It's all come crashing down for Donovan McNabb and the Redskins. Not only has he been benched for this weekend's game against the Cowboys, it appears his Redskins career is over. ESPN's Adam Schefter said today "Clearly, Mike Shanahan wouldn't be making the move if he had confidence in Donovan McNabb. The Washington Redskins' marriage with Donovan McNabb is over. It's over."
Not only will McNabb not start, he won't even be the backup. John Beck will back up Rex Grossman and McNabb will be the inactive 3rd QB for the rest of the season. Redskins coach Mike Shanahan told reporters today ''I cannot guarantee'' that McNabb ''will be back next year.''
And just in case there was any thought that maybe the relationship between McNabb and Shanahan could ever be repaired, McNabb's agent Fletcher Smith lambasted Shanny in a radio interview.
"Disrespectful is probably not strong enough of a word," Fletcher N. Smith, McNabb's representative, said in a lengthy phone interview Friday. "Donovan has handled himself with nothing but class, not just in Washington but as an ambassador for the league. To treat him this way ... it's beyond disrespectful."
"Just the way Mike handled the whole situation in Detroit, and in almost every instance since that time, and this is, I guess, the culmination of that. I think it's ... again, it's beyond disrespectful."
As dumb as Mike Shanahan looks here, I take some issue with what Fletcher Smith says here. How is so disrespectful to bench McNabb? What he has done this year that should guarantee him a starting job? Also, let's not forget that this isn't the first time in his recent career he's been benched or a team decided to get rid of him in favor of his backup. Here are McNabb's numbers this season.
That's the reality of how Donovan McNabb has played this season. If you took the name off the front of those stats, I can't see how anyone could argue that the guy who is putting those stats up is being "disrespected" by getting benched. This is the same "how dare anyone say or do anything cross about Donovan" we got for years in Philadelphia. If anyone even got a little frustrated with McNabb, we were all told how disrespectful we were and how we don't deserve a guy like Donovan McNabb...
Having said that, it Rex Grossman he's being benched for... so that is kinda disrespectful.
Chris Cooley said it better than I can. "This is one of the top 10 biggest bonehead trades in the history of the NFL"