I don’t look at this topic from the “will the Eagles ever win the Super Bowl with McNabb and Reid?” angle. I’m looking at if from the “can they ever win with McNabb and Reid?” angle.
The answer, quite simply, is yes.
It’s easy to say that these two have come up small in big games, but that’s not exactly true. Wild Card games are big games. Divisional playoff games are big games. You lose, you go home.
And yes, I will bring up John Elway and Bill Cowher. The Broncos once thought so much of John Elway, they drafted Tommy Maddox (1992) in the first round of the draft. John Elway simply was not a guy who was ever going to win. He is not going to win the Super Bowl…ever. This is what they said about him for years. Then he gets to his late 30’s, wins back-to-back Super Bowls and all of a sudden he’s one of the best ever. Things change quickly when you get a Terrell Davis, huh?
But the argument is that McNabb is no John Elway. Not so sure about that. Let’s look at John Elways passing yards through his first 10 seasons. He threw for 23,533 yards. McNabb in that same amount of time? 29,320. That’s almost 6,000 more yards.
And how about completion %? One of the biggest knocks on Donovan McNabb is that his completion % isn’t high enough. I think many of you would be shocked to know that Elway’s career completion % is a paltry 56.9%. Donovan is at 58.9% for his career. That’s a win for Donovan again.
And one of the most important stats is interceptions. INT’s will absolutely kill you. Through the first 10 years of Elways’ career, he got picked 157 times, to Donovan’s 90. Big difference.
And again, the only reason I’m comparing Donovan to Elway is because Elway heard the same “he’ll never win it” comments that Donovan is hearing.
As for Andy Reid, he consistently puts his team in position to win at the end of the season. In 2006, without their starting QB, the Eagles rallied and made a run to the Divisional Playoff game. Last year, with the season all but cooked and their star QB on the bench, they rallied to get to the NFC Championship game. This is a guy who keeps it together and keeps his team focused.
Joe Banner recently said that the best team isn’t always the Super Bowl winner, and to an extent he’s right. Were the Giants the best team in 2007? Probably not. But they had some things go their way (Favre gives them a gift in the NFC Championship game, Tyree catches a stupid pass on his helmet) and they ended up winning.
You have to be a little bit lucky to win it all in any sport. Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity and you must always be prepared to make your own luck. Andy Reid does that, but everything hasn’t clicked yet.
Sure, mathematically the odds of them winning it all at this point aren’t great. But if the Rooney’s didn’t stick with Bill Cowher through all those times that he couldn’t win the AFC Championship game, they don’t have at least one of their recent championships.
It would be a shame for Jeffrey Lurie and Joe Banner to make a change for the sake of doing so. Who would you get? What did Mike Shanahan do after Elway retired? Who says he’d do a better job than Reid? Is Kevin Kolb better than Donovan? Careful what you wish for.
So yeah, maybe they don’t win a Super Bowl together. But they are two of the best at what they do and they give the Eagles the best chance to win it all. This pairing absolutely can win a title together.
They aren’t perfect for sure, but they are two guys I’ll go to battle with any day.
