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For once, none of the labels commonly used to describe Philadelphia Eagles coach Andy Reid - calm, organized, steady, patient - seemed to apply. Instead, as his team was being hammered by Dallas the other night, only one word could adequately summarize Reid's outlook: helpless.
That's a feeling he understands all too well lately. Sunday's 38-17 embarrassment against the Cowboys came three days after the sentencing of his two oldest sons to jail on charges related to guns and drugs.
The sequence of events spoke of a common thread between the jobs of coaching and parenting, boiling down to this inescapable truth: The outcome is never guaranteed.
For all the responsibility that coaches and parents assume, there's a point when all the preparation, all the teaching and all the good intentions give way to merely trusting and hoping for the best, and the results are not always satisfactory.
"You can only control so much," said University of Utah coach Kyle Whittingham.
And now Reid, Whittingham's friend and former Brigham Young teammate, finds himself in a complex mess of second-guessing himself about his oldest sons' wayward path, trying to guide three other children through their teen years - and oh, yeah, fixing the Eagles' problems.
"I can't imagine the difficulty he's going through," Whittingham said Monday. "This job grinds you down as it is, without any external issues going on."
The response to the problems of Reid's sons is another classic case study of human nature. Some will find joy in the troubles of others, especially those who are any combination of rich, religious and famous, like the Reids. Some will wonder how the Philly coach's personal issues will affect the NFL playoff race. Some will be sympathetic, knowing that bad kids can happen to good parents.
In the search for an explanation for where the Reids went wrong, there's always the coaching profession. The family's five children each was born in a different state in a nine-year stretch of moves, illustrating the nature of the job. Yet Andy Reid tried to stay involved with his children, including the often-told story about how he would go to work for a few hours and come home for breakfast as a Green Bay Packers assistant.
It's also possible that Reid overcompensated by spoiling his children once he became a highly paid NFL head coach, creating a lifestyle that led to Garrett Reid's becoming, as he detailed in a court report, a drug dealer who enjoyed his status as a rich kid working in Philadelphia's toughest neighborhoods.
None of this can be easily explained and, just as in football, all anybody cares about is the result. After all these years of conducting film sessions and critiquing his players, Andy Reid found himself in court for six hours last Thursday during his sons' sentencing hearings, having a county judge lecture him and his wife about their parental failings. Judge Steven O'Neill spoke of "a family in crisis," while suggesting the parents were guilty of "enabling" drug addiction as rehabilitation attempts proved unsuccessful.
Reid did not respond to the judge. Having expressed his determination to continue coaching, he's dealing with the Eagles' crisis in the traditional way.
"The only thing you can do is keep battling," he said in a postgame news conference, two days after having described his sons' troubles as "a battle that we've dealt with here for a few years."
Some people wonder why Reid would keep coaching at all, instead of redirecting his personnel management expertise homeward to keep his other children from going the way of their older brothers.
Reid did take a five-week leave this past winter to deal with his sons' troubles and acknowledged some thoughts of giving up football, but he came back to work. His response Sunday to questions about the state of the Eagles was natural, citing his mission to do what coaches do: "find out the problems and get them solved."