid's semantics from The Inquirer:
Other Voices | If we only grasped how savvy Andy was
Subjunctive: a grammatical mood used for contingent or hypothetical action. Example: "If Eagles fans understood how smart Andy Reid was, they wouldn't criticize him so much."
Philly fans were grieving over the Eagles' loss to the Saints. As expected, head coach Andy Reid came in for a lot of abuse, especially because of some of his comments after the game.
He doesn't deserve it. Not only are his coaching skills good - six playoff berths in seven years - but his rhetorical skills are even better.
Don't laugh. Reid is a brilliant rhetorical strategist, a master of that pivotal event in professional sports: the press conference.
Sociologists have noted that media events in contemporary society have taken the place of news. Nowhere is this truer than in sports. Sports news nowadays is less about what happened on the field than about what experts say happened in the press conference afterward. As a result, plenty of coaches and players, trying to give the media audience what it wants, end up having their words used against them.
Not Andy Reid. He almost never says anything that makes his team look bad, that makes the other team look bad, or, most importantly, that creates unrealistic expectations.
Nov. 27: Everyone has pronounced the Birds dead after the Colts soundly beat them. What does Reid say about new quarterback Jeff Garcia's performance?: "I think Jeff did a nice job of managing the game... . There were a couple he'd probably like to have back, but all in all I thought he handled himself very well in a tough place to play."
He praises Garcia for what he did right, then imagines what Garcia felt about what he did wrong. He uses "probably" - a nicely ambiguous adverb and one of his favorite words - to soften the negative assessment.
Good physicians will tell you they don't just treat illness. They manage expectations, helping patients understand that the outcome is subject to many variables. Reid does the same thing for football fans. He never oversteps the bounds of the possible and is acutely aware of the contingent. He is master of the subjunctive mood.
Nov. 27 again: What does Reid say of his team's playoff chances?
"If you get down to the bottom of it and get it right, then you're still right in the mix of it."
He uses the "if-then" structure to relay a sense of possibility. He frames a garbled expression of hope.
The main criticism of Reid was that he didn't go for it on fourth and 15 against the Saints. His response? "That is one in hindsight that you probably should have gone for since the other way didn't work. You could probably make an argument out of either."
He grants hindsight but doesn't apologize for what was done. Yet people are using this archetypal Reidism to say he is second-guessing himself.
Reid's verbal acumen is so subtle, it's almost invisible - which is why many fans and football pundits don't see it. They brand him a rhetorical dimwit and miss what his phlegmatic, uninflected, sometimes unintelligible responses do: protect him and, more importantly, his team from harm.
"How about next year?" people ask Reid now. He answers: "So, I think people realize, on the team or in the building here, realize that we'll play together and we'll work together."
Isn't playing and working together what it's all about?
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The authors are English professors at Drexel University.
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