Alas poor Donovan, I knew him Horatio

OK, sitting here this morning waiting for a seat to open up so I figure I’d throw in my 2 cents on the McNabb trade. Basically the Birds were caught in a bit of a squeeze; they had 3 quarterbacks whose contracts were expiring at the same time, 2 with fairly big names and none who wanted to be back up. They were going to lose 2 of them somewhere along the line. If they extended McNabb someone was going to offer Kolb a chance and Vick was definitely testing the market. So what to do? Me, as much as I like McNabb and would have liked to see him get a ring in an Eagles uni I think the Eagles took the course they needed to take.

If they extended McNabb they lose the other QBs unless they can get some kind of trade value for them and it didn’t look like anyone was knocking really hard. By trading McNabb they are going to see if their judgment in taking Kolb was correct. He showed flashes of the necessary skills when McNabb was out last year but many a back up has shown great presence when stepping up for an injured starter only to fail when they get the job outright. So now Kolb is in the pressure cooker. If he handles it he keeps the job, Vick goes his way and whomever the Birds acquire this year becomes the backup. If Kolb fails the Birds offer Vick the job for a few years and start looking for their next starter. It had to be done. If the Eagles had kept McNabb they were going to have to draft another potential starting qb so that they had time to prepare him which meant there was going to be a fire sale for someone. Also this way if Kolb does turn out to be the qb they think he is you have him and his talented corp of receivers having quite a number of years together. If McNabb had stayed he would be retiring long before his receivers.

Obviously the Eagles do not think McNabb has the ability to win games on his own any more as the traded him to a team in their own division., a team they feel that might benefit from McNabb’s presence but doesn’t have the weapons to seriously challenge just yet and that by the time they acquire those weapons McNabb’s skills will have deteriorated even more. McNabb’s passing has always been erratic. Some days he could fire lasers in to his receivers while on others they were too low or behind them. His saving grace was the fact that on all except his really bad days his passing could be good enough and his legs were worth a couple of first downs. Even when he didn’t run the mere threat of it was enough to pull defenders towards him and away from his receivers. Age however has diminished that threat. Add in the fact that it’s been a rare season lately that he doesn’t get injured and the qb situation in Philadelphia left McNabb the odd man out.

So now starts the Kevin Kolb era in Philadelphia. He seems more a pure passer than McNabb so the excitement that Donovan brought to the game probably won’t be there. Reid may feel that he can fit into his pass happy offense better. We’ll see. One thing Kolb had better get used to, many of the fans that yelled for him the past few years will now turn on him and yell for his back up unless he wins that ring, and soon. The honeymoon will be short and the funeral brutal if he doesn’t win right away. It’s the nature of the beast. No Philly QB was ever good enough when he was playing. Everyone loves Jaworski these days but in his playing days the criticism was brutal. It was Vermeil, Montgomery and the D that were considered the heroes at the time. McNabb, for all the grief he took while here will be fondly remembered as time passes and if Kolb fails it won’t be a lot of time. So here is hoping that Reid is right, right in drafting Kolb when he did and right in going down this path. The games with Washington have always been tough and he just made them a lot tougher.

On a final note I do wish to say that I think McNabb got a bit of a raw deal here. The fans we all know about but management did it too. Andy Reid runs a pass happy offense yet in all the years he was here McNabb never had a talented receiving corp to work with. Oh there were some individuals at times, Chad Lewis at tight end for a couple of years and Owens at wide out for a short time but the Birds never gathered a complete set the way they have now and now he is gone. And for all those idiots who keep claiming that T.O. got the Eagles to the Super Bowl remember, he never played a playoff game. He was the cause of them getting a lot of regular season wins but the team got over the championship game hump without his help yet McNabb never gets the credit for that either. It is always T.O. that got them to the Bowl, not McNabb. So Donovan I wish you well in the time you have left in the league and hope you get the recognition you deserve. Just don’t do it against the Eagles.

Thanks for the listen.