Some of my deepest concerns were addressed within the last 24 hours
by the leader of the free world. A world that was, if only for a
season, viciously harassed by a strange sort of terrorist.
This is a more subtle sort of terrorist – the sort that scores
almost as many touchdowns as the games he plays. I am sick of
dignifying this terrorist with a real name. For a few minutes, he
has a new alias. The idiot.
His choreography is stomachable, but the way he blasted both his
organization and his quarterback, while proceeding to offer a
weightless apology that he presumed would, somehow, bring about
reconciliation, this sort of destructive naiveté is, from a team’s
standpoint, unforgivable. Sick of his ego, his reckless attacks, his
punctilious apologies, even his friendly smile, I, and probably
every other member of the Eagles’ faithful, am thrilled to see him
walk out the door.
The free world, by the way, is Philadelphia football. Hopefully we
are all familiar with its leader. Biting his tongue all season long,
on the first day of February, the last Wednesday before the first
Super Bowl since the Eagles’ tragic defeat, Donovan McNabb got his
gun off. For almost a year, it seemed like McNabb’s proverbial high
road had dropped him off somewhere among the clouds. His optimism
and refusal to lash out made me wonder if he was delusional. He
simply refused to lash out. But the idiot’s gone, and it’s safe now.
McNabb is on the level with the rest of us once again, having
denounced an unmistakable evil that many of us tried to deny (at the
expense of our emotional health). The idiot, the terrorist, the
disease, has been extracted.
In
an extended interview with ESPN’s Michael Smith, McNabb finally
revealed his thoughts on the whole situation. Few of them were
surprising, although, coming from him, they were fresher than
peaches in June.
Apparently, the real controversy began in Week 12 of the 2004
season, when the idiot complained – in the huddle – about McNabb’s
failure to throw him the ball on the preceding down. “He came back,
‘Hey, I was open, throw the ball!’ Me being into the game, I said
‘Hey, get in the huddle man.’ In different words, obviously. He
continued to talk about how he was open, throw the ball. And it led
to me using some language that’s really not suitable for the kids.”
He
also responded to the statement, “I’m not the one who got tired in
the Super Bowl.”
“I
didn’t get tired,” McNabb said. “I took a couple of hits. We were
trying to get our personnel together. I don’t think Andy Reid or any
of us knew how many plays [the idiot] was going to be able to play,
how he was going to be able to play on the ankle, would he have a
setback. At that particular time, we’re just trying to rotate guys.
It looked like we were unorganized. When people say I got tired or
we didn’t get our two-minute drill together, that’s completely
false.”
The Eagles’ leader addressed everything – the fight between the
idiot and Hugh Douglas, the way the idiot articulated every
complaint through the media and never man-to-man, the failure of
McNabb’s team to come to his defense, the way the locker room was
divided. On a Super Bowl special later in the day (which was, being
the 987th this week, not so special), he finally used
that juicy word “cancer” in reference to the idiot’s presence on the
team. Many of us have been waiting for an official voice like
McNabb’s to launch the C-bomb for a long time. It was music. The
whole interview was like emotional therapy. A weight is lifted. I
feel lighter than Todd Pinkston.
Irrational as it may seem, several teams are apparently interested
in a slow, painful death. It seems that the idiot is more like an
STD than a cancer. There’s the initial seduction, the momentary
thrill, then comes the pain.
To
those teams, McNabb declared an emphatic, “good luck.”
For Philadelphians, the state of the union is hopeful. A healthy
McNabb has consistently spawned a winning team. Granted, the defense
needs some serious attention, and obviously, the receiving core is
less than torrential. But Reid has a knack for filling holes, and
Jim Johnson has rarely disappointed in producing a defense.
Most importantly, a known terrorist has been identified and exiled.
McNabb can breathe again. Let the healing process begin.
