In Philadelphia, McNabb Endures Love-Hate Relationship

He sat there that week that he admitted not understanding the rules about overtime exactly the way that Donovan McNabb has been sitting there all of these past 10 years as he was blamed for everything that went wrong with the Philadelphia Eagles. He smiled. He laughed. He blamed himself. And in the face of yet another frenzy, he gave away nothing.

Regrets for saying he didn't know that in the NFL they played just one overtime?

"No," he said.

No?

"I think everybody 100 percent knows the rule now," he replied that day. "If I'm a trendsetter, I guess I set the trend."

Such it has been for the last decade in Philadelphia, where the franchise's most successful quarterback in the past quarter-century has endured kicks, punches and shoves while forever vexing observers with a smile and replies that yield nothing of what turmoil must certainly be churning inside. It is a war that is waged each week: Philadelphia adores its quarterback. Philadelphia reviles its quarterback. They appear on the brink of a breakup. Then the winning comes back and Philadelphia adores its quarterback once more.

These days, Philadelphia is in love again. After McNabb admitted following a tie with the Cincinnati Bengals that he was surprised there wasn't a second overtime and he was benched halfway through the game the next week against the Baltimore Ravens, he carried the Eagles to the playoffs. Back then the postseason looked like an impossibility. Now, they are heading to Minnesota for a first-round playoff game that they might well win. Where six weeks ago fans wanted him dumped, released, traded, anything to get him out of Philadelphia, now they worry McNabb might not be back.

And so it goes.

Former Eagles coach Dick Vermeil chuckled into the phone from a Florida vacation on Tuesday. He still lives outside Philadelphia and reads the local newspapers, listens to the talk shows and watches nightly newscasts. Perhaps better than most, he understands the city and its fickle nature, its combustibility. Once everyone loved him, too, and scorned him and then loved him again. Yet even Vermeil is amazed at the fire that comes McNabb's way, the blame for the team's failures that he receives.

"He doesn't deserve it," Vermeil said. "Look at the numbers. They're too good. But he's been here so long, he's almost become a spokesperson for the whole team and in being a spokesperson for the whole team he takes the blame. He's resilient. But I also think he's very understanding. To me, he comes across as a guy who doesn't want it to be about him.

"But it is."

Certainly the record is impressive. McNabb is the Eagles' all-time leader in pass attempts, completions, yards and touchdown passes. In his decade in Philadelphia, he has thrown for 29,320 yards and 194 touchdowns. This season alone he had 3,916 yards and 23 touchdowns with only 11 interceptions. He took the Eagles to four straight NFC championship games and one Super Bowl. Still, he can do little right. After all, the Eagles lost the first three of those four conference championship games. Fans continue to compile their lists of the quarterbacks they'd rather have. And for a time this fall there was an assumption that despite the fact McNabb is signed through 2012, he would nonetheless be gone after this season. Especially because the team drafted another quarterback, Kevin Kolb, with a second-round pick before last season.

The battle has worn on so long that it almost seems it would be best for everyone if he went somewhere else, started somewhere new and left Philadelphia to someone else.

McNabb will not consider such thoughts publicly. When asked, he always says he expects to be back.

"I don't think he has to leave," Vermeil said. "I think he needs to win some games."

He has won four of his past five and probably should have won the one he lost -- 10-3 to the Redskins -- but his receivers kept dropping passes that evening. And the final play looked like a game-tying touchdown -- a pass that Reggie Brown caught on the edge of the goal line, only to be knocked back by LaRon Landry and Fred Smoot of the Redskins as time ran out. Still, that does little for Philadelphia. When McNabb mentioned, after the Redskins game, that "I'm playing great" statistically, someone took that to the team's offensive coordinator, Marty Mornhinweg, asking how McNabb could think such a thing after a loss. Mornhinweg declined to answer.

On the day McNabb faced the media for the first time after the overtime comment, he was asked about a perception that lingered around town that he didn't care about winning. He furrowed his brow and mumbled: "That's unbelievable."

Asked to respond, he shook his head.

"There's no reason for me to sit up here and answer every question someone has about me," he said. "I've learned that through my whole career, I've learned that growing up. For me to say they don't like the way I walk, talk, smile, play, it doesn't matter. That's not something I try to entertain, to move people to my side. The only thing I can do is do my job and do my job at a high level."

And so now the Eagles go to the playoffs, which no one could have imagined six weeks ago, and suddenly McNabb is loved again. Not that anyone expects that to last.

"He's streaky," Vermeil said. "There are times when he throws balls that are unbelievable. And there are ones he throws in which the receivers are acrobats. But he only gets judged on those throws where his receivers are acrobats. He doesn't get judged on the others. You have to do both."


Source: washingtonpost.com