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Sorry, I realize now that something about that last post may not have been entirely clear.  That's the problem with blogging first drafts.

Anyway, if I were running the team, my top priority this offseason would be bringing in the types of free agent weapons who would let Donovan be Donovan.  Then we ride with him for a couple more years and try to win a Super Bowl.

However, if you're not going to do that and you truly think the receivers are fine and you just want to patch around the edges, then I think maybe it's time to move on. 

Keeping McNabb and not changing the team would pretty much be your worst-case scenario.

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...

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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.

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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.

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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. 

They Cut His Phone Line?

This Sean Taylor thing is intense.  When you're getting into phone lines being cut and multiple invasions of the same place...  They must have thought he had something of serious value there. 

What a thing for his family, friends and franchise to have to deal with right now. 

(As always for Redskins stuff, no one does the round-up of what everyone's saying better than Curly R.)

Questions, So Many Questions

Once again, I thought I'd figured this team out.  I began the year thinking this was a good team with a handful of question marks.  When early performances weren't up to expectations, I started to believe this was a talented team with a distinct lack of experience at key positions and a couple of serious personnel holes.  As things got worse, I accepted -- grudgingly -- that this was actually a bad team with issues at too many positions and a coach who may or may not have lost the trust of his charges.

After last night, who knows what to think.

Maybe the Eagles have turned a corner and demonstrated that they're back, but would you bet your house on it?  Are you that certain this wasn't just a case of an inferior team playing over its head against an opponent who spent the week looking past them?

On the other hand, dude, that was almost a sweet game.

This is one of those times I would kill to have a little access.  I'd love to be able to sit down with key members of the organization and ask...

... Brian Westbrook if there's a reason the team seems to respond so much better with QBs not named McNabb under center and if so would he mind sharing it with the rest of us?

... Jim Johnson where the heck he's been hiding all the fantastic stuff he rolled out against the Patriots and if there's some reason he doesn't feel compelled to use that stuff the other 15 weeks of the year?

... Jim Johnson (again) if the drafting of Chris Gocong and the schemes from last night's game mean the future of the Eagles defense will be a lot less static (shifting fronts, 3-3 or 3-4 looks) than what we've seen in the last few years?

... Jim Johnson (one last time) if blitzing works against Tom Freaking Brady why not try it more often against all the other mere mortals in this league?

... Reggie Brown, Kevin Curtis, Hank Baskett, Jason Avant and Greg Lewis who they'd rather see playing quarterback?

... Andy Reid if he's ever seen a more complicated QB controversy than the one he has right now?  He's got:

• Donovan McNabb, the presumptive starter and five-time Pro Bowler who seems to have a Dementor-like effect on his teammates every time he's actually healthy enough to take the field, to the extent that the team drafted...
• Kevin Kolb, the quarterback of the future, who fans want to see even though right now he isn't even as good as...
• A.J. Feeley, who missed some wide open guys last night and blew the game with a couple of picks, but also managed an offense that looked far, far more effective than anything we've seen since last year, when the team was led by...
• Jeff Garcia, who would be the cleeeeeaaaaar fan choice right now if only the Eagles had decided to re-sign him.

... Rick Burkholder if maybe we can slow that whole ankle/thumb rehab down a bit?

... Jeff Lurie if this team makes a second-half run will he be looking to open the pocketbook a little this offseason to bring in some quality free agents, since every young player on this team who's any good is already signed through 2016?

... Brian Dawkins if J.R. Reed is as solid as he appeared to be last night when he was laying the wood from the safety position in a way we've not seen since the last time Dawk was really healthy?

... and finally, Marty Mornhinweg if he's finally learned the lesson -- or if this was just a one-week thing -- that other teams spend so much time preparing for the Eagles' screen passes that you have to almost treat them like trick plays and use them sparingly and only in the perfect situations?

Not Sure About That Glass

There were an awful lot of good things about this game tonight.  The coaches on both sides of the ball came out with aggressive, innovative game plans that took the fight right to the Patriots.  The Eagles played with focus and determination, looking for all the world like the veteran, hard-fighting squad we remember from years past.  And A.J. Feeley and his wide receivers showed that it's not just Westbrook and the Seven Dwarves out there.

On the other hand, the Eagles lost tonight not just because the Patriots are really, really good, but because of the same mistakes that have plagued this franchise for years.  Blown timeouts (one left at the end of the game).  Stupid penalties (helloooo, Nick Cole).  Unrealistic play calling (that first pick six).  The guys put up a heck of a fight, but it was disappointing to see the same kinds of mistakes costing them another game.  And where has this kind of effort been all season?

With that said.

The Eagles obviously have nothing to feel badly about tonight.  They played their guts out against the NFL's best team and almost pulled off an incredible upset.  What matters now, though, is where they go from here.  Will this just be a blip in an otherwise underwhelming season?  Or will they build on tonight's effort by playing the same type of tough, aggressive -- and even creative -- football the rest of the year?

I just watched Andy Reid's post-game press conference and he made it quite clear that McNabb will be the starting quarterback next week.  Clearly A.J. didn't win the job tonight -- that second INT was the killer -- but he did things tonight with this offense that we haven't really seen this year.  That's puzzling, disturbing or vindicating, depending upon where you stand on the whole McNabb issue.

Finally, I want to call out a few other guys too.  I have no idea how J.R. Reed does in coverage, but I'll tell you what, he's not afraid to hit people.  Lito pretty much handled Randy Moss.  The rest of the defense played its best game of the season (scary, considering how well the Pats moved the ball).  The offensive line did a fantastic job giving A.J. time to make plays.  And Greg Lewis emerged from the void to make a huge contribution to this offense. 

And with that, I've got a 7 a.m. flight tomorrow, so it's time to move on.

Heck of an effort, though.  Heck of an effort.

Suck It, Boston

You've got no class and you're not that good.  You almost just lost to a mediocre NFC team playing its backup quarterback.  Congrats on that.

Put Westbrook Back There

15 Minutes

Congratulations, Nick Cole

You win the dumbest player of the year award.

How Many Chances is Brady Going to Give Us?

Gotta catch some of these, D.