Donnie SUCKS
AIKMAN SUCKS !!!!
I just love the humor, if you up north country folk can get it !
Just win baby !
Posted on Thu, Aug. 29, 2002
Criticism of McNabb's accuracy is off-target
By Bill Lyon
Inquirer Columnist
Just in time, we have been alerted that the Eagles cannot possibly make the Super Bowl.
Their fatal flaw has been exposed, and it has nothing at all to do with being able to stop the run or with a lack of speed among the receivers.
No, it is Donovan McNabb.
He can't throw that all-important six-inch forward pass. ( Now, that's some funny stuff !)
We know this now because questions about his accuracy on the short throw were raised on the telecast of last week's exhibition game against the Baltimore Ravens. McNabb was found wanting in that department by Troy Aikman, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback who was forced into retirement and up to the booth, owing to an alarming accumulation of concussions he suffered when inordinately large men dribbled him on artificial turf repeatedly. ( I love the hoops analogy ! )
There has followed an avalanche of overreaction.
It is August, and it is not only the lawns that have dried up. Our business is in desperate need of something to talk about.
And so at every stop on your remote control the last few days, there have been panels of ballistics experts, physicists and vice presidents in charge of looking out the window and thinking of something to debate, all weighing in on the Eagles' quarterback. ( hey, I know some of them ! )
He throws too hard. He throws too high. He throws too low. He's better out of the pocket than in. No, he's better on the run.
Rarely have so many nits been picked so relentlessly.
It is endemic.
McNabb throws heat. He does so because, like most of them, there isn't an opening so small he doesn't believe he can't penetrate with a spiral. If you don't believe that, if you aren't possessed of such self-confidence, then you never become special. Prudence, hopefully, comes with experience.
And he throws heat to beat the defender to the receiver.
McNabb throws a heavy ball that, if not caught cleanly, will leave each of your fingers pointing in a different direction. You catch in self-defense. There isn't an Eagles receiver who hasn't had a finger splinted, a knuckle popped, a thumb wrenched by one of his fastballs.
In that regard, he is reminiscent of John Elway, whose spirals impaled receivers, usually in the sternum. In fact, Elway's receivers used to brag about wearing The Elway Cross on their skin, referring to the mark left by the tip of a football that sizzled into them like a branding iron.
Almost to the end of his career, Elway would hear that he couldn't change speeds, that he struggled with the touch pass.
And we certainly saw how badly he turned out, didn't we?
Then there are those quarterbacks who are alleged to have the opposite problem - accurate enough, but at the expense of arm strength. Able to throw the dink and the dunk and the drop-off, but not, say, the deep out.
There actually used to be people who would tell you that all Joe Montana could do was throw a 5-yard slant, and then Jerry Rice would snatch it and run 90 yards with it.
Right. Montana was certainly a spectacular failure, wasn't he?
What Aikman said about McNabb was prefaced by a number of complimentary observations, was actually innocuous enough, and in fact, has validity. But it has all swirled into a tempest in a teapot.
The season hasn't even begun, and we are raking through minutiae.
McNabb does have a tendency to struggle with the touch pass. That is an adjustment that most mobile quarterbacks have to make. You're running around and running around, playing fox and hound with snorting pursuers, and it is understandably difficult to suddenly drop down 16 gears and throw an angel's breath of a ball.
This doesn't mean the adjustment can't be made. It doesn't mean he won't be able to improve somewhere over the rest of his career, which looks to have, oh, only another 10 to 12 years to it.
He has, after all, gotten better each season.
And this will be, after all, only his third full season as the starter.
As is his habit, McNabb kept his reaction to Aikman's criticism muted.
He said: "It's always something, when he comes up. I'm not accurate, I'm not running as much as I used to, I don't look comfortable back there. I'm just going out there and play my game and compete and improve."
Actually, before the game, Aikman had commented to writers that these Eagles reminded him of the Cowboys of the 1990s in that they were young and were being allowed to stay together and grow together. Those Dallas teams won three Super bowls in their decade of dominance.
As for McNabb, in his first two full seasons, he has not missed a start. He has produced 22 wins, and three more in the playoffs. He has accounted for three-fourths of the offense.
What he seems to do best is, win.
In the end, then, isn't all the rest of it pretty much just noise?
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