McNabb calls his Eagles season 'outstanding'

ARLINGTON, Texas - This time, Donovan McNabb at least made sure we couldn't say he'd blamed anyone but himself. A promising season and - who knows? - maybe even McNabb's Eagles career had just come crashing down on No. 5's shiny noggin with two lopsided losses to Dallas in the same calendar week. Blame me, McNabb said, but don't get rid of me, after an "outstanding" Eagles season. Bit of a mixed message, for sure.

The 6 days between the loss that ended the regular season and the even worse-looking loss that ended everything "was enough time to correct things," McNabb said after failing to inspire an overmatched bunch in a 34-14 dismantling at Cowboys Stadium Saturday night. Andy Reid, Marty Mornhinweg and Sean McDermott might disagree about what they could have achieved in 6 days; as far as we know, Wal-Mart was not having a sale last week on better blockers or tacklers, or Pro Bowl corners willing to follow the defensive coordinator's game plan.

"We just didn't capitalize on the opportunities today. I take full responsibility for all of it," McNabb said. "For all the opportunities we had to make plays, I should have made those plays for our team. I just didn't today."

McNabb indeed missed what should have been a handful of quick, crisp throws early, then the Eagles abandoned that part of the playbook, in favor of elaborate, slow-developing pass plays that seemed designed to give Dallas blitzers the best chance to hurl McNabb to the ground. The way McNabb got splashed around the shiny new Jerrydome turf, you would have thought he was Dave Spadaro's phlegm.

As usual, you could make the case, if you could summon the energy to do so one more time, that McNabb was largely irrelevant to the outcome, that no quarterback would have erased the multiple advantages Dallas pressed home. Rarely have two 11-5 teams looked less evenly matched. Also as usual, you could make the argument that even if McNabb wasn't the problem, he certainly wasn't part of any solution, and he certainly didn't play as well as the other team's quarterback.

Or you could just decide to be sick of the entire mess, surely a very popular option.

"There were some good things and some bad things. It was a team effort," Reid said when asked about the play of his 11th-year QB, who finished 19-for-37 for 230 yards, a touchdown and a pick. At the first half 2-minute warning, which came one play before Dallas scored to take a 24-7 lead, McNabb was 1-for-5 for 2 yards, and the first downs were 17-3 in favor of the Cowboys.

Asked if he expected McNabb to be his quarterback next season, Reid said: "Yeah, I do."

Cornerback Sheldon Brown, who might have had a worse final game than McNabb, said calls for a new QB shouldn't matter.

"We in the locker room believe in him, and that's the only thing that matters," Brown said.

"Donovan is a great quarterback. One of best in the NFL. He's done a great job leading this team. If it weren't for him, we wouldn't have had a lot of the success we've had," said running back Brian Westbrook, who seems more likely than McNabb to have played his final game as an Eagle.

But could the team use a change at QB?

"I don't know what this team needs right now," Westbrook said. "We have to find a way to win football games. I don't think one man is the answer at any position."

For some reason - stubbornness? - McNabb persists in wanting to stay here, though he has to know the needle on the vilification meter is spinning to new levels, if new levels are even possible.

"I don't see that happening," McNabb said, when asked if he thought he might be done as an Eagle after 11 seasons. Last June the team pumped money into his contract, which has one more season to run, but did not extend it. "I look to have an opportunity to work with these guys and obviously develop a rapport with one another, and kind of feed off what we started this year."

Team president Joe Banner, unavailable after this loss to discuss definitions of insanity or anything else, did not respond to an e-mail requesting his view of McNabb's future yesterday. Chairman Jeffrey Lurie waved away a pair of reporters who attempted to talk with him outside the locker room after the game. Reid certainly will be pressed further on the subject when he wraps up the season today at noon at NovaCare.

McNabb indicated that unlike a year ago, he won't be pressing for offseason contract talks to strengthen his hand, but he wouldn't turn them down, either.

"I think first and foremost you [review the year]. Would I like to get extended and be here? Absolutely," he said. "But there are a lot more other things I think we can focus in on now. If that was to come up, then so be it."

As for all the fallout, the questioning of whether it is time to try something else, McNabb said: "I don't pay attention to it. I answer [questions about my future] now and then I don't answer it again . . . I say it every year. I want to be here, I don't want to be anywhere else.

"We had an outstanding year this year. Just about 2, 3 weeks ago, everybody was happy with the guys we had at each position. Now we're talking about who's going to be here and who's not going to be here. I don't look at that. I look at, we have an opportunity to work with these guys through the offseason, and a full season of working together and hopefully changing the outcome of what happened tonight."

It wouldn't have been a McNabb wrapup news conference without a word choice that made you wince. "Outstanding" is such an off-key assessment, delivered with the smoke from the smoldering wreckage still burning the nostrils, that if management really thought McNabb felt that way, it just might want to move ahead with Kevin Kolb.

McNabb has to know that a campaign that ends with not one but two blowout losses to the hated Cowboys, and a wild-card-round exit for the first time in the Reid Era, ending the team's best season since the Super Bowl appearance five seasons earlier, is not quite "outstanding."

Pressed on the fact that the Birds did not beat a playoff team this season, McNabb refused to address the substance of the question - despite going 11-5, the Eagles couldn't run or play defense with the big boys. Whether he is really that obtuse, or he thought he was being loyal to his teammates by not dealing with the truth is an excellent question.

"We can't control who's on the schedule," McNabb said. "We won 11 games. We didn't win 16, I'm sorry for that. But you know what - we had a great season. We did a lot of explosive things on offense. [Whether] they were winning teams or not. I can't control that. But we beat some fairly decent defenses. We can't control what their record is at the end. But one thing we can control is winning the ballgame."

McNabb was similarly fuzzy when it came to an idea Reid had no trouble embracing - with the Cowboys sitting atop the NFC East, looking like a juggernaut, Job 1 for the Eagles this offseason has to be altering that matchup.

"Hopefully we're able to feed off of this," McNabb said, which led to a question about focusing on the Cowboys.

"Our main focus isn't just going to be on Dallas. We still have to focus on the Giants and the Redskins and whoever else is on the schedule," McNabb said, in that infuriating way he has, that leads him to praise Reggie Brown when the question is about DeSean Jackson. "Would we like to play this game again? Yes. But we can't. You don't want to go through the whole offseason just focusing on Dallas. If that's the case, we would have gone through the whole offseason focusing on Arizona last year, and we don't have them on the schedule this year. Again, it's a tough game. I put everything on my shoulders."

Uh, but we're pretty sure you do play Dallas next season, Donovan. Couple of times. And that three of the Eagles' six losses this season were to the Cowboys. And that most fans figure that's worth obssessing over.

McNabb does seem to understand that time, like a large portion of the fan base, is no longer on his side.

"When you get later in your career, these moments and these opportunities, you just never know when it's your last," McNabb said. "I don't mean that in if you're here or not, I mean that you've got to count down your days playing football. This is 11 years for me, going on 12. How many years after this, we'll never know. When you have a talented team like we have, things we were able to do this year, you just don't see it ending. You look up at the scoreboard and you see it's over, you just look forward to the next opportunity."

For more Eagles coverage and opinion, read the Daily News' Eagles blog, Eagletarian, at www.eagletarian.com.