Andy Reid's era of experiments will end with bad decisions and Michael Vick on the bench

The NFL's Sunday slate of game will not feature the Philadelphia Eagles, who lost Thursday night, 34-13, to the visiting Cincinnati Bengals.

The loss featured pretty much everything that has been wrong with the Eagles (4-10) all season long. However, as Philly.com columnist Bob Ford writes Sunday, the team's -- head coach Andy Reid's -- biggest gaffe was its inability to use quarterback Michael Vick, whose tenure in Philadelphia will end on the bench.

Reid's failure to distinguish between innovation and gimmick, which has been a recurring theme in his career here, is what brought Vick to town in the first place. The Wildcat offense turned out to be a blip on the screen instead of a game-changer, but Reid needed to get the newest version of the operating system, only to find it was outdated by the time he got it home.

Ford also points out that Vick's replacement, rookie Nick Foles, may not be the answer for the Eagles' quarterback future. If Foles doesn't work out it would be just another Eagles' idea gone bad.

In the meantime, the end of the Vick experiment, coming so soon after the end of the Jim Washburn experiment, and the end of the Juan Castillo experiment, brings to mind Reid's maddening habit of thinking outside the box rather than looking in the box to see if the answer was there the whole time.

Read Ford's complete column here.

The Eagles' next game will be next Sunday against the Washington Redskins (1 p.m. on Fox). Philadelphia will conclude its regular season, Dec. 30, at the New York Giants (1 p.m. on FOX). This is the second straight season the Eagles will finish the season without a winning record.