Reid isn't going to go over and tell McNabb he's out of the game, because, well, if it were Jamaal Jackson coming out in favor of Nick Cole, telling Jamaal would be Juan Castillo's job. It's important that Reid stick to that framework - it was probably somewhere in that notebook of how Mike Holmgren did things, which Andy brought over from Green Bay. (See, it's written right here: "Position coach tells player he's being benched." Got to follow the plan.)
"No," Reid said, when asked yesterday if he thought he should have made an exception for McNabb. "I talked to him [after the game] as I did the other quarterback. And that's how I went about doing it. At that particular time, you're in a tight time situation, you're trying to put things together for the second half, and that's how you go about doing it. So it's not a matter of disrespecting Donovan, or any other player, for that matter. It's what you do, and that's why they have coaches that do those things."
Except, that when the player is Donovan McNabb, it becomes the biggest story in the NFL universe that day, a public dissing that was a shock to even the opposition Ravens. And Reid couldn't see the need to look up from his color-coded charts to deliver the news in person?
"Tight time situation"? What, you have to fine-tune the playcalls on those 50-yard bombs on third-and-1?
How long would it have taken to walk over and say, "Donovan, listen, I have to do something here to try to change up and win this game. I'm going to go with Kevin. We'll talk more after the game. Watch the second half from the sideline with me and we'll compare notes on what we see. This is a tough situation for everybody, hang in there with me."
That would have taken, like, 15 seconds.
