It’s rarely noticed at the time, only in retrospect. The information is ignored when it is most useful, then comes in waves of regret afterward. It’s true of every failed relationship. The truth is, the writing is always on the wall. The signs are always present, if you bother to look.

Hey, it’s hard to blame anyone for simply choosing to only remember the good times, whether it’s those first few dates, bliss-filled vacations to the Caribbean, or in the case of the Philadelphia Eagles, four straight trips to the NFC championship game. There are always good times, even in bad relationships. But the writing, too, is always on the wall.

So when the local Philadelphia sports writers began to wonder a few weeks ago if perhaps it was time for Eagles head coach Andy Reid to move on, the concern was probably well overdue. The team’s 1-3 start fanned the flames, but the sparks had been lit for a while. Reid, for all the success he has had in Philly, was never a particularly good coach.

Reid made a name for himself by gambling on big plays and having those gambles pay off. But like a desperate drunk in Atlantic City, he keeps rolling the dice long after the hot streak ends. Bad preparation, bad personnel decisions and bad play calling – that’s Andy Reid. Hell, he probably likes Geno’s better than Pat’s, too.

Things have come to a head now because the Eagles are 2-4 and the rest of the NFC East looks playoff bound. The heat has been turned up because for the first autumn in more than a decade, the Eagles weren’t the biggest game in town. The fuel to the fire has been added now, with Reid’s two sons facing extensive legal proceedings, a stress that caused the coach to take a leave of absence from the team during the offseason. The 2007 Eagles have routinely looked overmatched, sluggish, and worst of all, unprepared.

But of course, these simply mark a tipping point. The bricks began to crumble long ago.

In the past four years, no team has lost more games it should have won than the Philadelphia Eagles. Witness this year’s defeats at the hands of Green Bay in Week 1 (because no one could field a punt), New York in Week 5 (when Reid refused to help Winston Justice on the O-line, allowing the Giants to rack up a record 12 sacks), and Chicago last week (when the Eagles couldn’t keep the Bears from charging 97 yards with no time outs in under two minutes) as prime examples, but the ugly losses go way back.

There was last season’s fourth-quarter collapses against the Giants, Saints and Tampa Bay.

Remember the 2005 opening loss to Atlanta on Monday Night when Jeremiah Trotter was ejected before the game even started.

Or the loss to Dallas later that season when the Cowboys scored twice in the final three minutes to win by 1.

Or the Super Bowl a year earlier. But let’s not get to that just yet.

The Philly media, not normally known for their reserved opinions on weighty sporting matters, has only now begun to openly criticize Reid’s decision making. They question whether his attention is fully on the team or whether his sons’ legal troubles have proved to be a distraction. But Reid has a long history of curious decisions.

Sure, he didn’t need an experienced returner this year. It only cost them a game.

Or how about when he refused to carry a back-up kicker in 2005, despite knowing David Akers was severely hobbled entering the game. The end result was that for two straight games, a linebacker was kicking extra points.

Or how he continued to call nearly 70 percent passing plays in a season where his quarterback was playing with a sports hernia and was barely mobile?

How about the personnel decisions that sent players like Trotter and Hugh Douglas packing – and set the stage for the Terrell Owens debacle two years later?

Or how Reid handled the Owens affair, alienating his star receiver, allowing the locker room to be divided, and hanging his quarterback out to dry? That last part is a move that Reid – along with Eagles management – has done again and again. While Donovan McNabb is a lightning rod for criticism in Philly, Reid sits back and watches.

And then there’s the curious calls in the Super Bowl in 2005, letting the clock tick, tick, tick away in the fourth quarter of a winnable game. But let’s not get to that just yet.

It’s hard, of course, to make the legitimate case that a coach is responsible for all of a team’s shortcomings. Andy Reid has never thrown an interception. He has never allowed an opposing wide receiver to get open downfield. He has never fumbled away a punt.

But Reid is also in charge of the Eagles’ personnel, and so the ultimate responsibility again resides with him.

With the notable exception of Owens – an experiment that failed as much because of Eagles management’s ineptitude as Owens’ self-indulgence – Reid has routinely refused to give McNabb any weapons on offense with which to work. While the Patriots got a slew of receivers for Tom Brady to throw to, the Eagles once again chose to remain under the salary cap – an annual occurrence in Philly.

Brian Westbrook is a star, but he was a little-known, undersized back out of Villanova that the hometown club stole in the draft. Skill position players are never a priority for Reid come April. In fact, the last skill-position player the Eagles selected in the first round of the draft was Freddie Mitchell – seven seasons ago.

Reid did, of course, use this year's first pick (although it was in the second round) to draft a skill position guy. By selecting Kevin Kolb -- roundly considered the fifth-best quarterback in the draft -- as McNabb's back-up with the team's first pick in 2007, Reid managed to add more fuel to the fire when the McNabb backlash in Philly was at its zenith. Whether it's having the backs of his biggest stars or keeping his plus-sized form in place under his polo shirts, "support" isn't a word in Reid's vocabulary.

The truth is, the Andy Reid era should be remembered as much for what wasn’t accomplished as for what was, and there is only one man to blame for those shortcomings.

Four straight NFC title games are great, but it would be hard to argue that the Eagles weren’t the better team in at least three of them, yet they won just one.

Last year’s astonishing run to the playoffs behind Jeff Garcia was memorable, but it’s easy to forget that it took McNabb’s season-ending injury for Reid to abandon his all-pass, all-the-time play calling in favor of the balanced attack that finally started winning games.

It’s easy to hate Terrell Owens in Philly, but that’s only because we forget how Reid refused to placate a player he knew required special treatment when he traded for him. Or that Reid cut the locker-room leaders who should have maintained calm in the face of chaos. Or that Reid, along with the rest of the Eagles management, has worked tirelessly to create the players-against-management approach that allowed the Owens situation to balloon out of control. Too many players, from Trotter to Westbrook, had been given the silent treatment instead of a new contract. Never was Reid on their side.

Reid is always steadfast. He KNOWS what’s best, and no one should ever challenge him. He refuses to allow his assistants to speak to the media. He makes Mike Martz-ian decisions without regret. He ties his players’ hands, then expects them to win anyway.

Whether he’s deciding he doesn’t need a healthy kicker or a wide out who can get open, whether he refuses to help an overmatched lineman or deflect criticism from his star quarterback, Reid ALWAYS knows best. He’s a genius, and he needs you to know it.

Still, looking back at that Super Bowl against the heavily favored Patriots in 2005, watching those final seconds tick off the clock in a game that could have easily ended with Philadelphia’s first championship since 1983, it’s hard not to think a genius could have done more.

To quote a line from “Spinal Tap,” there’s a thin line between genius and stupidity. And the truth is, we should have seen which side of the fence Andy Reid was on all along.