good/bad news on McNabb, by Eagles fans for Skins fans

i ventured to a few Eagles message boards and got their good news & bad news on #5. (http://www.realfootball365.com/articles/redskins/14855)

as always, please click and pass along, repost, share on facebook/twitter etc..

thanks!!

Without reading this I'll toss out mine first and see how it stacks up:

Good: mobile, strong arm, solid leader, experienced, doesn't turn the ball over

Bad: streaky thrower, when he's off he's way off, not overly accurate

Tremendous insight from this guy, appropriately places part of the Eagles' failures on McNabb, and partly on Andy Reid. I can tell you being a Philly resident, talk radio around here (and fans in general) are far too quick to blame McNabb for everything and far too quick to defend Reid.

McNabb is not the best QB in the league, but he is much, much better than what we've had. The question is, can Shanahan bring out what Reid could not.

I think if you take out the extreme fringes of both sides of the 5 debate you'll get something that looks like this: very good QB who (at one time, perhaps again) can make the kind of plays that very few guys in this league can make. Because of this trait, he was able to keep this franchise in contention for the better part of a decade. As far as his mechanics and skills go, that's pretty much the same thing that you'll read elsewhere. He can heave a ball 70 yards downfield, but it's in the short game where his flaws are more prevalent. He throws low and hard. In a precision scheme, this becomes very much a magnified flaw. When he has confidence in his line and his feet are set, he's better able to make these throws, but this brings up the second flaw...he holds on to the ball WAAAY too long. I think that's one of the things about his career INT stats which is somewhat jilted. He's always been a guy whose hated tossing picks, but that's not as good of a thing as you might think. He hates taking chances. He'll take the sack or make an incredibly bad check down throw instead.
Final analysis time: McNabb was/is a very good QB who was brought into a situation in which his personality and abilities were right enough to make this team very competitive, but flawed enough to undermine the team's ultimate efforts. Some of it is the organization's inability to build a system around the talents of the player, rather expecting the player to perform under a specific system. This part was Andy Reid's fault. The part which was on McNabb is that he was never able to get past the part of himself which continually faulted the environment around him, rather than putting his efforts into working on the aspects of his game which needed to be addressed in order to succeed in this system.

yea, after plenty of hazing, some were quite helpful and definitely aware that Reid was a big part of the problem as well.

yea, after plenty of hazing, some were quite helpful and definitely aware that Reid was a big part of the problem as well.

The thing that makes me hopeful is the fact Shanahan is not going to throw 70% of the time like Reid. He's going to protect McNabb with a strong committment to the run. Hopefully that will help cut down on some of McNabb's bad streaks.

I will complement a lot of the guys on those two boards. A lot of them are bright and reasonable people. Unfortunately they're in no way reflective of the city's overall fan base.

I will complement a lot of the guys on those two boards. A lot of them are bright and reasonable people. Unfortunately they're in no way reflective of the city's overall fan base.


well, it's small sample.... and i'd argue they are in SOME way reflective, as "no way reflective" seems a bit too strong. they are obviously part of the fan base.

also, i weeded out the ones that weren't insightful. "pukes during superbowls and cant win the big one" kinda stuff. there was still plenty of "cant win the big game" senitment that i did include.

Tremendous insight from this guy, appropriately places part of the Eagles' failures on McNabb, and partly on Andy Reid.

agree, that was the best one.

i had to trim some of it, as it was too long. here's all of the original post by "Hooky"

OK, I'll play along.

First of all, the reason there's no preview or edit feature is intentional. This site's pretty much a snapshot of the place that inspired it. As such, when you open your mouth (or type as the case may be), you're judged by what comes out, and there's no take-backs or do-overs (no matter what your condition may be at that particular time).

Anyway, about the question at hand. I think if you take out the extreme fringes of both sides of the 5 debate you'll get something that looks like this: Very good QB who (at one time, perhaps again) can make the kind of plays that very few guys in this league can make. Because of this trait, he was able to keep this franchise in contention for the better part of a decade. As far as his mechanics & skills go, that's pretty much the same thing that you'll read elsewhere. He can heave a ball 70 yards downfield, but it's in the short game where his flaws are more prevalent. He throws low and hard. In a precision scheme (like the one that Andy has tried to implement here...you'll note that I said "tried"), this becomes very much a magnified flaw. When he has confidence in his line and his feet are set, he's better able to make these throws, but this brings up the second flaw...he holds on to the ball WAAAY too long. I think that's one of the things about his career INT stats which is somewhat jilted. He's always been a guy who's hated tossing picks, but that's not as good of a thing as you might think. He hates taking chances. He'll take the sack or make an incredibly bad checkdown throw instead. My take has been that for the better part of his time here, he was looking for separation from his receivers which these guys simply weren't capable of producing. The only two times when this wasn't the case were last year with Jackson and in '04 with Owens. In the case of the latter, he really trusted the fact that if he just put the ball up there in the neighborhood, T.O. would come down with it more often than not. In the case of the much smaller D.Jackson, he was charged with putting the ball in front of him, which he was able to do simply with arm strength. Without those kind of weapons, he'll probably look to find a soft-handed checkdown (like he had in Chad Lewis), but whoever that person is better start doing deep knee bends right now, because that ball is going to be coming in low and fast.

That covers the player, now for the man. First of all, he's a good guy. He's the kind of person who won't end up making negative headlines for any actions off the field, but in spite of this, he wasn't fully embraced by the fanbase here. Most fans would agree that what happened on draft day in '99 was an abberation and unrepresentative of the vast majority of fans. Despite the cheers and accolades over the years, he never seemed to be able to let that go. He had many opportunities over the years to step up and make a statement about himself either publicly or on the field, but elected not to. Instead, he had the tendency to portray Donavan the comic, which many times backfired (see: the entrance into Cowboys playoff game this season). This led many fans to think that he didn't take the game as seriously as they did. This is a cardinal sin in Philadelphia.

Final analysis time. McNabb was/is a very good QB who was brought into a situation in which his personality and abilities were right enough to make this team very competitive, but flawed enough to undermine the team's ultimate efforts. Some of it is the organization's inability to build a system around the talents of the player, rather expecting the player to perform under a specific system. This part was Reid's fault. The part which was on McNabb is that he was never able to get past the part of himself which continually faulted the environment around him, rather than putting his efforts into working on the aspects of his game which needed to be addressed in order to succeed in this system.

I also liked the one Schneed posted, but this one is really good. All in all, there seemed to be consistency from the posters.

“Almost all of the negative thoughts I have towards 5 can be traced back to Andy Reid. Inaccuracy: if his left knee locks, the ball is going anywhere but the Receiver's hands. If I can see that on my TV all the way here in Sweden, you'd think someone on the staff could have seen it & corrected it. 3 & outs: For a team that was always at the top of the stats for points scored, they also topped the list on "3 & outs." The fans always complained about the inevitable incompletion on 3rd & 2, but the real problem was not being able to run for those 2 yards. In the long run, I feel that 5 masked a lot of Reid’s problems as a coach, not the other way around.”
-fågelpojke

Rainy, I literally thought you were a Raider fan. Perhaps a beat writer or someone trying to make a name for themselves trying to get a job as a beat writer, except I thought you were in Oakland or something. I was kinda supprised to see you pulling a "Turn around is fair play" on us.

Nice that you did it though. I think they pretty much said what some us fans who were not psyched about the McNabb deal already thought about him. I think it's funny though that only one person felt he might have lost his step in the scramble department and we might get stuck with leaning on his accurracy or lack there of.