Rich Hofmann: Will McNabb be as super as Elway?

ASHBURN, Va. - There seems to be a mixup here. The Eagles insist they are not rebuilding whenever you ask them, but Donovan McNabb says, "They're rebuilding, and they're going young. So I never knew 33 years old was old, but I guess I'm too old."

There really seems to be a mixup here. The Washington Redskins, after signing a bunch of older free agents and trading for a 33-year-old quarterback named McNabb, seem to be going for a super-quick turnaround but new coach Mike Shanahan says, "That's completely false . . . It's a rebuilding process."

We are now into the game of managing expectations. The Eagles really don't get to play that one anymore, by the way. New quarterback Kevin Kolb is going to have to show his ability pretty quickly and they are ultimately going to have to win a Super Bowl, or the jury charged with deciding the fate of the Andy

Reid legacy will be sent out with some pretty severe instructions.

For McNabb, though, it is different. The notion that he has to come here and win a Super Bowl in order to be successful - for a franchise that has defined dysfunction for a decade, from the owner on down - really seems harsh. The idea that he has to follow in the footsteps of John Elway - who won two late-career Super Bowls under Shanahan in Denver - makes for a neat-and-easy conversation point but seems to stretch reasonableness into something else entirely.

The intention here was to remove the anvil of Elway from McNabb's neck. But after listening to McNabb and Shanahan at the introductory news conference - lights, camera, action, et cetera - McNabb seems to want the anvil there. It is the standard that he is embracing.

"The thing that [Shanahan] has accomplished with great quarterbacks like John Elway, a guy who I've been pretty much compared to all throughout my career so far," McNabb said. "It just so happens he stepped into him when he was 34. I'll turn 34 this year. He finished John's career with two Super Bowls. Hopefully I can continue to follow behind that.

"But one person can't achieve that. You achieve that by team."

That is the caveat. The Eagles have built stable, accomplished teams around McNabb. The Redskins have built teetering nonsense around their quarterbacks in recent years. McNabb isn't walking into a mess because Shanahan is much too good for that, and things can turn around quickly in the NFL of the 21st century, but this Elway still seems a healthy distance away.

But Shanahan is clutching onto the notion, too - along with the story of another of his pupils and another late-blooming success, Steve Young. And it is a little bit eerie that when you made historical, stylistic comparisons - even before all of this - Elway, Young and McNabb often did end up in the same conversation.

"People don't realize what happened to John Elway," Shanahan said, standing on the side after the big news conference was over. "After Denver lost the AFC [divisional playoff] against Jacksonville, the cry at the time was for John to retire. That's all people talked about . . . People forget. They've got short memories.

"Steve Young, after losing the NFC Championship Games 2 years in a row, actually got booed off the field at the championship game. He comes back and threw six touchdown passes and scored 49 points in the Super Bowl.

"John Elway's been through it. He does it for 15, 16 years, that's perseverance. Steve Young, just waiting in San Francisco for 6 years - and that's besides Tampa Bay and the USFL - getting booed but having the perseverance, just like Donovan, to prevail. Knowing that this is not a sprint, it's a marathon. Are you tough enough mentally to fight yourself through it?

"Donovan is very tough mentally," Shanahan said. "He understands that he's got some goals and he's going to work as hard as he can to reach those goals."

Everybody in Philadelphia will be watching how the Redskins approach offense. McNabb joked yesterday about how little the Eagles ran the ball, and the Shanahan-Elway success involved a heavy dose of running back Terrell Davis. Shanahan wouldn't say what he had planned and if McNabb would benefit from more balance. "Time will tell," he said, before heaping a pile of platitudes on Reid.

It will be incredibly fun to watch, and there is every reason to believe that the change will reinvigorate McNabb to some degree. Still, many of us have seen a ceiling in recent years.

But Elway broke through it, right?

That seems to be how we will judge McNabb after all.

Send e-mail to hofmanr@phillynews.com, or read his blog, The Idle Rich, at http://go.philly.com/theidlerich.

For recent columns go to http://go.philly.com/hofmann.