Posted on 10/02/2003 6:52:36 PM PDT by shoedog
Defending Limbaugh
Rush was right: McNabb isnt a great quarterback, and the media does overrate him because he is black
By Allen Barra SLATE.COM
Oct. 2 In his notorious ESPN comments last Sunday night, Rush Limbaugh said he never thought the Philadelphia Eagles Donovan McNabb was that good of a quarterback. If Limbaugh were a more astute analyst, he would have been even harsher and said, Donovan McNabb is barely a mediocre quarterback. But other than that, Limbaugh pretty much spoke the truth. Limbaugh lost his job for saying in public what many football fans and analysts have been saying privately for the past couple of seasons.
LETS REVIEW: McNabb, he said, is overrated ... what we have here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback can do well-black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well. Theres a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he didnt deserve. The defense carried this team. Lets take the football stuff first. For the past four seasons, the Philadelphia Eagles have had one of the best defenses in the National Football League and have failed to make it to the Super Bowl primarily because of an ineffective offense an offense run by Donovan McNabb. McNabb was a great college quarterback, in my estimation one of the best of the 90s while at Syracuse. (For the record, I helped persuade ESPN Magazine, then called ESPN Total Sports, to put him on the cover of the 1998 college-football preview issue.) He is one of the most talented athletes in the NFL, but that talent has not translated into greatness as a pro quarterback. McNabb has started for the Eagles since the 2000 season. In that time, the Eagles offense has never ranked higher than 10th in the league in yards gained. In fact, their 10th-place rank in 2002 was easily their best; in their two previous seasons, they were 17th in a 32-team league. They rank 31st so far in 2003.
BY THE NUMBERS In contrast, the Eagles defense in those four seasons has never ranked lower than 10th in yards allowed. In 2001, they were seventh; in 2002 they were fourth; this year theyre fifth. It shouldnt take a football Einstein to see that the Eagles strength over the past few seasons has been on defense, and Limbaugh is no football Einstein, which is probably why he spotted it. The news that the Eagles defense has carried them over this period should be neither surprising nor controversial to anyone with access to simple NFL statistics or for that matter, with access to a television. Yet, McNabb has received an overwhelming share of media attention and thus the credit. Now why is this? Lets look at a quarterback with similar numbers who also plays for a team with a great defense. I dont know anyone who would call Brad Johnson one of the best quarterbacks in pro football which is how McNabb is often referred to. In fact, I dont know anyone who would call Brad Johnson, on the evidence of his 10-year NFL career, much more than mediocre. Yet, Johnsons NFL career passer rating, as of last Sunday, is 7.3 points higher than McNabbs (84.8 to 77.5), he has completed his passes at a higher rate (61.8 percent to 56.4 percent) and has averaged significantly more yards per pass (6.84 to 5.91). McNabb excels in just one area, running, where he has gained 2,040 yards and scored 14 touchdowns to Johnsons 467 and seven. But McNabb has also been sacked more frequently than Johnson-more than once, on average, per game, which negates much of the rushing advantage. In other words, in just about every way, Brad Johnson has been a more effective quarterback than McNabb and over a longer period.
WIN OR LOSE And even if you say the stats dont matter and that a quarterbacks job is to win games, Johnson comes out ahead. Johnson has something McNabb doesnt, a Super Bowl ring, which he went on to win after his Bucs trounced McNabbs Eagles in last years NFC championship game by a score of 27-10. The Bucs and Eagles were regarded by everyone as having the two best defenses in the NFL last year. When they played in the championship game, the difference was that the Bucs defense completely bottled up McNabb while the Eagles defense couldnt stop Johnson. In terms of performance, many NFL quarterbacks should be ranked ahead of McNabb. But McNabb has represented something special to all of us since he started his first game in the NFL, and we all know what that is.
Limbaugh is being excoriated for making race an issue in the NFL. This is hypocrisy. I dont know of a football writer who didnt regard the dearth of black NFL quarterbacks as one of the most important issues in the late 80s and early 90s. (The topic really caught fire after 1988, when Doug Williams of the Washington Redskins became the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl.) So far, no black quarterback has been able to dominate a league in which the majority of the players are black. To pretend that many of us didnt want McNabb to be the best quarterback in the NFL because hes black is absurd. To say that we shouldnt root for a quarterback to win because hes black is every bit as nonsensical as to say that we shouldnt have rooted for Jackie Robinson to succeed because he was black. (Please, I dont need to be reminded that McNabbs situation is not so difficult or important as Robinsons-Im talking about a principle.) Consequently, it is equally absurd to say that the sports media havent overrated Donovan McNabb because hes black.
Im sorry to have to say it; he is the quarterback for a team I root for. Instead of calling him overrated, I wish I could be admiring his Super Bowl rings. But the truth is that I and a great many other sportswriters have chosen for the past few years to see McNabb as a better player than he has been because we want him to be. Rush Limbaugh didnt say Donovan McNabb was a bad quarterback because he is black. He said that the media have overrated McNabb because he is black, and Limbaugh is right. He didnt say anything that he shouldnt have said, and in fact he said things that other commentators should have been saying for some time now. I should have said them myself. I mean, if they didnt hire Rush Limbaugh to say things like this, what they did they hire him for? To talk about the prevent defense?
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Thanks for reminding us of the enormous double (triple, us - libs - black) standard.
Well as Ronald Reagan once said, "I paid for that microphone." EIB is Rush's company. ESPN is ownded by Disney. I think Rush forgot the golden rule. Those who have the gold make the rules.
I like to watch sports in order to get away from thinking about politics.
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