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Black Sunday
By John Stolnis

I guess we should be used to this by now.

For the third time in the last five years, Donovan McNabb will miss at least the last six games of the regular season, after tearing his ACL in Sunday’s 31-13 loss to the Tennessee Titans at Lincoln Financial Field.

The injury occured on a seemingly innocuous play at the start of the second quarter, as McNabb rolled to his right and tried to complete a pass as he was scrambling out of bounds along the Tennessee sideline.

McNabb, unable to put any weight on his right knee, was carted off the field and is expected to miss anywhere from 8-12 months, obliterating not only the rest of the 2006 season, but also leaving his 2007 season in doubt.

In other words, Eagles fans’ worst nightmare has come true. Again. The one player the Eagles could not afford to lose has been lost for the rest of the season.

It is a nasty bit of deja vu.

In 2002, McNabb missed the last six games of that campaign after he broke his foot against the Arizona Cardinals on a damp, rainy day at the Vet. In 2005, McNabb struggled all year with a hernia until he was finally forced to sit out the rest of the season after injuring it to the point he could no longer play against the Cowboys in Week 10.

Now this. Oh, and let’s not forget about his injury against the Carolina Panthers in the first half of the Birds’ 2003 NFC Championship Game, which knocked him out of that contest.

What makes losing McNabb so difficult is that there is absolutely no back-up plan. Donovan is asked to do more for his team than any other quarterback in the NFL. He does not have the talent that the Peyton Mannings and the Carson Palmers of the world have and he does not have a coaching staff that understands the importance of establishing a running game.

The Eagles expect Donovan McNabb to be their all and everything. They put all of their eggs in his basket, give him marginally talented receivers and continually fail to establish an identity running the ball. And that philosophy works, as long as Donovan is healthy and whipping the ball around the Linc like he’s capable of.

Unfortunately, that plan backfires tremendously when your all and everything is lost for the year.

Because the Eagles have refused to pay any attention to the running game, have no Pro Bowlers at the receiver position, and sport a defense that is as dependable as an Anna Nicole Smith babysitting service, they have screwed themselves.

The only way the Philadelphia Eagles can be successful is if Donovan McNabb is running the show. And now, he won’t be. Maybe not for a long time.

The answer at back-up QB? Jeff Garcia, who went 26-48 (48 passing attempts???) for 189 yards and a touchdown, but had serious trouble moving the Eagles anywhere on Sunday.

Did it look to anyone else like Garcia hadn’t seen the practice field at all this season? He has been practicing with the team, all season, hasn’t he? Is it too much to ask your back-up QB to step in and at least be marginally competent against a 2-7 defense?

As for the Birds and their prospects here in 2006, you can kiss the playoffs goodbye. It was asking a lot of the Birds to run off a 6-2 second half with their murderous schedule and a healthy Donovan McNabb. But now they’ve lost to the previously 2-7 Titans at home, and asking them to go 5-1 in their last six (@ Indy, CAR, @ Wash, @ NY Giants, @ Dal., ATL) with a back-up QB, no running game, a bad defense and horrific playcalling is just idiotic.

It can’t be done. Not with Jeff Garcia or A.J. Feely at QB. Not with a receiving corps that drops passes as if the football has cancer on it. Not with a defense that misses way too many tackles and allows Travis Henry to run for 143 yards on it. Not with a coaching staff that continues to call for play-action passes on third-and-goal from the 1/2 yard-line. And not with a special teams unit that gives up a 90 yard punt return for a touchdown to PacMan Jones.

It ain’t happening, folks.

So, another season is wasted. The Birds’ 4-1 start, a distant memory. At 5-5, it would take a bona fide miracle for the Eagles to go 5-1 in their last six, up against a murderous schedule with a weak back-up QB, players who seem to have given up, and a coaching staff that can’t seem to get out of its own way.

With McNabb, maybe it could have been done. Without him, there’s no chance.

Perhaps the worst thing about McNabb’s injury is the label with which we must now be bestow on #5…

“Injury-prone.”

You can’t miss this many games this many years in a row without being labeled as “injury-prone” or “brittle.” You just cannot count on Donovan McNabb to ever give you a full 16 game season again.

He is a fantastic player, perhaps the greatest quarterback in Philadelphia Eagles history. He is a man vastly underappreciated by the citizens of Philadelphia, but you have to wonder about how much longer his body can hold up.

Perhaps it’s time to invest a second or third-round pick in this year’s NFL Draft on a quarterback. Not someone to replace McNabb, because he should be the starter on this team until he retires or cannot play the game anymore, but someone who can be groomed to be a viable back-up.

Because at the rate he’s going, who knows how many years Donnie Mac has left? A torn ACL is no joke. While Carson Palmer has recovered from his ACL tear in the span of about eight months, Daunte Culpepper still feels pain in his knee and is sidelined probably for the rest of the year. There’s no telling how long #5 will take to heal from this.

We may not see a fully healthy Donovan McNabb again until the start of the 2008 season, if at all.

A scary thought in the middle of another lost season.

John Stolnis is a staff writer for www.phillysportsline.com Look for John's articles and more Philadelphia Sports News.

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