"Michael Vick took a trip down memory lane last night. And it wasn't a good trip.

After playing like a legitimate league MVP candidate most of the season, after leading the Eagles to eight wins in the nine games he had started and finished, Vick turned into a pumpkin in his team's costly 24-14 loss to the Vikings, which blew their chance of gaining a first-round playoff bye to smithereens.

Eagle Mike became Falcon Mike.

He was careless with the football, losing two fumbles, including one that was returned for a touchdown and another that effectively destroyed a potential scoring drive.

His decision-making, so good much of the season, was poor. He had trouble recognizing blitzes, which were many and varied. He often seemed befuddled by the Vikings' coverages.

While he threw just one interception - his sixth in the last five games - it easily could've been three or four if the Vikings' defensive backs knew how to catch the football.

Vick forced passes into double coverage. He missed open receivers. He completed 58.1 percent of his passes. It was only the third time this season he had a sub-60 completion percentage.

He averaged a season-low 6.1 yards per attempt. He finished with a season-low 74.1 passer rating.

In his defense, he did all of this most of the time while running for his life, because the Eagles' offensive line spent much of the game looking like its primary mission was to get him killed. And he did it on a bruised quad he said he injured on the first play of the game.

Vick was sacked a season-high six times. When a guy as elusive as Vick gets sacked that many times, the people charged with protecting him should cover their faces in shame.

His receivers didn't help him either, dropping at least three passes.

"It was terrible,'' Eagles coach Andy Reid said. "Every phase was terrible.'' Reid made sure to include coaching in that evaluation.

Reid declined to single out Vick for blame, but made it clear he deserved as much as anybody on the offense, which was held to its lowest point total since the Redskins held the Vickless Eagles to 12 points in Week 4.

"The whole offense didn't play well,'' Reid said. "I expect everybody to execute the offense the way it's supposed to be executed.''"