McNabb and us
All right, it is now upon us. Donovan McNabb is coming home -- and Philadelphia will always be his home. The historians (and reality) will always demand it, as they should.
McNabb and us
Rich Hofmann, Daily News Sports Columnist
All right, it is now upon us. Donovan McNabb is coming home -- and Philadelphia will always be his home. The historians (and reality) will always demand it, as they should. And, well, I'm just going to stream-of-consciousness this thing for a while.
I love it as a newspaper guy -- because who doesn't love this kind of a story? But I hate it, too. It's complicated. In the time McNabb was here, and especially in the outer years, we have all taken sides and established positions -- and we are all cemented into place, even if we don't want to be. With this man, this topic, and especially on this weekend against the Redskins, nuance takes a holiday. But life is nuance and McNabb deserves at least that much.
At the end, like I said, we all chose sides. I thought it was time to turn the page and wrote it that way for at least his final year, and probably longer than that. Really good friends of mine, really smart people, disagree. You start with hints and shades of meaning and then you dig yourself in deeper over the months -- it is how opinions evolve. And the two schools of thought that resulted went like this: that the Eagles are just beating their heads against the wall here and should start anew with Kevin Kolb, or that McNabb is mostly blameless here and that the real problem is that he was badly served over the years by Andy Reid, who called the wrong plays too often and who didn't provide him with the surrounding cast until the best of McNabb's career was behind him and a portion of the fan base was poisoned.
My friends probably wouldn't even agree with the way I have stated their position, even though we have discussed this, for probably 3 years -- at various decibel levels and sobriety levels -- in restaurants, bars, cabs, press boxes, hotel lobbies, telepones, texts, tweets, blogs, columns, sidebars, television and radio appearances. And bars. Oh yeah, mentioned that already.
This Michael Vick business has thrown a complete curve into the old arguments, and that is true enough. I will repeat what I wrote the day Kolb was told to sit down: if the Eagles don't make a long playoff run after this season, Reid just wasted a year and really needs to be held accountable. We're months away from the answer there. In the meantime, there is Sunday, McNabb Day.
We all have these positions, and we're all locked in, and that's true. But it should not rob any of us of the ability to recognize what McNabb accomplished here. It is entirely possible to recognize the good things he did for the Eagles and still believe it was time to move on after 11 seasons. It is the nuance of the thing, and I really wish some of it would bleed through the rhetoric this week.
Because Donovan McNabb stabilized a franchise that was so prone to wild swings and misses (and mostly misses). He was an elite talent for a long time. Two aspects of his game made him special: his legs and his good judgment. He ran his way out of a lot of trouble over the years and his interception rate was so low that he never gave games away. It was a great combination.
But while he won a lot of big games over the years, a lot of playoff game, he was almost never the best player in the ultimate games. (His fault? Andy's fault? You want another beer?) And now his legs aren't there anymore, not to the same level, because of injuries and age. All of that, plus a contract that needed extending -- and which the Redskins have not yet extended -- led to where we are now. But you already knew that.
Just be honest with yourself. Think about the years 1999 to 2009. Eleven seasons. About 200 games. A long time. Can you really pretend that this was not the best long run for this franchise in any of our lifetimes? Because you are dissatisfied with the lack of a championship, a real and obvious dissatisfaction, can you really act as if the rest of it did not happen?
My guess, on the weekend when Donovan McNabb comes home, is that most people can't forget, not if they're honest with themselves.
palmyra21 - Troy Brown, David Patten, Deion Branch, Bethel Johnson, David Givens, Reche Caldwell, Chad Jackson, Jabar Gaffney, P.K. Sam, Tim Dwight, Doug Gabriel, Bam Childress, and Andre' Davis - that's who Brady won with? How many of them guys do you remember other than Jabar Gaffney? exactly. shut it fatzo.— Krusty the Klown- palmyra made me change my mind. Glad donny is gone. Go Eagles.— Krusty the Klown
Comment removed.- Comment removed.
The Eagles were the best show in town the last decade. With McNabb the Birds always were near the finish line when the smoked cleared. Amazing run, for sure. What if they drafted one of the other qb's in 99? What if they traded Donovan to the Cowboys? Remember Carmichael wearing the prima donna uniform? Things (if you are older then ten you know) could have been a lot worse. Show some class Sunday and stand up an cheer like hell for ole 5. Then let's get after him. Go Eagles, Go Mike Go!- hubbs in frisco when did the eagles have a number 1 ranked defense in the league???? are you smoking?? they never had it! don't give this nitwit props, he doesn't know what he is taking about. the eagles have never head the best defense in the league. the best they had was a #1 nfc ranking in 2008— tremo12
- EVERYONE PLEASE LISTEN...hubbs in frisco could not be anything further wrong...the eagles never had a #1 ranked defense until 2008. in 2003 when they went to nfc champ game their d was 10th in nfc.— tremo12
- Krusty, how many of the WRs #5 had to play with had over 5000 receiving yards in their career? TO and that's it.— palmyra21
- hubbs_in_frisco: how did those defenses do in the big games? I remember St. Louis lighting us up, Arizona the same. And when we made the Bowl New England ran it down our throats and we barely put up any resistance. Football is a team game, not individual. TEAM.— wondo40
Stats are great but none of those Eagle Ds were what I would call a killer D. '85 Bears, Ravens SB D, those were killer Ds. The best Eagle D was the Reggie White D during Randall's era. It was flat out scary but guess what, no SB rings there either. Both Randall and McNabb never quite put it together but you can't say they didn't try. No SB for McNabb? Yep. Time to move on from him? Yep. Could the Eagles have done a lot worse without him? Yep. However he is welcomed on Sunday he made the last decade very enjoyable despite the agony.— tpizza
"People forget about McNabb did because Mike Vick is just so freakin awesome."
Wow, he won games against Detroit and Jacksonville, and that wipes out McNabb's ten years. No wonder Eagles fans have a bad reputation.
- The Eagles vaunted defense gave up big drives late in important games in every season ending lost especially in McNabb's prime years. Who cares where they were ranked in the regular season, they got outplayed in every big game and didn't hold up to their regular season stats so the stats are moot.— ccheung
- No one ever mentions how many years the Eagles were in the top 5 in points scored during McNabb's tenure. Reid just doesn't understand that football is a game of ball control and field position. The ultimate irony from a guy who played in the trenches. The Eagles are just like BYU under Lavell, all flash and dash until they play a great team in a bowl then its 42-14 and a sad trip back to mormon land.— ccheung
- There are no Pro Bowlers in Drew Brees arsenal of weapons. Take that statement as you want. Thats all I'm saying.— watsonmr
- Take a look at the career QB rating and you'll see that McNabb ranks pretty high at #15.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NFL_career_passer_rating_leaders
The guys in SF keeps mentioning show up way down the list. Rate McD how ever you want but he was way above average and the stats prove it. 33000+ yds passing so he must have thrown a few on the mark.— brs50
