Andy on Andrews: He's just a wuss.

I have a feeling Shawn Andrews got the spanking he was hoping to avoid after all.

As expected, once Andy Reid gave us the injury/Donovan report this afternoon, the first question was about what guard Andrews said yesterday, about his visit with the ankle specialist being a "tear jerker." Big Red did all he could to put out the fire started by Andrews' Wednesday -- and my suspicion is that it WAS a performance -- but it didn't really work all that well.

"Shawn's an emotional guy," Reid said. "He wants to be out here playing. That locker room can become a rough place when you're not playing. They guys get after you a little bit.

"The bottom line is that there's nobody that wants to be out there more than Shawn. He's frustrated. But the main thing, and really the only thing I care about right now is that he's getting better. And that he's doing."

The coach said he believes his All Pro right guard will be in the Eagles lineup for the season opener in Green Bay.

Then a TV reporter asked Reid a question that basically said Andrews had made it seem like his career was threatened by this injury, which is not what I took from it at all. The most interesting detail of Andrews' act Wednesday was his mention of a "window," which I took to possibly mean that he had a chronic, degenerative ankle condition that could potentially shorten his career, though not end it.

In any case, Andy's answer to the question went like this:

"That's him being Shawn. One thing that makes Shawn a great football player is that he's an emotional football player. He showed you a little emotion yesterday, and he wants back out on the field, and he's just got to weather this thing and as frustrating as it is for him he's just got to weather through it."

Translated: Shawn Andrews is a big girlie wuss who can't get his feelings under control, but sometimes big girlie wusses are great football players.

What followed was definitely an interesting exchange, in which Rueben Frank Asked Andy why he doesn't let players talk about injuries.

AR (uncomfortably): I'd rather just do it myself. It works out better. I mean, we're taking this thing here (the Andrews thing)and blowing it way out of perspective.

RF: But that's because he felt he couldn't talk about it so it makes the situation (worse)...

AR: Why don't we move on to the next question.

And the press conference went back to its regularly scheduled Donovan-centric programming.

For the most part, I think Andy's right. It does make his life easier for players to not be able to talk about injuries. It also oftem makes the players' lives easier, since they can just deflect those questions.

In fact, Andrews could easily have just echoed the party line about working back and taking it slow and hoping for the best, etc., and we all would have made it a two-sentence blurb in the daily notebook and Andy wouldn't have been uncomfortable at all. But Andrews didn't.

More to the point, he chose not to make it easy on himself.

As usual, the next question is why, and now we're back to where we were this morning, wondering if Andrews is just screwing with us or if this is something real. Except now there's a third intriguing option, which is that Andrews thinks he's fine, and he's putting Reid and the Eagles' under pressure to play him just to prove they're not hiding some horrioble thing. Which they absolutely won't.

As I said before, I think he's just having fun with us, jerking us around. I was there, I saw Andrews' face, he didn't look like a guy not in control of his emotions. He looked like a kid pushing buttons. Which I appreciate. Heck, it's given us something to write about, made our jobs a little easier and more fun for a couple of days, let us use the work "spank" in quote multiple times in print. I'm grateful, even.

Until Andrews plays, we probably won't know anything, because I doubt we'll be hearing from him much again before then. As far as speaking to the media, I'll bet Big Shawn is on double-secret probation.