Donovan McNabb...

The more I think about Sunday night's game, the more I'm settling on a new theory of Donovan McNabb.  It all makes sense, from the touchdown passes down to the interceptions, to everything else that's happened in the last four years.  Here is it, the theory that explains everything:

Donovan McNabb doesn't like throwing the ball into tight spaces. 

I know what you're thinking.  "Well, duh, we all knew that."  And yes, we did all know that.  But we knew it as a fact, like the fact that pizza tastes good or the fact that Marty Mornhinweg gives even more boring interviews than Andy Reid.  I'm saying it's bigger than that. 

To prove it, let's look at some of the competing theories that people are tossing around and show why they don't make as much sense.

Competing theory #1:  Donovan McNabb sucks.

Ludicrous on its face, which doesn't stop many people from bleating it as much as they can.  He doesn't suck, he's never sucked and once the proponents of this view get back to us with an explanation for how such a crappy quarterback could make five Pro Bowls and carry an offense for years, then maybe we'll take it a little more seriously.

Competing theory #2:  Donovan McNabb isn't accurate.

This one has a kernel of truth to it, but it's not enough to explain everything.  Did you see how many throws A.J. missed on Sunday night?  I plan to look at it in more detail when I do the video rewind, but off the top of my head I can remember at least three times that Feeley missed guys who were really wide open.  I mean all by themselves wide open. 

Quarterbacks miss throws.  No one has ever gone a full season with a 100 percent completion percentage.  When Brady misses a guy, people think it's because there was a hand in his face or he couldn't step up or maybe the ball was a little slick.  When McNabb misses a guy, people say it's because he's an inaccurate quarterback with a serious aversion to worms. 

We see what we expect to see.

Competing theory #3:  It's the wide receivers. 

I've gone back and forth on this one all year and the lack of internal blog consistency really ticks me off.  I defended them after the first Redskins game when Ron Jaworski spent the night ripping them on national television.  Then I whacked them after the Dallas game when it looked like they were shooting BB guns while the Dallas receivers were packing howitzers.

At this point, I think we can fairly state what we have -- a good crop of wide receivers, each with various strengths, but no truly physically dominant guy in the mode of Randy Moss or Terrell Owens.  I still think Curtis spends a lot of time out of position (Wes Welker?  Hello?) and it's clear none of these guys is a field stretcher in the mode of Donte Stallworth, but as a group they are "good enough."

Competing theory #4:  His teammates hate him.

I mean, really.  The whole thing doesn't make sense, but do we really think that guys are tanking because they don't like the quarterback, who isn't even a bad guy?  If this were the case, wouldn't we have heard something -- anything -- from the locker room now about how the team is rallying behind A.J. and doesn't want to see McNabb come back?  You don't think Dana Pennett O'Neill is out there right now trying to coax some third-string special teamer into making some headlines? 

In the absence of even some smoke, we can rule out fire.  Which doesn't mean there's not some truth to the next idea...

Competing theory #5:  His teammates play better when he's not on the field because of his lack of energy/fire/whatever. 

I think this is partly true.  Jeff Garcia and A.J. Feeley are both guys who play with a lot of emotion.  People seem to feed off of that.  But the thing is, this wasn't a problem before.  Back in 2002, no one was claiming that the Eagles would be better if McNabb would just knock some heads around.  (Ok, this isn't totally true, lots of fans have wished he would smile less and curse more for a long time.  But the upbeat approach didn't seem to hurt on the field.) 

And it's not like Garcia and Feeley are all that comparable.  I'll buy the Garcia, "saddle up boys 'cause this is my last shot at a winner" thing, but A.J. Feeley?  Really?  Where was this magical team-building fire in Miami or San Diego? 

I love A.J., just as every good Eagles fan who remembers the way he saved a season does, but I'm not buying the coincidence that the Eagles just happened to have two backup quarterbacks who fired up their teams in the exact same way when McNabb went down. 

Maybe there's a marginal effect here, but it can't explain the whole shebang.

Competing theory #6:  His teammates play better when he's not on the field because they take it upon themselves to make plays rather than waiting for Superman to emerge from his phone booth.

I thought there was something to this last year.  A number of guys even said as much after McNabb went down.  But did it look like guys were playing above their heads on Sunday night?  Or did it instead look kind of the same except the execution was a bit better? 

And would the same guys who figured out that they needed to step up their games last season somehow forget that over the summer as they saw their veteran QB rehabbing and coming back at less than full strength?  Again, decent theory last year, but it doesn't seem to have stood the test of time.

Competing theory #7:  The play-calling changes when McNabb goes down.

Not to say I told you so, but...

- - - - - -

And that's it, that's all I can come up with.  Please let me know in the comments if you have any to add, but for now, that's all I've got.  So now the tight spaces theory.

- - - - - -

For whatever reason, Donovan McNabb doesn't like to put the ball into tight spaces.  We know this now because:

1. He has a career-long track record of avoiding interceptions.
2. Quarterbacks who play in his place make throws in the same offense that we don't see him make.
3. Every NFL wide receiver can get open, it's just a question of how open.
4. He throws the ball far more often to physically dominant guys who can get really open (Owens and Stallworth).
5. He takes an awful lot of sacks -- more than a veteran quarterback who is this comfortable with the offense really should, simply because he's hesitant to pull the trigger.

We don't actually know why McNabb doesn't like to throw into tight spaces.  It's not because he can't, because when it's desperation time and he has no choice, he'll bury the ball right in a guy's gut with coverage draped on him.  It's probably instead because he had so much success doing things the other way, that he's never needed to change.

Then the injuries happened.

McNabb used to be a guy who could buy time for his receivers to go from "open" to "really open" by scrambling in, around, and outside the pocket.  His receivers did stink back in the day, but it didn't matter because his mobility could help them get time to get open.  Now that he's not the same guy, even though he has better wide receivers, he's struggling somewhat because he can't play the same way he did before. 

McNabb's career has basically had four phases:

1. The rookie
2. The guy who made plays with mobility
3. The guy who had great weapons who were able to get the kind of separation that made him comfortable
4. The guy who doesn't have his mobility and doesn't have great weapons (although, again, they're "good enough")

That leaves us with two problems, because I don't think McNabb is going to change.

First of all, McNabb needs to be healthy.  He is a fine pocket passer much of the time, but he can't go from above average to where he used to be unless he's healthy. 

Let me repeat that, because it's important.  McNabb is NOT playing that badly this year.  However, he's not going from a 6.5 to an 8.5 if he's lugging around a bum wheel.   

Secondly, the receivers are here to stay, and that's a problem.  Think of it this way.  Say you're a team with LaDanian Tomlinson.  You've got one of the best running backs in the league, so you figure, he's that good, he should be able to carry us on his own.  So you build a light-butted offensive line with a focus on pass protection and put your time and effort into fixing the passing part of your offense. 

Is that going to work?  No.

It's the same thing with McNabb.  You have a guy who plays the position a certain way.  For him to be truly successful, he needs to have certain types of receivers (unless he's fully healthy, and even then he's far better with better weapons).  Do you think that not giving him those types of receivers is going to work out well?

Nope.

Which means there are two possible fixes here -- ditch McNabb or ditch the wide receivers -- because praying he stays healthy and can be the old McNabb again doesn't seem to be working out.  With Kevin Kolb waiting in the wings, it's not hard to figure out which way they're going to go.

- - - - - -

Postscript

Here's the thing about all the people bashing McNabb.  What's going to happen when they trade him to Chicago?  And all of a sudden he's not throwing to Kevin Curtis and Reggie Brown, but instead Bernard Berrian (assuming he stays) and Devin Hester?  Or what if he goes to Baltimore and his protect-the-ball-at-all-costs approach is a perfect fit for how that team plays football?  Or San Diego where he gets to hand off 60 percent of the time and make his living off Antonio Gates the rest of the game like everyone else down there does?  Imagine him in Arizona with those wide receivers. 

The point is, maybe it's time for McNabb to go, for reasons that have little to do with him and more to do with how the front office didn't provide the type of receiver with whom he thrives. When he does, you'll sound just like the guy in Hoosiers who leads the charge to fire Norman Dale after the first vote on ditching the coach.  And you're going to look just as dumb when he's tearing up the league and shoving the "he can't play" crap back in his critics' faces every Sunday.  Which will happen. 

Unless he gets traded to Minnesota.  Then he's pretty much f'ed. 

Comments

[BenZ]

Here's something that's not really discussed a whole lot, because it's not a theory that can be supported or refuted with anything more than subjective, anecdotal evidence: McNabb throws a hard ball to catch.

I think he is a zinger, always has been. Occasionally this has made things fun to watch, but more often than we should, we watch balls smacking off our WR's hands. There is something about the wobble that Manning (the good one) puts on his balls that make them like fruit to be plucked from a tree for his receivers. It's not arm strength, it's not mechanics, it's just some kind of connection, some kind of touch that he has that McNabb doesn't. And I saw that touch in Feeley. I had to hold my breath a couple of times when he let it go down field vs NE, because it seemed like his passes were a little lazy, like a safety would have time to track them down. But then, boom, he'd hit his targets in the hands. And they'd hold on, time after time. There were a ton of catches made, in traffic, over the shoulder, what have you, that we're lucky if we get to see once in a McNabb game. So, what do you think? He lacks a little touch? I don't think this is a competing theory to yours, just an additional thing to think about.

(Plus, it'd help explain the low INT thing-- if we can't catch his ball, the other team isn't going to be able to either)

[Me]

It's too bad drop stats are so hard to get. It would be great to quantify the exact impact (two percentage points?) of that issue. Reggie Brown clearly doesn't like catching his ball.

[Paul]

I could see that. However, it seems to me like most of the incompletion McNabb throws are in the ground at the players feet. I think if he threw the ball TOO hard, that there would be a lot more interceptions on tipped balls.

[meanguy]

i thought a lot about this "ball into the ground" thing as i was watching the eagles-pats game. see, the thing is, *every* qb has balls fall short of the receiver. both brady and feeley threw short balls a few times. it happens. the problem is that not every qb throws a ball as hard and with as low a trajectory as mcnabb does.

when a qb lobs a ball and it falls short, it's just an inaccurate pass. when don throws a ball short, it literally looks like he threw it into the ground because it has no trajectory and it's flying at 100 mph.

[Phil]

It's amazing what can happen in Andy Reid's offense when a quarterback takes 3 steps, plants his back foot, and throws downfield. The offense does "seem" to move better under Feeley, as well it did with Garcia last year. Perhaps it's because these quarterbacks are able to develop more consistent timing. As you developed in your blog: a willingness to throw into tight spaces is necessary in maintaining that rhythm.

Sometimes I wonder if Reid's play calling is better suited for a quarterback willing to risk interceptions for the sake of 1-2-3 throw.

[Dan]

BEN Z. I think it was ANTONIO FREEMAN who was asked whether or not McNabb throws a hard ball.

And he answered nothing like that which Favre throws. But he did say that yes, he does throw a "heavy" ball; I don't that receivers use the term "hard," they use the term "heavy."

But quarterbacks do throw different styles.

Romo throws a soft ball.

Elway and Favre throw a heavy one.

Aikman was supposedly the best.

But that topic you broached about the type of throw he makes was thrashed out several years ago.

Freeman also said that Favre BROKE EVERY SINGLE BONE IN BOTH HANDS, except one.

THAT was how heavy Favre's ball was, ......... and still is.

[Dan]

We have to be a bit careful about his low throws.

Sometimes he will DELIBERATELY throw the ball low, to make sure that only one guy has a chance for the ball, and that one guy happens to wear green.

But then there are other times, when he has a guy wide open in space, often in the flat, and he one hops it there, or makes the guy make a shoestring grab.

And we all know that happens far too often for an NFL quarterback, especially for a qb that we're endlessly told is "the man" by the organization.

Guys that are "the man" don't do that. And if they did, they would soon cease to be "the man."

You know McNabb is fully capable of coming out, going 28 for 34, throwing 4 touchdowns and racking up 425 yds. And then the media and all the Donovan lovers will come out and proclaim that Donovan "has laid to rest" objections of his play.

It's a constant theme, but then soon thereafter, Donovan will go out there and throw in a clunker, followed by another clunker, then yet a third clunker. By which time people are frustrated and Donovan lovers feel besieged, ........... but then, the light breaks, the sun shines, and #5 will come out and throw in some incredible game.

Which starts the whole lamentable cycle started again.

He can't quash the indictment made against him because he can't crush his own erratic play.

HE IS WITHOUT A DOUBT the most enigmatic player in Philadelphia sports history.

If somebody can think of a player as enigmatic, or more enigmatic, I'd like to know who he was.

[bigmyc]

Give me a break, please. You can cite his win-loss percentage all day but it doesn't say anythin about the last two years.
Look, I don't think he sucks either, but he is certainly NO STRANGER to suckage....and that's putting it mildly. Your comment about carrying the offense and all that is completely short sighted. Do you give Andy no credit for his scheming? Westbrook for his game changing, defense altering ability?

McNabb takes too many naps. He takes too many plays, series and quarters off. Who the hell could deny this? I'll tell ya; I don't actually believe that he sucks, but I could make an incredible argument as to why he does. It'd be pretty easy, actually.

[bigmyc]

As I am reading your post, I came along the AJ Feeley "fire" comment about Miami and San Diego.... I have simply one response, "Ah, What?"

Miami was a Chinese fire drill of a place and San Diego was in flux. Both teams without the solid "gold standard" type base of the Eagles. THAT should not be held against him.

How do you account for Garcia FLOPPING in Detroit and phasing out in Cleveland....hmmmmmm....

As a coach McNabb is not an accurate qb bc of his mechanics! He is not a west coast qb - plain and simple. He lacks the fire and poise to be Brady or Montana type of qb. He has good days in Philadelphia but will not be in the top-tier of qbs and especially with the injury bug hitting every season now.