« Wedding Video: Director's Cut | Main | Charlie Wilson's War: This Is Almost A Book Review »

November 27, 2005

The McNabb Nookie Theory

What took me so long to figure this out?

For all the theories that have been floated in re: the Eagles, TO and the lousy/ borderline insane play of Number 5 (and I really got a kick out of the Avon Barksdale - Stringer Bell analogy floated by Jason Whitlock on ESPN.com; man, am I jealous! I thought I was way clever with my Sith nonsense from a couple weeks back, but dropping the Wire? Damn. This is specifically why I don’t have the talent or imagination to make my living as a writer...anyhoo), I really think there's an Ockham's Razor explanation that hasn't yet been properly explored. Something so simple and clean and pure that it really might be the answer we've all been looking for all along.

Could it all really have been this obvious?

After having the best season of his career in 2004 (which followed four years of HOISTING THE EAGLES ONTO HIS BACK AND INTO THREE NFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAMES WITH MINIMAL HELP ON OFFENSE, IN CASE YOU’VE FORGOTTEN), Number 5 took a big step back this year. Happy, football-game-winning Donovan McNabb disappeared and was replacing with Evil Dunivin. Evil Dunivin made lousy reads, missed open receivers, botched easy plays, threw horrific picks, and generally looked like a guy whose head was most definitely not in the game. To say he was pressing doesn’t do his ongoing carnival of brain-farts justice; having a sore tummy (or groin, or whatever) shouldn’t affect your ability to decide when and where to deliver the ball. Sure, it might make it harder to actually deliver said ball, but a sports hernia shouldn’t actually impair your ability to make decisions. Or should it?

Without offering too many grim anatomical details (and I really should bring in a physician as an expert witness on all this), wouldn’t you have to imagine that having a sports hernia (a tear in the lining of your lower groin) would make, errr, certain activities a tad more challenging? Or at least extremely painful? And sure, his ability to play through pain is well-documented, but maybe this was just one injury too many. Number 5 is a red-blooded fellow with a lovely wife and daughter, and is by all accounts a good family man. But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have needs!

So perhaps said sports hernia was preventing him from, errr, satisfying those needs. And it was driving him insane! Insane with teenaged-boy-in-the-pre-broadband-era rage! He couldn’t think, he couldn’t concentrate, he couldn’t relax – and he sure as hell couldn’t read a defense. I posit that his mind was so clouded with pent-up frustration that it most definitely impacted his play on the field, and led to a season fraught with reprehensible decision making.

All along, we thought it was some sort of Super Bowl hangover, the constant sniping of TO, the nonstop whining and theorizing of the local and national sports blathermonkeys, even a locker-room mutiny. Nope. Turns out Number 5 just needed to get laid.

Posted by thatkid at November 27, 2005 9:57 AM under Philly , Sports

Comments

Post a comment

About ThatKid

Copyright (c) 2004-2007 thatkidinthecorner