Stone Face

The pundits who were stunned by the Philadelphia Eagles' 58-37 win last Saturday over the Detroit Lions failed to take into account one significant part of the Eagles: coach Ray Rhodes.

One day late in the season a TV analyst asked Rhodes to smile for the camera. "I don't smile," Rhodes informed him. "And I don't do luncheons. And I don't like to lose football games."

What we are also learning about this fiercely driven man is that he gets his team ready for the big games. It was Philadelphia's 20-17 victory over the Dallas Cowboys on Dec. 10—the Eagles' first win over the Cowboys in four years—that brought Rhodes's team to within a game of clinching a playoff berth, and last Saturday's win was a nearly flawless performance by a team composed largely of bargain-basement free-agent pickups.

Rhodes played wide receiver and corner-back for the New York Giants from 1974 to '79 and spent one season at cornerback for the San Francisco 49ers before joining the Niner staff in '81. After two years as the Green Bay Packers' defensive coordinator, in '92 and '93, he returned to San Francisco last season to help build a defense that, with six new starters, finished eighth in total defense and second against the run.

"When you talk about winning, you can only mean one thing, and that's a championship," Rhodes said in February when he was hired to coach Philadelphia. Those words appeared to mock him after the Eagles lost their opener 21-6 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and then sank to 1-3 after a 48-17 blowout by the Oakland Raiders on Sept. 24. "After the Tampa Bay game I woke up in a cold sweat," Rhodes said recently. "I had chills. I was haunted by the fear of failure. I had nightmares after the Raiders beat us and scored 48 unanswered points. I couldn't get over it. Where did I go wrong? It ate at me like a cancer. It was my lowest point in 15 years.

"The day after the Raider game I told my team, 'I don't care who we play next, but it's going to be an alley light. I want some skinned knuckles. I want blood.' " Philadelphia regrouped and won nine of its next 11.

Going into last Saturday's wild-card game Rhodes had the Eagles in a nasty, edgy mood. Fights broke out in practice. "Pretty testy," said left guard Guy McIntyre, a former 49er, after last Saturday's victory. "But that's the way Ray runs his practices." Rhodes had turned the game planning over to his assistants, and they had come up with a terrific scheme. But it was the head coach who put the lire in his players' bellies.