His slow starts were often too much to overcome and always painful to watch. So, too, were his "one-of-the-guys" gymnastics, theatrics, proclamations. Often it seemed he projected confidence outside of the huddle more than he did inside of it. So often while accepting blame or criticism, he insinuated blame elsewhere. So often it was not his fault, but the team's fault.
But he was a citizen, a good one, and he rarely embarrassed either town or team. He didn't lash out when he was booed on draft day. He tried desperately to extricate himself from Terrell Owens' clumsy attempts to renegotiate his contract, suffering through characterizations that stick with him even today, most pointedly that he was a wimp on the playing field.
He played a game with a broken ankle once. He played half a season with a sports hernia. One criticism of him is that he held the ball too long, which was true, but that was about indecision, not guts. Hell, he got creamed a lot because of it. Early in his career, he ran over linebackers when he scrambled.
Yeah, he picked a real bad time to get sick in the huddle. But can we stop with the wimp talk? You wonder if that will define him, will wash over everything else he did, the way Mitch Williams' pitch to Joe Carter obscures what a gamer he was in 1993, how he pitched and got saves with his left arm hanging off, how he was never the same after that season.
McNabb thinks it will. I believe that. It's part of why he didn't want to leave here, even as the public sentiment for it built and the organizational support for him collapsed.
