IF DONOVAN McNabb's broken rib hurts badly enough, Kevin Kolb's coming-out party will be Sunday.
Or, his burial as a Bird will be Sunday.
Either way, a pair of fellow Texans will be watching a portion of their legacy take another step - forward, or backward.
They both are pretty sure he will head in the right direction.
"Kevin's a very, very good quarterback," said Jerry Rhome, Kolb's quarterback tutor.
"He can handle the job. He'll take care of business," said Art Briles, Kolb's high school and college coach.
On the face of it, Briles and Rhome have every reason to glowingly endorse Kolb.
Rhome is a QB expert, a specialty coach for hire. Briles, now at Baylor, not only coached Kolb - he can use Kolb's successes as a recruiting tool - but his son, Kendal, remains Kolb's good friend. In the offseason, Kolb lives less than 2 hours from Waco.
Neither offers coaching advice lest they disrupt the Eagles' teaching track, but both routinely speak with Kolb.
And, really, neither needs to embellish his opinion of Kolb to further his own end.
Rhome was an All-America quarterback at Tulsa, played with four NFL teams and coached on 10 NFL clubs in a 25-year career. He has coached Troy Aikman, Warren Moon, Kurt Warner, Joe Theismann and Steve McNair.
Briles, an all-state quarterback and a wideout at Houston, developed a version of the spread offense that served him well through 20 years of success, including four state titles at Stephenville High, Kolb's alma mater. He took the scheme to college, where, with Kolb, he turned around Houston's program.
No, they don't need Kolb to play well in the Eagles' home opener against the Saints. They just believe he will.
"I taught him as much as I could teach him," Rhome said.
That meant endless predraft sessions in the winter and early spring of 2007, after Kolb had passed for almost 13,000 yards, then fourth in the Division I-A record books.
By the time Kolb went to the Senior Bowl in late January, he had distanced himself enough from the shotgun-only spread scheme to impress Andy Reid and Co. By April, Kolb had convinced them that they should spend their first pick on him. After trading out of the first round, they took him 36th overall.
As usual, they did their homework.
Like McNabb, Kolb's suitability for the NFL game was questioned, largely because other spread-offense quarterbacks such as David Klingler and Tim Couch failed to make the transition. Of course, the QB scrapheap is full of failed college option passers, too, and the Birds correctly believed McNabb would never end up among them.
They picked McNabb on ability and aptitude. They did the same with Kolb. He piled up yards at Houston as much because of his mind as his strong arm and a stat-friendly scheme.
"He's got a great intellect and anticipation, the ability to see things before they happen, an ability other people don't have," Briles said.
