Posted on 10/02/2003 6:52:36 PM PDT by shoedog
Defending Limbaugh
Rush was right: McNabb isn’t 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.
LET’S 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.” “There’s a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he didn’t deserve. The defense carried this team.” Let’s 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 they’re fifth. It shouldn’t 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? Let’s look at a quarterback with similar numbers who also plays for a team with a great defense. I don’t 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 don’t know anyone who would call Brad Johnson, on the evidence of his 10-year NFL career, much more than mediocre. Yet, Johnson’s NFL career passer rating, as of last Sunday, is 7.3 points higher than McNabb’s (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 Johnson’s 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 don’t matter and that a quarterback’s job is to win games, Johnson comes out ahead. Johnson has something McNabb doesn’t, a Super Bowl ring, which he went on to win after his Bucs trounced McNabb’s Eagles in last year’s 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 couldn’t 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 don’t know of a football writer who didn’t 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 didn’t want McNabb to be the best quarterback in the NFL because he’s black is absurd. To say that we shouldn’t root for a quarterback to win because he’s black is every bit as nonsensical as to say that we shouldn’t have rooted for Jackie Robinson to succeed because he was black. (Please, I don’t need to be reminded that McNabb’s situation is not so difficult or important as Robinson’s-I’m talking about a principle.) Consequently, it is equally absurd to say that the sports media haven’t overrated Donovan McNabb because he’s black.
I’m 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 didn’t 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 didn’t say anything that he shouldn’t 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 didn’t 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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Rush could have asserted that Player X was better than McNabb. Right? And just left it at that?
No. The next question would be: Why do you think that, Rush? Rush could have trotted out scores to show how McNabb really was getting a promotional push by broadcasters, etc., but it still wouldn't have gotten fully to the real answer.
Point here is, if Rush had NOT answered the "next question" in his terms -- it *could* have turned into another "trent lott" scenario -- with his words not only being taken out of context -- but hammered in the negative through sheer "interpretation" by those with an axe to grind against Rush. In football, this "play" is called a "fumble", no?
Rush didn't fumble the ball. He delivered.
Ideologically, Rush was the "diversity" factor on that ESPN panel. And they, the fellow sportscasters and the usual dem racial-crats tried to steal the ball, and ended up chewing grass, instead. And why? Rush did not fumble, he delivered, and he hung onto the ball throughout. I'd call that a completed pass. His "coaches" (ESPN) were screamed at, railed at, threatened with protests, and lots of ugliness. Rush did the honorable thing -- he laid the ball down at the goal line, and honorably left the field. He didn't whine. He didn't threaten to sue or libel or smear anyone.
That's class.
Anyone who listens to sports commentary has to have heard the constant discussions about affirmative action in sports. Why are there so few black quarterbacks, coaches, managers, owners, broadcasters, etc., etc., etc.? This has been a running conversation for several years now focusing on the question, "Are blacks/minorities relegated to the lower echelon spots in sports, i.e., players but never leaders?" I'm not sure I can think of any sports outlets with any sort of discussion and commentary who haven't covered the subject. Where have you been -- and why would you think it's fair game for others to prattle on about but off limits for Rush? Isn't that the position the extreme left takes whenever any conservative anywhere discussing any subject mentions race?
Well, obviously here's the problem. Some sports fans are intelligent, thinking, and into all of the aspects and issues surrounding other sports. Others are just at the bar...
However, I think it's arrogant to assume because you are the latter that there are none of the former.
When it ALREADY IS this way; how or why is his commenting upon it being "BLAMED" upon him?
Let me give you another example: A teacher in a classroom teaching math -- suddenly injects a "newism" into her lecture as to how stupid the Bush Administration is for not doing the math correct in projecting what this war would cost. Student replies -- Projections are necessary and because we are at war, there are so many variables, and the constants are upon which the hard stats reside, Ergo, Bush is doing the right thing. Teacher then says: I don't appreciate you injecting politics into my math class.
Let me give you another -- Preferential Affirmative Action. In the early days of Prop 209 -- 209 people were massively accused of trying to politicize "affirmative action".
The very process of what became affirmative action -- the very deed of what is now preferential discrimination, had been politicized LONG before 209 arrived on the scene. It had become a political "football". But then, folks begin commenting upon it -- and so many people were upset that 209 was "politicizing" preferential affirmative action. When in fact, 209 not only was disagreeing with politicized affirmative action, it was daring to make it clear how off track of original intent it had become.How "political" it already was!
Rush called the kettle and the pot black, and he is not to be blamed for it, in my books. He addressed a political "hidden" assumption. Hidden only in that the "diversity/tolerance" crowds demand that what they believe, what they promote "politically" never be questioned, commented upon, or addressed. And nor do I think he in any way was casting aspersions upon McNabb -- Rush was addressing a "lowered standard" sportscasters are carrying (and we already know what those lowered standards do to everything it touches (education, for one)). And he called them on it.
Yes I do think the "average" NFL fan cares more about sitting in the sports bar and staring at cute bar maids.
By trying to shoe-horn the "average" sports fan into some mindless world, you are cutting out all us here at FR. IN fact, I always did wonder why the media seemed to be over-rating Donovan McNabb, and Limbaugh's explanation seemed as plausible as any.
If the NFL did not want to mix politics with football, they would never have created this quota system by which they are forcing owners into interviewing or hiring selected people based on race rather than talent.
Here's a prime example of someone taking a comment out of context and trying to twist it into being a point that was never made. It's just this sort of deliberate misunderstanding and exaggeration that fed this whole trumped up debate to start with.
Outstanding point. Nothing is more political than big-money sports and anyone who tries to pretend there is a separation between sports and politics is just kidding himself.
I did. It was drivel, IMHO. I *am* still allowed to have an opinion, aren't I? Or have you decided anything that doesn't square with your only-there-for-the-cute-barmaid crowd is irrelevant?
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