Les Bowen: Mixed signals confusing for Eagles' Kolb, and others

"That was a bit of a surprise. I didn't think I said anything wrong," Kolb said after yesterday's workout, which was driven into the indoor facility by weather that mimicked April. "I understand that you have to be careful with everything you say. All I meant was I'm ready, and when the time comes, I'll do my best to win a football game . . . It was shocking it got driven that far."

Well, actually, he said a little more than he recalled.

Kolb, drafted as Donovan McNabb's presumed successor in 2007, acknowledged last week that if McNabb gets a contract extension, presumably cementing McNabb's status as starter beyond 2010, "that'll be frustrating."

"But, shoot, what are my options?" Kolb continued then. "I'll just come out here and execute and show them I can be the guy they want me to be."

Kolb said yesterday that he hasn't spoken with McNabb about what he said, doesn't feel he needs to speak with him about it.

"Donovan knows what I was saying," said Kolb, who is preparing for the third season of a 4-year contract. "Like any quarterback, any competitor, you want to be on the field."

Here's the thing - Kolb's comments about wanting to play really weren't all that fascinating, or combustible. The situation still is.

Kolb also copped last week to being "antsy." No kidding.

The carrot has been dangled in front of Kolb, off and on, since the Eagles shocked McNabb by making Kolb the first player they drafted 2 years ago, in the second round. The rationale then was that McNabb had sustained serious, season-ending injuries that required surgery in both the previous campaigns. The team wasn't ready to cut ties with him right away, but you could sure see it happening after one more bad news X-ray or MRI. It wasn't like Kolb had been drafted to back up a midcareer Peyton Manning.

There have been no more serious McNabb injuries, yet there were points in the 2007 and 2008 seasons when many fans and media members felt McNabb was on his way out of town. You know Kolb had to feel that buzz, had to wonder, and dream.

In the wake of a 38-17 home loss to Dallas on Nov. 4, 2007, an Inquirer piece was headlined: "QB handoff/The transition from McNabb to his successor has begun."

Lest we be accused of picking on the Inky, around the same time a Daily News editorial columnist declared:

"Donovan McNabb seems to be in the middle of his Philadelphia swan song. The handwriting has been on the wall since he missed significant parts of the last two seasons, leading the Birds to draft Kevin Kolb in the spring. Every week, we wait for the Donovan of old to reappear, but it's painfully clear now that that day will never come. At least not while he's in an Eagles uniform."

Most of us covering the team drove home from Baltimore the night of last Nov. 23 pondering whether we had just seen the last of No. 5 in green and white, after Kolb played the second half of the worst loss of the season, 36-7 to the Ravens.

An Inquirer columnist felt the benching had only hastened the inevitable by a matter of weeks: "The McNabb Era was rocketing to a close anyway. Although no one in the organization had officially said so, Kolb was going to be the starter when the first minicamp of 2009 opened."

A Daily News columnist, critiquing Andy Reid's decision the next day to go back to McNabb for a Thanksgiving start against the Cardinals, said: "At this point, Kolb should start the rest of the season."

Point of all this being, the job has to have seemed within grasping range to Kolb, more than once. Of course he's "antsy" to play by now.

Just as obviously, McNabb's strong peformance, bouncing back from that Baltimore humiliation, guiding the Eagles into the playoffs, and then to the NFC Championship Game, ensured that he prepares for the 2009 season as the starter, unchallenged. But that McNabb contract extension, the one Kolb said he would find "frustrating?" Well, you don't see any contract extension yet, do you?

There have been whispers that the offseason sitdown between McNabb and management at least elicited a promise that McNabb is the quarterback this season as long as he is healthy - no "Benching, the Sequel."

We don't know if that's true. We don't know if McNabb really feels he has been given better weapons this year, or if he looks at the birth certificates of Jeremy Maclin and LeSean McCoy (both 20 years old, can't even take 'em out drinking when they show up in Arizona to work on pass-route timing) and really sees Kolb's ticket to the playoffs, 3 or 4 years from now.

Thus far in his Eagles career, Kolb has been much more impressive off the field than on; he hasn't done anything in little scraps of playing time here and there to hasten McNabb's demise. Kolb has consistently struck the right tone, though, when discussing the situation - he's been confident, yet deferential. That balance has to get harder to strike, the longer you sit. *

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