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Rich Hofmann: McNabb must shoulder the load for Eagles

THE EAGLES have entered the blah-blah-blah stage of the proceedings, where the meaningless words they speak are even more meaningless than usual. They need to beat the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday. They need to win five or six of their final seven games. The rest of it is just killing time.

The remainder of the Eagles’ season is literally in the hands of quarterback Donovan McNabb. (Jerry Lodriguss/Staff Photographer)
The remainder of the Eagles’ season is literally in the hands of quarterback Donovan McNabb. (Jerry Lodriguss/Staff Photographer)Read more

THE EAGLES have entered the blah-blah-blah stage of the proceedings, where the meaningless words they speak are even more meaningless than usual. They need to beat the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday. They need to win five or six of their final seven games. The rest of it is just killing time.

"I hope that others see our situation as I see it - we have enough talent in our locker room to be a winning team," Donovan McNabb said in the Yardbarker.com blog that bears his name. "We certainly have our backs against the wall. We have to come out fighting from start to finish. I need to get into a rhythm early and stay in that groove till the final whistle . . . we all do.

"I don't expect this blog to do anything other than share my thoughts with you. These are just words. I need to put them into action."

McNabb is right. It is on him now. The Eagles' predicament demands it. The dominance of the quarterback position demands it. The history of his career with this franchise demands it. It is hard to imagine the Eagles getting to where they need to get if McNabb cannot conjure 6 or 7 weeks from the time capsule.

He has been good this year but not good enough - which is to say, he has been them. Even with an offense scoring a ton of points, there have not been any climb-on-my-back moments.

"One thing that we can pinpoint is that we haven't closed games," McNabb said yesterday, returning to practice after taking a personal day on Wednesday. "It's got to be a total-team deal. Offensively if we can't get things going, defensively you've got to step up. If defensively we're struggling a little bit, offensively we have to take over - special teams as well. That's just the way this game goes. It could be a shootout or it could be something that goes 3-0. You have to be on top of your game at all times, on all phases, in order to win games in this league."

For McNabb, it has been a season full of disconnects.

He still throws the outs and the curls - the big-arm stud throws - with everything he has always had. But his passes farther down the field, especially lately, are coming up painfully short and weak. When the ball is in the air for more than 30 yards, McNabb is only 2-for-11 this year.

His overall completion percentage (61.4 percent) is solid for him, among the highest of his career. But especially given the really excellent protection he has received this season from his offensive line, his touchdowns (13) are a little low.

He looks good physically, more nimble than last year when he was rehabbing the 2006 knee injury. But he is barely running anymore. There are 13 NFL quarterbacks who run more often per game than McNabb does. Put it this way: Even last year with the knee, McNabb ran 50 times in 14 games and got 16 first downs with his legs. This year, his 14-game pace goes like this: 34 carries and eight first downs.

He has looked polished, even dynamic, for some stretches of games, especially early in the season. But his starts are becoming painfully slow. In the last three games, he started 5-for-13 with a lost fumble against Atlanta, 3-for-13 with a bad interception at Seattle, and 0-for-8 into the middle of the second quarter against the Giants.

There is all of that. And then there is the team's maddening inability to run the ball in key short-yardage situations, which really has little to do with McNabb.

"Again, it goes back to being able to seal the deal," he said. "Scoring is not an issue for us, eating up big yards is not either. When you get into those types of situations where it counts for maybe a 4-minute drill or continuing a drive, we have to be able to pick up those short yardages. If it's a pass play or if it's a run play, whatever it may be, it's important that we be able to keep drives alive by doing it. Maybe in the Dallas game, we would have won that game. Maybe in the Giants game, we would have won the game. But, it's something that we focused on weeks ago and it just didn't happen last week."

He says they still have time, which is true. But time is about up. The short-yardage thing has lingered for 10 weeks now. It is hard to tell if running back Brian Westbrook is getting any healthier or not. On the other side of the ball, the defensive line is not getting any bigger and the same overplay the pass/overplay the run, rob Peter/pay Paul issues will continue.

This is a decent team, hoping to be a very good team, currently wracked by dilemmas. It needs to go on a hellacious run here or prepare for the recriminations - and the changes.

The more you think about it, the more it comes back to No. 5. Because, honestly, if he can't lead them out of it, who can? *

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.