Posted on 02/08/2005 11:49:37 AM PST by West Coast Conservative
PHILADELPHIA -- Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was so ill in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl that a teammate had to call a play in the huddle, center Hank Fraley said.
"He fought to the end," Fraley told Comcast SportsNet on Monday. "He gave it his all. He was almost puking in the huddle. One play had to be called by (wideout) Freddie Mitchell because Donovan was mumbling because he was almost puking."
Offensive lineman Jon Runyan also echoed Fraley's comments in the same interview aired on two local radio stations on Tuesday after the Comcast report.
McNabb was shaky in Philadelphia's 24-21 loss to the England Patriots on Sunday, throwing for 357 yards and three touchdowns, was also getting picked off three times.
McNabb misfired on several passes early, held the ball too long in other instances and made several poor decisions. One of the best scramblers in the NFL, McNabb had zero yards rushing on just one carry and was sacked four times.
An Eagles spokesman did not immediately return a phone call Tuesday.
You're making excuses for him....Why did he throw the other TWO interceptions (they were awful, bad decision throws).
Now I am NOT saying McNabb is not a good QB..He is...and he played well for MOST of the game...but he made THREE bad decision and it COST BIG TIME...
PLus, their play callling (clock control) in their last possession was woeful...not the stuff of pros.
You are right that IF one passes 50 plus times, the odds increase for interceptions...However the three interceptions in this game were ALL bad decision throws...not getting sacked, falling down throws...not tipped...just bad decisions...
In McNabb's case, I think it was the pressure of big game jitters....if he gets a chance at the big prize again, I think he will be fine....the OTHER reason they lost, was the horrible time managment on their possesion...just horrible play calling (most likely not the fault of McNabb). McNabb is a good QB, and he IS a very good passer, and I believe that if he gets another shot at the big game, he will come through...
BUT, as with ALL champion teams, they WILL have to have some consistent running attack as well.
Big game jitters definitely played into it, but again there's some bad play calling plays into that, one of the oldest rules of football coaching is that if your QB is jittery run the ball let your QB get into a rhythm without the pressure of passing, go to a couple of stretch handoffs and let him mellow out. You also have to wonder how much of his bad decision making is becaue of the wierd defensive alignment, I don't think anybody in the NFC based on the 3-4 and forget a 2-5. This is something that's going to hurt the NFC in the big dance as the AFC gets more and more fond of the 3-4, it presents a lot of challenges for the offense and NFC teams aren't going to be facing it much until the SB.
I think McNabb is a good QB and will bounce back. I also think the Eagles gameplan set him up for failure.
again, compare his performance to other QBs against New England this year. he played better, under more pressure, than did the likes of manning, roethlisberger, and whatever other "traditional" QB that's getting worshipped on FR any other time. how many QBs threw 3 TDs against that VAUNTED defense? here's a hint - NOT MANY.
You didn't understand my post. I specifically mentioned in my post that when the Eagles did rush on the very last possession, they got intercepted. This is the exact same thing that happened to the Colts and the Steelers.
The Eagles were wise to just relax and not rush things. They did score on that drive. If they had rushed, they would have been picked off - just like they were on their very last drive.
Read my post again and try to understand it better.
I don't really know but do you think the Pats would have lost that game had the qbs been switched? Or is Brady somehow able to produce a running game all by himself? Do you believe that McNabb had as good protection as did Brady? As good a game plan? Or that Bellichek would not have developed McNabb into a better qb than he already is?
McNabb was not at his best Sunday but there have only been 5 qbs who have passed for more yardage than he in a SB and this was with NO running game which allowed the Pats to just pin their ears back and concentrate on him. Brady had no such problems to face and the Eagles had to worry about much more that just Brady.
I will say that I saw McNabb take apart the Bears in a playoff game when they had been 13-3 with the most brilliant performance I have ever seen. Brady would not have been able to do that because he is not a runner. Why the Eagles did not use that ability in this game will always be a mystery to me.
Agreed. The Eagles are my second most disliked team just behind the Steelers, but even I see the hypocrisy in these posts.
Does anyone really think that Brady could lead any other team to the superbowl championship? As I've said before, put Manning on the Patriots and they'd never lose a game.
If McNabb and Brady had switched places 4 years ago, we'd all be talking now about how McNabb is among the top 5 QBs ever and Brady would probably be out of the league by now.
If any player showed greatness on Sunday, it was TO. Put TO on any top 15 team and they become instant superbowl contenders. The same can't be said of Brady or McNabb. I do think McNabb really hurt himself after the Rush fiasco. Rush didn't attack him personally - at the time McNabb had about 4 poor games in a row and the media was wondering what had suddenly gone wrong.
Rush rightly pointed out that nothing had SUDDENLY gone wrong, McNabb just wasn't as good yet as the media had claimed. He never said that McNabb wasn't good or wouldn't be good, he just pointed out that at that moment in time, he wasn't there yet.
This isn't anything out of the norm - it happens in baseball all the time. An other average rookie will have a good post season and all of a sudden he is hailed as the next hall of famer. Jared Wright comes to mind.
McNabb could have helped himself by making a joke out of it and not taking it so seriously. Instead, he seemed bitter and embraced the attitudes set forth by that jackass Tom Jackson and other members of the ESPN crew. There was no reason the situation had to be get blown up the way it did and McNabb could have done a lot to have prevented it.
By McNabb reacting the way he did and letting it be a big story, he guaranteed that about 40% of the country will always root against him and want to see him fail. Unfortunately, if he does ever win, the media will use that to discredit Rush and by extension conservatives. He made it to where he will never be a loved QB like Roger Staubach or Dan Marino.
I don't really know but do you think the Pats would have lost that game had the qbs been switched?
Yes.
I find you to be generally reasonable, but there are a lot of things wrong with the above two sentences.
first, rush DID single out mcnabb as an example of "social concern".
second, mcnabb didn't react - the media did.
third, the media, for once, WAS right about something being wrong - donovan had a thumb injury.
mcnabb did everything he could to defuse the "controversy" - and the notion that he has to win a superbowl to "prove rush wrong" is ludicrous on its face. not to mention rush's lap-dogs will simply THEN say that it was the defense/receivers/coaching/weak NFC/etc.
he was thrust into a lose-lose situation by someone else, and has done the best he can.
it's pathetic how these rush-zombies grasp at straws (like one subpar game against the world champs in a 15-4 season) to bolster what they know is a weak case to begin with.
sorry to be so rushed, circumstances require I disconnect for a while and wanted to wrap this up first.
So having a running attack is of no importance?
The overall point to be made is that McNabb at this point in his career is an average to good quarterback. Like Elway, who finally won the Super Bowl his last 2 seasons, has the opportunity to improve his game and win the Super Bowl.
You're right. I meant linemen as opposed to just linebackers. Some of the guys playing linebacker for the Patriots are converted linemen, or have had to play lineman for a while...so what exactly the position being played is, is a bit ambiguous. And people like Vrabel are very good at getting that push. The Patriots play a 3-4, but only most of the time, instead of the usual 4-3, so their linebackers are good at dealing with the offensive line directly.
Yeah, with all their blitz looks and personel shifting the way you tell the difference between a lineman and linebacker in NE is their pre-snap stance, if they've got a hand on the ground they're a lineman if not they're a linebacker. Which is one of the things that help their defense, it's confusing as hell to read pre-snap.
It was a pointless run as time had run out, not part of a drive. It was done instead of throwing a hail mary...to a point short of the red zone.
Of course that gets into their first bout of terrible clock management, they started that drive with 1:10 on the clock and I think still had all their time outs. They managed to get just outside FG range when time expired but used no timeouts in the process, good management and they could probably have gotten into solid FG range, in retrospect that loss of three points was pretty huge. Never liked it when teams are satisfied with the first half, if you're not up by 30 you can probably use a couple more points.
A very high proportion of high-yardage passing efforts have been in losing causes. It's not because the QBs are having a good game, it's BECAUSE the running attack is abandoned that they get the big yards.
Put Manning on the Patriots and he'd never be allowed to play the way he does on the Colts. Most of the time Brady is throttled back, but when a score is needed, they just turn him on, score, and then settle back into a basic offense. MAnning operates in a completely different environment.
Do you feel that Warren Sapp is also a racist agitator? Here are a few glowing comments by Mr. Sapp:
(Tampa Bay star defensive tackle Warren Sapp sounded off on the Limbaugh situation on Sporting News Radio's James Brown Show.)
"I'm shocked that Tom Jackson and Michael Irvin just sat there and let this roll across their faces and didn't say anything. Do we not have anybody that understands that there's way more scrubs in this game that are Anglos than there are black ones that are being pumped up? Trust me, it's not even close. I don't know what Rush Limbaugh was thinking, but Michael Irvin and Tom Jackson didn't do us much justice, that's the one thing I was more teed off about than anything."
(Unhappy that the NFL powers had warned him against skipping through the Indianapolis Colts' pregame warm-ups, Sapp blasted the NFL and Washington Redskins linebacker LaVar Arrington in an interview Sunday on CBS' "The NFL Today.")
"He got what he wanted," Sapp said of Arrington, "He snitched and slave master come down. That's all that is. ... Stop a man from doing something that he's been doing for nine years? And so now there's a rule against me. Thanks. I knew (the league) was gonna do what they did because they've been notoriously against Sapp. Like I said before, it's a slave system. Make no mistake about it, slave master say you can't do it, don't do it. They'll make an example out of you."
"Much of this monday, tuesday and wednesday morning quarterbacking is just a typical example of the MSM trying to downplay every success that a New England sports team has"
Well the MSM has to whine about something no matter what the subject. If it had been the Pats losing to a midwest or southern team, they would have called for a redo.
LOL. I was wondering how long it would take for someone to pick up on that tagline!
I'm not a huge Big Country fan, but they are a great "guitar band." I read somewhere that they're still quite popular on European tours -- is that true?
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