Eagles spread the blame for sacks

Marty Mornhinweg took Donovan McNabb aside for one of those "You're not as young as you think" talks.

The conversation spun out of the quarterback's tendency to take too many sacks this season. Part of the blame can be pinned on the offensive line, but Mornhinweg wasn't shy about assigning some to McNabb. Hence "The Talk."

"Some of those guys are faster than you are now," the Eagles' offensive coordinator recalled telling McNabb. "Back in the day, you could move and groove and make 10 yards."

That day returns now and then, but mostly the 33-year-old quarterback can get run down. McNabb, though, isn't alone in sometimes holding the ball too long.

"In my history, two thirds of the sacks are normally [on] the quarterback," Mornhinweg said. "There is a chance to get the ball out. Only about a third is there absolutely no chance to get the ball out. I thought he did an excellent job of that last year."

In 2008, McNabb was sacked only 23 times in 16 games. Through 10 games this season, Eagles quarterbacks have been sacked 25 times, with McNabb being brought down 22 times in eight games.

While the line's instability has something to do with that number, McNabb has tried too often to escape harm. The younger McNabb seemed to be able to wiggle out of any bind, but in reality he was sacked more often earlier in his career. In his first six seasons, he was sacked 2.5 times a game. In the last five, it's 2.3.

"When you are getting pressure, you just don't want to force a ball to the middle of the field, don't want to force the ball to a receiver just to get the ball out, because that's when it becomes an interception or something happens," McNabb said. "Sometimes you have to take the sack and go to the next play. Sometimes you just get the ball out of your hands, throw it out of bounds if you can."

Last week against the Bears, two of three sacks were primarily his fault.

"Two of them were on screens, so we have to throw them away," Mornhinweg said. "I'm not particularly concerned about that, because we know where the issues were, so we have that corrected just a bit."

Now is as good a time as any. Washington arrives for Sunday's game shredded by injury, but the Redskins still have a formidable defense and a pass rush among the best in the NFL. They're tied for eighth in the league in sacks with 25 and have two of the top sackmasters in defensive end Andre Carter, with eight, and linebacker Brian Orakpo, who has seven.

McNabb admitted that he probably needed to do a better job.

"That's something I've been trying to do, and sometimes maybe I can get it out a little bit quicker, but again, you have to be smart with it," he said.

The offensive line cannot escape culpability, whether because of injuries or other factors. Todd Herremans missed the first five games of the season, and in the first three the Eagles gave up only four sacks. They held Kansas City in Week 3 without a sack when Kevin Kolb replaced McNabb.

There is little precision when assigning fault for sacks, though.

"Sacks are a funny thing, because it's just what you are saying they get kind of dumped in the offensive line's lap," head coach Andy Reid said. "Can the line do better? Absolutely, but sacks, when you really break them down and study them, everyone has a little piece of those sacks, and they are distributed across the board with the offensive players, and at times the coaches."

But it starts with the line, and the Eagles say they are finally starting to gets some cohesiveness. For most of the season, they have had a rotation at right guard with Nick Cole, Max Jean-Gilles, or Stacy Andrews. But Cole played the entire Chicago game, and Andrews did not dress.

"Continuity on the offensive line is highly correlated to winning," Mornhinweg said, "so it's a good thing when you have all five guys playing. In the long run, it's a good thing. We're at that point right now where we played five guys last week. The more they play together, the better they'll get. They have a real opportunity to be a really good unit up there by the end of the season."