As NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue paused before announcing Philadelphia’s second overall pick in the 1999 NFL draft, Eagles fans in attendance waited in anxious anticipation, hoping their team selected the highly touted Heisman Trophy-winner Ricky Williams, a running back from the University of Texas. Instead, the Eagles’ front office opted for Donovan McNabb. As the quarterback from Syracuse walked across the stage to be congratulated by the commissioner, he did not receive a warm reception from the Philly faithful, as their boos filled Radio City Music Hall. This was the inauspicious beginning to a rocky relationship between franchise quarterback and city—a relationship that came to an end this past week as McNabb was traded to the Washington Redskins for two future draft picks—a move the Eagles will soon regret.
The trade of Donovan McNabb has been discussed around the NFL for a few years now, and intense speculation coupled with three Eagles quarterbacks in their final contract year made the move all but inevitable this off-season. For whatever reason, speculation about a McNabb trade always seemed to gain steam in Philadelphia, particularly since the fan base and front office itself never seemed to be completely confident or satisfied with McNabb on the field, even though he was considered to be one of the best quarterbacks in the league.
In trading McNabb, the Eagles have placed all their eggs in the basket of Kevin Kolb, an unproven player drafted by the Eagles out of the University of Houston with a second round draft pick in 2007. Looking back, the pick signaled the beginning of the end for McNabb—Kolb has been the apple of head coach Andy Reid’s eye since he was drafted. The Eagles will soon realize what they are missing, though, when the combination of Kolb and Michael Vick comes up short compared to what McNabb has produced. In his 11 seasons in Philly, McNabb has taken the team to the playoffs seven times and reached the Conference Championship Game five times and the Super Bowl once. Kolb will have to lead the Eagles to a top-four finish in the NFL nearly every other year in order to match McNabb’s record.
However, Eagles fans have long used the argument that McNabb can’t win the big game, having never won a Super Bowl for the city. Using that argument, Hall of Fame quarterbacks Jim Kelly and Dan Marino are abject failures and should have been shown the door by their respective franchises long before the actual end of their careers. Instead, these players were beloved by their cities and had extremely supportive fan bases. These fans reveled in any success the QBs brought to the city and shared in the player’s hurt that came from a career with everything but a championship. What is it about the Eagles franchise or Philadelphia fans that made it so hard for them to embrace McNabb for everything he brought to the city, rather than boo him on the field whenever he came up just short? Perhaps the answer lies in the infamous psyche of the Philly sports fan, an attitude that breeds a love-hate relationship with athletes depending on their most recent performances.
Along with the inherent questionability of trading McNabb, the move is all the more dubious due to which team the Eagles dumped him onto. The Eagles traded McNabb to the Redskins, a division rival who the Eagles play twice a year during the regular season. This signals that the Eagles were so desperate to get rid of McNabb that they didn’t care who took him and that they had such little confidence in his ability to produce on the field that they were not concerned about facing him in the regular season.
For the Eagles sake, I hope they know something about Kolb that the rest of us do not. Maybe McNabb will be just an average quarterback in D.C., and Kolb will rise to the ranks of the elite. The Eagles had better wish for this scenario. The only way they can possibly justify this move is to win a championship in the near future with Kolb at the helm. Unfortunately, with McNabb gone, such a satisfying outcome for the Eagles is far from likely.
