Donovan McNabb is surrounded

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Donovan McNabb can forgo the Statue of Liberty play in order to pass to actual good receivers

What do you make of Donovan McNabb?

Words like mercurial come to mind.

Questions why all that talent has failed to produce a Super Bowl victory come to mind.

Doubters wanted to get rid of Donovan, pretty much every year of his career. How would that make you feel?

Can there be more to it than that? Yes, there can and there is. Donovan McNabb needs to have other players around him.

This brings up the great build-a-team debate and how it all works. The theories are endless, but when you get down to it, there is no denying that having a very talented, cool as a cucumber, quarterback is an asset not to be denied. Hmm, Kurt Warner comes to mind.

Now that we have established that a great quarterback is a good thing and aren’t we smart, then the next thing is that the most talented, cool as a cucumber, quarterback cannot do it alone. He needs something else.

What?

Something. Something, like a great defense. See Pittsburgh or Baltimore. Something, like a great offense. See Indianapolis and Peyton Manning. Something, like great players and that brings us back to Kurt Warner.

Now this is not a knock on Kurt Warner, but just how well would he have fared with Donovan’s list of great teammates or vice versa.

On Warner’s side of the ledger: Larry Fitzgerald, Isaac Bruce, Anquan Boldin, Torry Holt, Marshall Faulk, Tiki Barber, Amani Toomer, Jeremy Shockey, Az-Zahir Hakim.

On McNabb’s: Brian Westbrook and Terrell Owens. They are the only two weapons McNabb has had that would qualify for Warner’s list of elite teammates.

There is always a chicken-and-egg relationship between quarterbacks and their receivers, but there can be no disputing that Warner has played with more blue-chip offensive skill players during his career than McNabb has. It isn’t even close.

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Donovan McNabb with receivers

Finally, this year Donovan McNabb finds himself with receivers that he can trust, receivers that he can just throw the ball up in tight spots and they will go up and battle for the ball and, more times than not, the receiving corps will come down with it. Donovan needs those kinds of players if he is to win.

McNabb trusts rookie DeSean Jackson. He trusts Kevin Curtis. He has developed a terrific rapport with Jason Avant, especially on third downs. McNabb is building a trust with Brent Celek, is comfortable with Hank Baskett, and, of course, always knows he can throw to Westbrook.

There’s that chicken-and-egg element again. McNabb said after the Giants game that he made a conscious effort to trust his receivers.

“One thing that I did at the earlier part of this year was to show them that I have the trust in them,” he said. “That was putting balls in the position where they can go up and compete for it. If coverage was tight, still show them that I have the trust in them. Even if they drop balls, come back to them.”

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Is Donovan as good as Kurt Warner? Who knows? Is he as accurate as Kurt Warner? No, but finally he has a crew that he can trust to make him look good and to win the big game!

Photo source Newscom

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