I just don’t think McNabb fits that “dumping an older guy on the cusp of failure” philosophy that the Eagles are apparently really good at recognizing in other players.
There are only 3 possible outcomes:
McNabb and Kolb both do well for their teams, and the division is more competitive.
Kolb does well and McNabb falls on his face in Washington and the division is less competitive.
McNabb does well and Kolb does not, setting back the Eagles and making the division less competitive.
I’m inclined to believe in my first proposal, and more inclined to believe that McNabb will do better in Washington than Kolb will do with the Eagles.
We can only see what happens, but this thread has taken a turn for the silly with those of you like StinkFish claiming that McNabb essentially sucks. He doesn’t. He’s good and there’s no reason to believe he won’t be next season, particularly as he was traded within the division and now has a convenient well of motivation to grind his axe against Philly twice a year.
I don’t either, but that’s because I think the Eagles are good enough to win a Super Bowl right now with McNabb.
They put themselves in position to be serious contenders for three or four years by signing Asante Samuel and putting some receivers around McNabb. Now they won’t be.
Moreover, they could have re-signed Kolb for reasonable money. In the case of the Packers, the obvious precedent, there was no chance they’d get Rodgers re-signed, and Favre threatened to retire every offseason.
McNabb, by contrast, would almost certainly have accepted an extension.
I also don’t think Kolb comes from a background which predicts success in the NFL. Houston runs an offense somewhat like Texas Tech - “wing the ball around a shit ton”, basically (have a look at Case Keenum’s numbers last year) and nobody is cutting veterans to give Graham Harrell a starting job. That said, he’s had the opportunity to sit and learn for three years, so if he’s an NFL-caliber player we should know it early on.
Just for, I don’t know, posterity’s sake, slight correction: I’m not talking about liking the guy, I’m talking about evaluating him as a football player. Irrational assessment of his ability to be a quarterback, not of him as a man. I don’t really have much to say about what’s a good reason not to like him.
Anyway, I’m talking dictionary-definition rational/irrational. Based on reason. I’ve addressed some examples, but sure: McNabb sucks because he can’t win a big game = irrational, because he already has by any reasonable definition. Because he smiles too much, because he didn’t publicly trash TO, because he says in interviews that he didn’t like being booed for being drafted instead of Ricky Williams, because his mother is in Chunky Soup commercials, because he is pouty, mouth breathing, and fat-assed, because of his strange air-guitar, dancing, and sideline-giggling antics; those are irrational reasons to say he is not a very good quarterback. And those are all reasons I’ve heard to explain why he is/was not good enough to be the Eagles quarterback, and why Jeff Garcia, and AJ Feeley, and Kevin Kolb, and Michael Vick all should have been starting instead of McNabb.
Rational reasons: his completion percentage, his injury history, his performance at any given time, his not knowing the rules, his poor management of clock and down, etc. These include anything that involves him playing football, provided it is a real thing that happened and not some kind of prophecy, and particularly that does not include the phrase “will never” because what are you, an oracle?
The “not knowing the rules” one is ridiculous, in my not-humble opinion. American football has the most complicated rules of any major team sport. The goddamn officials get them wrong all the time (see Matt Hasselbeck being called for an illegal block in the Super Bowl while trying to make a tackle).
This is not an accurate portrayal of my views on McNabb. I don’t think he is a terrible quarterback. I think he is a good, but not a great QB. I also believe he has been over-rated his entire career.
But if you believe if given the choice between McNabb and, say Rex Grossman, I wouldn’t take McNabb, you are missing the point entirely.
Your point seems to rest on a “been there, done that” idea that because McNabb has “been there, done that” enough times and not achieved the ultimate goal of a SB win somehow that his time is up and he could never “get over that hump”.
Maybe so and maybe not. Again, I suppose we’ll see how the respective teams in question perform throughout the year.
I’ve got nothing against winning now. But this decision seems to have clear tradeoffs between present and future. McNabb represents an investment in 2010 and 2011, and 2012 if we’re very lucky, but that’s pretty much it. And the draft choices represent an investment in the present and the longer-term future.
The problem with a big investment in now, in the Redskins’ case, is they’re a crappy team. They may have been better than their 4-12 record last year, but they aren’t one QB from winning even a first-round playoff game. I’m old enough to remember when George Allen came east from Los Angeles in 1971, bringing his Over The Hill Gang of former Rams players with him, plus a number of veterans that their teams were willing to part with, at the cost of a slew of draft choices. The difference was, Vince Lombardi had coached the Redskins in 1969, and had built the foundation of a good team - one that understandably didn’t play up to its ability after Lombardi died shortly before the 1970 season began. That team was a lot better than its 6-8 record suggested. Then when Allen brought in Diron Talbert, Jack Pardee, Verlon Biggs, Manny Sistrunk, Billy Kilmer, Roy Jefferson, and others, they were all of a sudden a very good team.
Similarly when Joe Gibbs came in back in 1981: Jack Pardee had built a pretty good team that underperformed for obvious reasons without John Riggins in 1980.
So I’ve seen ‘the future is now,’ and know it can work under the right circumstances. I just don’t see that we’re in those circumstances. I don’t see either line as being just one player away from being strong units, for instance. We’ve got nothin’ at RB.
I agree. But if you’ve got a genuinely terrible team that’s already got a mostly-empty cupboard of draft choices, you’re not going to make them into a contender this year or next; you’re talking two years to a solid playoff team, and three to a genuine contender.
I agree that you’ve got to work towards specific improvements in the team along the way. You’d want the Redskins to be a better team each year starting now, rather than say, “oh, we’re rebuilding, we’re going to suck.” Acceptance of suckitude in the short term IS only a road to long-term suckitude. No, it’s “we’re rebuilding, and here’s what we’re fixing THIS year. We expect to do better because of these fixes, but we know further fixes are needed before this becomes a great team.” But by the time the 'Skins fix the lines and get a RB, McNabb will be used up. So we’ll be getting a new QB in 2012 or 2013 anyway, so why pay real money for one now when you could be fixing the O-line instead?
Which brings me to:
Omni, I just don’t see that McNabb’s gonna do that much for the Redskins right now. He’s missed over a season’s worth of games over the past 5 years, and will have a weak O-line in front of him, and (for now, at least) no running game. I think that this takes away from the ability of the Redskins to address their more structural problems with draft choices, and their identity this year, at least, is likely to resemble that of Jurgensen’s mid-1960s Redskins: a shabby team whose QB is managing to overcome some of its problems by dint of his abilities.
Maybe Shanahan can work miracles I can’t see, or maybe the foundation is better than it looks to me, and they’ll have a better identity in 2011. But I’m struggling to see how.
You’ve got three former Pro Bowlers at RB, two of whom are hardly removed from 1,500 yard seasons.
Your defensive line has two excellent players (Haynesworth, Carter), one very good one (Griffin, assuming he didn’t leave) and one old crappy guy (Philip Daniels). You’ve also got Brian Orakpo, who could probably post even more sacks (than his rookie 11) if he moved to end.
This of course is a reasonable position, and obviously not why people have objected to your arguments. I don’t think anyone would dispute that Mcnabb is not an inner circle hall of famer of the ilk of Manning or Brady. By the same token, it is clear Mcnabb is an above average quarterback. What is silly is believing that a team can’t win with a “good not great” quarterback. As has been shown time and time again they can. Recent examples include Big Ben and Eli Manning whom are both very good but flawed quarterbacks. As you pointed out you don’t even need a good qb to win a super bowl unless Dilfer has some hidden talent I’m missing.
The Eagles can win a super bowl with Mcnabb. They can win one with Kolb too. The question is which one gives them a better chance for now and the future. Personally, the failure rate on quarterbacks is too high for me to get rid of a solid starter for an unknown. The Eagles can win now, and you have to take your shots when you can… A reasonable person might disagree and think Kolb plus a draft pick will be more valuable than Mcnabb. Mnabb can’t win a big game is not a viable point.
By the way I also don’t think the Redskins will be competitive. Quarterbacks don’t make bad teams good.
I don’t think they could have, which is why I’m in the middle ground with regards to this discussion. I think McNabb is talented enough to win a Super Bowl and has proven that he isn’t yet washed up or showing signs of decline, but that he was also a poor fit for Philadelphia and had reached his fullest potential there. It may be simplistiuc, but you can’t win in a throw-first offense with a QB who is so inaccurate on short and medium throws, especially when that offense uses short throws as “run plays.” McNabb’s fit in Philadelphia was terrible through and through. Is there a more openly sensitive QB in the league than McNabb? Is there a more openly insensitive and belligerent fan base in the league than Philadelphia’s? That’s just a bad pairing.
No team could have won with Washington’s coaching situation last season. At the very least, Shanahan will bring leadership and stability to Washington and force players to pay attention and try. That alone is worth a win or two in my eyes. This honestly looks like an 8-8 team to me, with McNabb or Jason Campbell. I can’t see the team repeating a 4-12 or 5-11 season.
So you have a team with strong defensive credentials and personnel, add in a coach whom players will actually respect, an experienced QB who limits mistakes and turnovers, and if this team can find some way to run the ball, that’s a recipe for a playoff team. I’ve heard Shanahan has a reputation for finding ways to run the ball well with far less at the RB position than the Redskins have. It could work. It certainly, absolutely, can’t be worse than last season.
Except that they were in the Super Bowl against a great team and tied after 3. So unless you really believe that it was utterly inevitable, a million times out of a million, that they’d give up more points in the last 15 minutes than they scored, your “can’t” is completely out of place.
I had a nice, long reply to you and others, but my computer (specifically windows 7) decided to download updates and reboot my computer. When I came back to finish the post, it was gone. My bad (and I really need to find a setting to change so I can delay those automatic updates). The good news is this will be a much shorter post, which is probably a much better thing for everyone.
OK, for the most part, we seem to agree on irrational and irrational. Not liking his shoe-size is an irrational reason to be sure. So is the color of his skin. I’m not interested in arguments that stray on things that don’t directly impact his ability to win or lose a football game based on his ability to play QB.
As you might have guessed, I am not an oracle. (Although I can bake a cookie that tastes like Neo’s grandmother’s cookies and I knew he was going to break that vase).
Sports Psychology is a legitimate field of study for a reason. The mental game, the ability to perform under pressure, and the confidence that some players have over others is not imaginary. It’s real, even if ***why ***some QB’s have what I call the “it” factor and some don’t may never be quantifiable or correctable.
With that said, my criticisms of McNabb that may seem irrational to you are not necessarily irrational to me. I will agree that calling him a “mouth-breather” is a cheap shot, and I can’t see how it would impact his ability to play QB. So, I’ll throw that one out. The other ones, however, aren’t as easily dismissed.
His weight is not something that can be easily tossed aside. This is my personal opinion, but since I’ve had a chance to watch him over the course of his entire time in Philly, it appears to me that he has gained significant weight. For an elite athlete, and a QB that had the ability to run better than most QB’s when he came into the league, he ran less and less as the years went on. He didn’t seem to be in the best of shape; he seemed winded; the extra weight cannot be good for his knees; and he seemed to want to throw a pass even if he had the ability to run for a first down was in front of him.
His personal on field behavior is also something that may or may not be irrational depending on how one interprets it. I personally think that a lot of that was to mask his lack of self-confidence… I don’t remember (and I’ll stand corrected if it is the case) McNabb playing air guitar earlier in his career, or giggling and dancing on the sidelines. Those behaviors seemed to grow as his career progressed. Maybe they were always there, and I just started noticing them after the losses in the NFC Championship games or the one SB. His throwing up in 4th quarter of the SB demonstrated an incredible level of stress, not the behavior of a mentally strong QB. I remember reading comments of his teammates about this, and they weren’t complimentary. Puking didn’t inspire his teammates.
The concrete things used to evaluate a QB’s talent can all be reviewed. If I was an Eagle fan, or had a lot of time on my hands, I’d be interested in looking at a number of things that don’t appear in just looking at a team’s wins and losses. For example, how did he perform against teams at the beginning of the year vs. the end? How did he perform during games that counted for something vs. a game in September that didn’t have immediate ramifications? There are a ton of these that I’d like to look at, but I’m not interested in proving (or disproving) my point to your satisfaction. My semi-educated opinion has been formed by a decade of watching him from a non-emotional fan perspective.
To say he’s never won the big game is not really arguable. He doesn’t have a ring. However, he has, as you’ve pointed out, won a number of significant games. You can’t lose a Super Bowl without getting to one, and you can’t lose 4 NFC championship games without getting there.
But there is more to just getting there. In the 4 NFC champ. losses, they were, IMO, better than the Cardinals, Panthers, and Bucs. (I have no idea if they were favored or not in their 5 NFC title games under McNabb, but I think they were in all but the game against the Rams).
The Super Bowl loss was to arguably the best team of the era (the Pats), so on the face of it, there isn’t a lot I can beat him up over on that one. But if I remember correctly, he had the ball in his hands at the end of the game with a chance to get his team in field goal position and he couldn’t do it. When you think of QB’s that have the “it” factor, like Joe Montana, who drove his team the length of the field to beat the Bengals, or more recently, Roethlisberger driving the Steelers to the winning TD against the Cards, that just never happened for McNabb and the Eagles. Bad luck? Perhaps. Or is it something more?
That’s something that separates the greats from the very goods. A mental toughness that is there, that when the offense is in the huddle they know that the QB has the ability to do it in crunch time. His throws will be on target; he’ll hit receivers in stride; he’ll improvise when necessary; and he’ll raise the level of play of everyone around him because they have confidence in his ability to move the ball.
Now from a personal POV, McNabb handles himself very well in interviews. He appears to be a good person off the field, and people seem to genuinely like him as a person. His public actions during the T.O. debacle is a good example of this. No argument with you there.
Finally, you are correct in your assessment that I have no real idea how he will do in Washington. “Will never” is not a phrase that is credible. “Has never”, however is. And as I’ve mentioned a few times in this thread, if he wins a super bowl in DC, I’ll be happy to chew on some crow. But I don’t think I’m in any danger.
(Aren’t you glad I lost my long answer?) :dubious:
OK, I’m done with this topic. I’ll see if there is a thread beating up Roethisberger that I can jump into.
I wouldn’t dispute Sports Psychology is legitimate. What I find ludicrous is the belief that individuals with no training believing they can diagnose an individual by watching them play and interview on TV.
Most QBs run less as they age. It is easily testable to compare Mcnabb’s runs to other similar qbs.
I personally think anyone who has reached Mcnabb’s level probably doesn’t lack self confidence. Then again it would stupid be reach such conclusion who I’ve only seen through their public face presented.
This is the key point. People interpret actions based on results. The difference between Farve’s just having fun out there persona and Mcnabb’s immaturity is simply the fact that one won and the other hasn’t.
Again, if Mcnabb wins we would talk about out how inspiring his performance was in that he overcame illness. You formed a conclusion first and are trying to make the facts fit rather than looking at them objectively
I think that is an oxymoron. You aren’t willing to check if your right, you are just going to assume you are? Can you imagine why I don’t put great faith in your opinions? If someone came in and proved Mcnabb didn’t play better in the first half than the 2nd will you concede that perhaps you are mistaken and Mcnabb isn’t as anti-clutch as you believe? Or would you just believe it anyway?
This is what annoys me. If a player fails it doesn’t mean he lacks mental toughness. He could lack ability. He could be unlucky. His receivers could be poor or defenders especially good. Not every bad pass is a mental failing. Sometimes a guy just throws a bad pass.
Sampras threw up in that QF because of dehydration, and he won the match and went on to win the tournament that year. (And he threw up once, not six times.) Whether McNabb puked because of dehydration, nerves, a stomach bug, or something else, I don’t know. Unless somebody can really show he got sick because he was nervous I can’t hold that against him.
Yahoo’s player page for McNabb answers a lot of these questions, specifically the split stats and situational stats. Looking at all the stats is quite tedious, so let’s just look at the passer rating delta compared to his career average.
In close games: -7.8 (~1200 attempts)
Late in close games: -7.7 (~300 attempts)
First half: +2.6
Second half: -2.9
Last 2:00 of either half: -6.4
The Cardinals couldn’t stop anyone. A better example is Eli, who didn’t just set up a field goal but rather scored two go-ahead touchdowns in the fourth quarter against a better New England team than McNabb faced. (One that would have been considered the greatest team in NFL history had Eli not scored those two touchdowns.) That’s as “it factor” as it gets. I mean, c’mon, he did it twice in one game!
Hell, Bill Russell threw up before every game and said it was because he got nervous. Even if McNabb threw up because he was fucking terrified (which is a silly proposition to begin with), you can either point to what he did on the field to prove that he was terrified, or you can’t. You cant say he played OK, the way he always does, but he would have played better if he had balls of steel.
The important thing, to me, is whether the guy is playing uncharacteristically poorly in a way that requires some kind of intangible explanation. To my eye, he has not. (To answer the question, the Eagles drove 80 yards in 4 minutes to score the touchdown that put them down 3, and then got the ball back at the 4 yard line with 46 seconds left, at which point yes, he “failed” to have enough poise to get the 96 yards. He was criticized for taking too long to get the first touchdown, you may recall).
The entire argument (when the actual visceral dislike is removed from the equation) really boils down to this:
And there’s two things I’d point out. The first is simply that even the quarterbacks who you would say ‘have it’ don’t do it nearly all the time. There are lots of important games in the NFL, and yet there isn’t anybody who wins anything like all of them. Roethlisberger’s turned in as many clutch stinkers as he has big game winning performances. Brady’s been getting there and losing for years now.
The second is that first sentence. “When you think of QBs who have that ‘it’ factor like Joe Montana,” you’re thinking of the quarterbacks in retrospect who you already know won the Super Bowl. You can’t tell me, right now, who in the NFL or in college has that thing you’re talking about and who does not, based only on observing them. You can only tell me they have it after they win.
Do you follow baseball at all? Do you, by any chance, hate Alex Rodriguez? For years and years it was the most commonly accepted truism in the sport that Alex Rodriguez would put up great numbers and never help you win. It was perfectly acceptable sports journalism to say that since A-Rod is such a choke, he actually hurts his team rather than helping – he is a guy you don’t want on your roster. This was because he never got his team over the hump – he “always” failed in the big at-bat, the big series. And a smaller community of stubborn analytical types always argued, no, it’s a small sample size, he’s a great player and you want him on your team more than almost any other player, you can’t weave a handful of games into a picture of him as a player. But it was a joke to say that to most baseball fans – they’d laugh and talk about chokers and losers, maybe talk about spreadsheets and mom’s basement, etc.
Last year A-Rod hit about .400 in the playoffs and hit six huge home runs. He was the best player on the field every game, and the Yankees won the World Series. The funny thing about it was that after the playoffs were over, his postseason statistics for his career were identical to his regular season ones. His long-awaited explosion and his development of that “it” factor that had been so obviously lacking to so many people’s eyes could be easily explained by dumb luck. In Rodriguez’ case, that thing that separated him from the greats – which he was absolutely massacred for for years and years – appears to have been statistical noise; regular ups and downs. Anybody that had bet on his lack of clutch would have been sorely disappointed, while anybody who had looked to his overall career performance to speak to how good a player he’d be in an important game would have been expecting it.
And that’s really all I’m saying. When we say “Bad luck? Perhaps.” I think we ought to appreciate the power of that statement. Nobody’s ever done it until they have, and we really have no basis to decide who never will, except to say, you know, the awful players are less likely and the great ones are more likely.
