How Quickly People Forget

The folks who don't like McNabb generally fall into one of two categories.  The first is the group that argues McNabb has always been overrated, he's never run the offense well and the Eagles have mostly won in spite of him.  These are generally the same people who think the Eagles are "cheap."  There's little point in arguing with these individuals, since they're not operating in the realm of reason when it comes to these matters.

However, there is another, saner group that concedes McNabb once was good, but now they feel he no longer is and its time to move on.  (Depending upon how you define the parameters of this group, its membership could be pretty large.)  The stronger version of this side's argument is that McNabb was very good in 2004, but since then he's had three bad years, so clearly he's finished and it's time for the Kolb era to begin.

The problem is that -- factually -- this isn't true.  Yes, McNabb has had injury issues the past three years that have seriously diminished his performance.  And yes, I think everyone would concede that for whatever reason he just doesn't look "right" out there these days.

But as I wrote just a couple of days ago, the evidence is clear that while McNabb isn't having the kind of season we're used to, his performance this year is (just) above average for the league.  More importantly, what people seem to be forgetting is just how well McNabb was playing last season before he got hurt. 

For purposes of comparison, I've taken every quarterback in the league this season and extrapolated their stats as if they played a full 16-game schedule.  I did the same thing with McNabb's 2006 and 2004 seasons, and then compared his "healthy" stats with the league leaders across six important quarterback categories:

(I don't know why typepad keeps screwing up my pictures when I upload them, by the way.  It's annoying.)

If you look at the numbers, you'll see that McNabb -- assuming a 16-game season for him last year -- would have been among the league leaders across the board.  This is emphatically NOT the picture of a guy who wasn't any good.

In fact, if you plot out the guys who appear in the top 10 for at least four of those six categories, you find it's a pretty exclusive list AND that McNabb is settled in nicely upon it (this one's big so click for the full-size image):

This is why, for all the frustration of this year, I'm not ready to give up on McNabb.  He was this good last year.  Are you willing to argue -- do you honestly believe -- that the odds of Kevin Kolb making that list next year are better than McNabb's?