What did Donovan McNabb ever do to deserve this?
All he's done is play hard, play hurt, play well, give Philadelphia everything he had, even through legendary fan dysfunctional discord.
And now he might be headed to Oakland? Al Davis?
That's just mean.
It's not like McNabb is Terrell Owens, who deserves a year or five with the Raiders. Or Pacman Jones or Ann Coulter or Milton Bradley or, yeah, many people in and out of football should serve a penance with Oakland.
Team officials say there is no frontrunner for a quarterback that is amazingly on the trading block. And, of course, Oakland isn't a frontrunner for anything.
Eli Manning told a wire service that ""It's shocking that a guy who's been such an important part of their organization, that they'd want to get rid of him."
Indeed.
Quarterbacks get too much blame and credit from those on the outside, which is, of course, totally irrelevant. Those inside know why a team has succeeded or failed, and until one player lines up at nine positions, singular blame remains ignorant.
McNabb doesn't call plays, doesn't make personnel moves, doesn't make defensive calls, certainly didn't look to sign TO.
Age? Sure, he's 33. And he was also the No. 12 QB in the NFL in efficiency last year and tied for 14th in 2008. Note that the Eagles haven't had a quality balanced offensive plan in awhile.
Good grief, the guy's resume is pretty sweet:
1. Became the first player in NFL history to finish a season with 30+ TD passes (31) and fewer than 10 INTs (8) in 2004
2. Became the 4th-fastest QB in NFL history to reach the 50-win plateau in just 71 starts, vs. Bal. (10/31/04)
3. One of 7 players in NFL history to have amassed over 25,000 passing yards (25,404) and 2,500 rushing yards (2,962)
4. Ranks 1st among active passers in INT percentage (2.12) and 2nd on the NFL's all time list to Neil O'Donnell (2.11)
5. Ranks 3rd on the NFL's all-time list in TD:INT ratio (min. 1,500 atts.) (2.16) to Tom Brady (2.29) and Steve Young (2.17).
6. Ranks 1st on the Eagles all-time lists in completions (2,189), and 2nd in TDs (171), yards (25,404) and attempts (3,732) behind Ron Jaworski.
That's from the team Web site, which also notes that McNabb is third in winning percentage among active quarterbacks (behind Brady and Manning) and third all-time in TD-to-interception ratio (behind Brady and Young).
And that scramble of 14.1 seconds in November of 2004 on a Monday night against Dallas - sweeeet - where he ran around for awhile and completed a 60-yard pass to Freddie Mitchell, not to mention a perfect from-the-pocket 28-yard pass to Mitchell on fourth and 26 in an overtime win over Green Bay in the 2003 playoffs.
Goose-bump plays, and he's on the trading block.
Yeah, there's a guy in a Philly uniform who was a different quarterback than the norm, and it ain't Michael Vick. Never was, never will be.
And if he’s going to be dumped, he sure deserves better than Oakland.
LOUGHDMOUTHINGS
Don't pay attention to most of the info this week regarding enrollment of the Final Four teams.
Annoyingly, schools choose to mislead the world on how big a school it really is, throwing in every part-time 47-year-old continuing education student in the "enrollment" it sells.
That's unless it wants to go the other way and talk about intimate student-teacher ratios.
The equation schools should use - helloooo, Mercer - is undergrads on the main campus.
Thus: Butler, 3,800, not 4,500; Duke, 6,400, not 13,600; Michigan State, 36,500, not 47,200; West Virginia, 21,700, not 29,000.
And schools make Web sites difficult and misleading, so that's only very close to the number. Few will just say "main campus undergraduate enrollment."
The figure that should be used are, well, the pool eligible for NCAA competition, meaning full-time on the main campus.
Yes, a tiny few athletes are grad students, but that's more in name only than actually trying to get the Masters.
Mercer is no more a school of 8,000 than I am high on Sandra Bullock's updated speed-dial. ...
Absent from the men's Final Four: SEC and Big 12. Absent from the women's Final Four: SEC and Big 10.
And what's the world coming to when Kentucky's women last longer than Tennessee in the tournament? ...
LeBron James said he could lead the NBA in scoring if he wanted to.
Anybody who doesn't believe him is free to take a defensive stance with him on the wing. ...
RPI watch: The NCAA's RPI is through games of March 15, so it's just the regular season: 3. Duke; 4. West Virginia; 12. Butler; 28. Michigan State.
Others:
Teamrankings.com: 2. Duke; 4. West Virginia; 7. Butler; 15. Michigan State.
Realtimerpi.com: 3. Duke; 4. West Virginia; 12. Butler; 28. Michigan State.
CBS Sports: 3. Duke; 4. West Virginia; 11. Butler; 28. Michigan State. ...
Next time it's rainy and you have the time, make a statement and visit the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame. Anything that can keep the countdown from starting is good. ...
The assorted grousing about the Big East's performance in the postseason sort of misses the point.
Yes, many teams made the NCAA or NIT. The conference has 16 teams, and 10 are in the NCAA's top 64 RPI. Five were in the top 15.
Those five are 8-4 in the NCAA tournament.
Five teams made the NIT and didn't do all that well. Not all teams in postseason are great teams.
Now, had this argument been about SEC football and bowls - crappy or otherwise - and beating up on each other, well, you better wear a cup. ...
Spring football is much ado about barely something, for the most part.
From UConn head coach Randy Edsall by way of the New Haven Register:
"Everybody's an All-American in shorts." ...
Former Westside and Alabama standout Kareem Jackson is mighty high on NFL draft charts, pretty much ranking in the top half-dozen of cornerbacks in the draft.
He wasn't known to have shutdown speed, but dropped a 4.48/40 at the NFL combine. ...
At some point between now and Saturday, how can one or two of the main cable movie-oriented channels not be running "Hoosiers" a couple times? ...
And you think I'm delusional?
New York Jets coach Rex Ryan had lap-band surgery, and wishes he'd have done it sooner.
"I'd be down to about 220 (pounds)," Ryan said, according to the New York Daily News, "and maybe I would get that opportunity to have that romantic scene with Heather Locklear."
Rex, ya know, Heather's up to, well, she's older than me. ...
Parity? This Final Four has two No. 5 seeds for the first time, and only five other 5s have reached the Final Four since seeding started in 1979. ...
Anti-parity? The group making up the women's Final Four knows the way.
Stanford is going for the third straight time and is the last team to beat UConn. Oklahoma, which announced in 1990 that it was dropping a program that was averaging 65 fans a game, is in its third Final Four and has been seeded third or better in seven of the last 10 tournaments.
UConn is UConn. And Baylor won it all in 2005 and has ended the season in the AP's top 15 six times since 1999-2000. ...
Kobe Bryant did not look even apathetic at the end of Wednesday's butt-whipping administered to the Lakers by the Hawks.
Atlanta, not a city with an overly passionate fan base for any of its teams, set a team record with more than 20,000 fans at Philips.
How many of them were Lakers fans is the disappointing part. But the Hawks certainly did their best to inspire some conversions. ...
Reggie Wayne of the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Sun-Sentinel has an idea for the Steelers.
"Ben Roethlisberger will not report to the team's voluntary offseason conditioning program. However, if they put in a dance floor and a cash bar, he might reconsider."
All he's done is play hard, play hurt, play well, give Philadelphia everything he had, even through legendary fan dysfunctional discord.
And now he might be headed to Oakland? Al Davis?
That's just mean.
It's not like McNabb is Terrell Owens, who deserves a year or five with the Raiders. Or Pacman Jones or Ann Coulter or Milton Bradley or, yeah, many people in and out of football should serve a penance with Oakland.
Team officials say there is no frontrunner for a quarterback that is amazingly on the trading block. And, of course, Oakland isn't a frontrunner for anything.
Eli Manning told a wire service that ""It's shocking that a guy who's been such an important part of their organization, that they'd want to get rid of him."
Indeed.
Quarterbacks get too much blame and credit from those on the outside, which is, of course, totally irrelevant. Those inside know why a team has succeeded or failed, and until one player lines up at nine positions, singular blame remains ignorant.
McNabb doesn't call plays, doesn't make personnel moves, doesn't make defensive calls, certainly didn't look to sign TO.
Age? Sure, he's 33. And he was also the No. 12 QB in the NFL in efficiency last year and tied for 14th in 2008. Note that the Eagles haven't had a quality balanced offensive plan in awhile.
Good grief, the guy's resume is pretty sweet:
1. Became the first player in NFL history to finish a season with 30+ TD passes (31) and fewer than 10 INTs (8) in 2004
2. Became the 4th-fastest QB in NFL history to reach the 50-win plateau in just 71 starts, vs. Bal. (10/31/04)
3. One of 7 players in NFL history to have amassed over 25,000 passing yards (25,404) and 2,500 rushing yards (2,962)
4. Ranks 1st among active passers in INT percentage (2.12) and 2nd on the NFL's all time list to Neil O'Donnell (2.11)
5. Ranks 3rd on the NFL's all-time list in TD:INT ratio (min. 1,500 atts.) (2.16) to Tom Brady (2.29) and Steve Young (2.17).
6. Ranks 1st on the Eagles all-time lists in completions (2,189), and 2nd in TDs (171), yards (25,404) and attempts (3,732) behind Ron Jaworski.
That's from the team Web site, which also notes that McNabb is third in winning percentage among active quarterbacks (behind Brady and Manning) and third all-time in TD-to-interception ratio (behind Brady and Young).
And that scramble of 14.1 seconds in November of 2004 on a Monday night against Dallas - sweeeet - where he ran around for awhile and completed a 60-yard pass to Freddie Mitchell, not to mention a perfect from-the-pocket 28-yard pass to Mitchell on fourth and 26 in an overtime win over Green Bay in the 2003 playoffs.
Goose-bump plays, and he's on the trading block.
Yeah, there's a guy in a Philly uniform who was a different quarterback than the norm, and it ain't Michael Vick. Never was, never will be.
And if he’s going to be dumped, he sure deserves better than Oakland.
LOUGHDMOUTHINGS
Don't pay attention to most of the info this week regarding enrollment of the Final Four teams.
Annoyingly, schools choose to mislead the world on how big a school it really is, throwing in every part-time 47-year-old continuing education student in the "enrollment" it sells.
That's unless it wants to go the other way and talk about intimate student-teacher ratios.
The equation schools should use - helloooo, Mercer - is undergrads on the main campus.
Thus: Butler, 3,800, not 4,500; Duke, 6,400, not 13,600; Michigan State, 36,500, not 47,200; West Virginia, 21,700, not 29,000.
And schools make Web sites difficult and misleading, so that's only very close to the number. Few will just say "main campus undergraduate enrollment."
The figure that should be used are, well, the pool eligible for NCAA competition, meaning full-time on the main campus.
Yes, a tiny few athletes are grad students, but that's more in name only than actually trying to get the Masters.
Mercer is no more a school of 8,000 than I am high on Sandra Bullock's updated speed-dial. ...
Absent from the men's Final Four: SEC and Big 12. Absent from the women's Final Four: SEC and Big 10.
And what's the world coming to when Kentucky's women last longer than Tennessee in the tournament? ...
LeBron James said he could lead the NBA in scoring if he wanted to.
Anybody who doesn't believe him is free to take a defensive stance with him on the wing. ...
RPI watch: The NCAA's RPI is through games of March 15, so it's just the regular season: 3. Duke; 4. West Virginia; 12. Butler; 28. Michigan State.
Others:
Teamrankings.com: 2. Duke; 4. West Virginia; 7. Butler; 15. Michigan State.
Realtimerpi.com: 3. Duke; 4. West Virginia; 12. Butler; 28. Michigan State.
CBS Sports: 3. Duke; 4. West Virginia; 11. Butler; 28. Michigan State. ...
Next time it's rainy and you have the time, make a statement and visit the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame. Anything that can keep the countdown from starting is good. ...
The assorted grousing about the Big East's performance in the postseason sort of misses the point.
Yes, many teams made the NCAA or NIT. The conference has 16 teams, and 10 are in the NCAA's top 64 RPI. Five were in the top 15.
Those five are 8-4 in the NCAA tournament.
Five teams made the NIT and didn't do all that well. Not all teams in postseason are great teams.
Now, had this argument been about SEC football and bowls - crappy or otherwise - and beating up on each other, well, you better wear a cup. ...
Spring football is much ado about barely something, for the most part.
From UConn head coach Randy Edsall by way of the New Haven Register:
"Everybody's an All-American in shorts." ...
Former Westside and Alabama standout Kareem Jackson is mighty high on NFL draft charts, pretty much ranking in the top half-dozen of cornerbacks in the draft.
He wasn't known to have shutdown speed, but dropped a 4.48/40 at the NFL combine. ...
At some point between now and Saturday, how can one or two of the main cable movie-oriented channels not be running "Hoosiers" a couple times? ...
And you think I'm delusional?
New York Jets coach Rex Ryan had lap-band surgery, and wishes he'd have done it sooner.
"I'd be down to about 220 (pounds)," Ryan said, according to the New York Daily News, "and maybe I would get that opportunity to have that romantic scene with Heather Locklear."
Rex, ya know, Heather's up to, well, she's older than me. ...
Parity? This Final Four has two No. 5 seeds for the first time, and only five other 5s have reached the Final Four since seeding started in 1979. ...
Anti-parity? The group making up the women's Final Four knows the way.
Stanford is going for the third straight time and is the last team to beat UConn. Oklahoma, which announced in 1990 that it was dropping a program that was averaging 65 fans a game, is in its third Final Four and has been seeded third or better in seven of the last 10 tournaments.
UConn is UConn. And Baylor won it all in 2005 and has ended the season in the AP's top 15 six times since 1999-2000. ...
Kobe Bryant did not look even apathetic at the end of Wednesday's butt-whipping administered to the Lakers by the Hawks.
Atlanta, not a city with an overly passionate fan base for any of its teams, set a team record with more than 20,000 fans at Philips.
How many of them were Lakers fans is the disappointing part. But the Hawks certainly did their best to inspire some conversions. ...
Reggie Wayne of the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Sun-Sentinel has an idea for the Steelers.
"Ben Roethlisberger will not report to the team's voluntary offseason conditioning program. However, if they put in a dance floor and a cash bar, he might reconsider."
Youd like to see the McNabb situation unfold similar to the Green Bay-Favre-Rodgers scenario where it has thus far worked out relatively well for all parties. Although Oakland is certainly not McNabb's ideal landing spot, I do believe he can make Oakland a competitor in a somewhat winnable division. If nothing else, maybe he will at least be appreciated out there.
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