Rush Limbaugh Was RightDonovan McNabb isn't a great quarterback, and the media do overrate him because he is black.
Posted Thursday, Oct. 2, 2003, at 6:33 PM ET
In his notorious ESPN comments last Sunday night, Rush Limbaugh said he never thought the Philadelphia Eagles' Donovan McNabb was "that good of a quarterback."
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StumbleUponIf Limbaugh were a more astute analyst, he would have been even harsher and said, "Donovan McNabb is barely a mediocre quarterback." But other than that, Limbaugh pretty much spoke the truth. Limbaugh lost his job for saying in public what many football fans and analysts have been saying privately for the past couple of seasons.
Let's review: McNabb, he said, is "overrated ... what we have here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback can do well—black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well."
"There's a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of his team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team."
Let's take the football stuff first. For the past four seasons, the Philadelphia Eagles have had one of the best defenses in the National Football League and have failed to make it to the Super Bowl primarily because of an ineffective offense—an offense run by Donovan McNabb. McNabb was a great college quarterback, in my estimation one of the best of the '90s while at Syracuse. (For the record, I helped persuade ESPN Magazine, then called ESPN Total Sports, to put him on the cover of the 1998 college-football preview issue.) He is one of the most talented athletes in the NFL, but that talent has not translated into greatness as a pro quarterback.
McNabb has started for the Eagles since the 2000 season. In that time, the Eagles offense has never ranked higher than 10th in the league in yards gained. In fact, their 10th-place rank in 2002 was easily their best; in their two previous seasons, they were 17th in a 32-team league. They rank 31st so far in 2003.
In contrast, the Eagles defense in those four seasons has never ranked lower than 10th in yards allowed. In 2001, they were seventh; in 2002 they were fourth; this year they're fifth. It shouldn't take a football Einstein to see that the Eagles' strength over the past few seasons has been on defense, and Limbaugh is no football Einstein, which is probably why he spotted it.
The news that the Eagles defense has "carried" them over this period should be neither surprising nor controversial to anyone with access to simple NFL statistics—or for that matter, with access to a television. Yet, McNabb has received an overwhelming share of media attention and thus the credit. Now why is this?
Let's look at a quarterback with similar numbers who also plays for a team with a great defense. I don't know anyone who would call Brad Johnson one of the best quarterbacks in pro football—which is how McNabb is often referred to. In fact, I don't know anyone who would call Brad Johnson, on the evidence of his 10-year NFL career, much more than mediocre. Yet, Johnson's NFL career passer rating, as of last Sunday, is 7.3 points higher than McNabb's (84.8 to 77.5), he has completed his passes at a higher rate (61.8 percent to 56.4 percent), and has averaged significantly more yards per pass (6.84 to 5.91). McNabb excels in just one area, running, where he has gained 2,040 yards and scored 14 touchdowns to Johnson's 467 and seven. But McNabb has also been sacked more frequently than Johnson—more than once, on average, per game, which negates much of the rushing advantage.
In other words, in just about every way, Brad Johnson has been a more effective quarterback than McNabb and over a longer period.
And even if you say the stats don't matter and that a quarterback's job is to win games, Johnson comes out ahead. Johnson has something McNabb doesn't, a Super Bowl ring, which he went on to win after his Bucs trounced McNabb's Eagles in last year's NFC championship game by a score of 27-10. The Bucs and Eagles were regarded by everyone as having the two best defenses in the NFL last year. When they played in the championship game, the difference was that the Bucs defense completely bottled up McNabb while the Eagles defense couldn't stop Johnson.
In terms of performance, many NFL quarterbacks should be ranked ahead of McNabb. But McNabb has represented something special to all of us since he started his first game in the NFL, and we all know what that is.
Limbaugh is being excoriated for making race an issue in the NFL. This is hypocrisy. I don't know of a football writer who didn't regard the dearth of black NFL quarterbacks as one of the most important issues in the late '80s and early '90s. (The topic really caught fire after 1988, when Doug Williams of the Washington Redskins became the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl.)
So far, no black quarterback has been able to dominate a league in which the majority of the players are black. To pretend that many of us didn't want McNabb to be the best quarterback in the NFL because he's black is absurd. To say that we shouldn't root for a quarterback to win because he's black is every bit as nonsensical as to say that we shouldn't have rooted for Jackie Robinson to succeed because he was black. (Please, I don't need to be reminded that McNabb's situation is not so difficult or important as Robinson's—I'm talking about a principle.)
Consequently, it is equally absurd to say that the sports media haven't overrated Donovan McNabb because he's black. I'm sorry to have to say it; he is the quarterback for a team I root for. Instead of calling him overrated, I wish I could be admiring his Super Bowl rings. But the truth is that I and a great many other sportswriters have chosen for the past few years to see McNabb as a better player than he has been because we want him to be.
Rush Limbaugh didn't say Donovan McNabb was a bad quarterback because he is black. He said that the media have overrated McNabb because he is black, and Limbaugh is right. He didn't say anything that he shouldn't have said, and in fact he said things that other commentators should have been saying for some time now. I should have said them myself. I mean, if they didn't hire Rush Limbaugh to say things like this, what did they hire him for? To talk about the prevent defense?
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Remarks from the Fray:
Limbaugh would like to paint this as a Elian-esque raid by the PC-police, but that's not the case.
Limbaugh is a mere variable in the free market he so ardently embraces. The National Football League is a multi-billion dollar business. While CapCities/Disney may be the proprietors of ESPN's "Gameday," it's no secret that the league is more than a mere image consultant for its programming — be it on ESPN, FOX, CBS or HBO.
Limbaugh spoke. (He didn't exercise his "first amendment rights," the moron. The first amendment protects an individual's free speech rights against the state.) ESPN is not committed to giving anyone a voice — you, me, King Harald of Norway. It makes this choice (in conjunction with the NFL, to be certain) based on some fundamental principles.
Do you know what the NUMBER ONE principle on which the NFL and Disney makes such decisions? $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
It's simply not desirous for the NFL and Disney to have Rush performing his schtick on Sundays. The NFL has a cauldron of problems; they don't need another. Broadcast programming is the league's incontrovertible gem. Rush flouted that and he was slapped for it.
Limbaugh has made a fortune in broadcasting; he should know better. As Al Pacino says in GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS, "Don't open your mouth until you know what the shot is." Limbaugh didn't know the shot. He thought he was in the Premiere Radio Network Studios. He wasn't. He didn't take inventory of his bosses, his employers, his co-workers, the milieu.
The so-called liberal media didn't do him in. Nor did the NAACP. The Byzantine laws that govern the market did.
Whether he's correct about McNabb is incidental.
--echoguy
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Who here wishes to claim that the press is not desirous to see a black superstar quarterback?
Who here wishes to assert that the press isn't actively seeking a black Steve Young, Patin Manning, Joe Namath, etc, etc?
Who here believes that the press does not sometimes ignore real stories in their search for a preconceived story?
Who here ha not heard the expression, "If they can't find a story, they'll make one."
BTW, Rush's comment were mainly about the press, not McNabb. Hence the press has manufactured the supposed outrage to Limbaugh's statement.
--dougtheavenger1957
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The idea that Donovan McNabb is overrated because of his skin color doesn't stand up to scrutiny. If you assume that, then you would have to assume that ALL black quarterbacks are over-rated, or at least are over-rated at a higher rate than white quarterbacks. But that's just not true. McNabb may be over-rated, along with a couple of others, but there are plenty of black quarterbacks out there that aren't doing chunky soup commercials, like Aaron Brooks, Jeff Blake, and Quincy Carter. Moreover, plenty of white quarterbacks are over-rated. Tom Brady, Drew Bledsoe, and in recent years Brett Favre (blasphemy!) are the ones that spring to mind. And others are under-rated, such as Jay Fiedler and Brad Johnson. The reason McNabb is over-rated is not because black quarterbacks are over-rated by the media, or even that quarterbacks in general are over-rated by the media (although they are). It is simply that the sports media forms a consensus about a player's worth in the first season of their career, and never varies from it from then on. Moreover, somebody always has to be the face of a particular team. With the Ravens, it's Ray Lewis, with the Buccaneers, it's Warren Sapp (talk about over-rated!), and with the Eagles, for whatever reason, it's McNabb. For crying out loud, look at Brian Urlacher. He's in as many commercials as McNabb, despite the fact that he's just a decent linebacker playing on the worst team in the league. What secret conspiracy are you going to blame that on?
--OhioBoy
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The hounding out of Rush Limbaugh illustrates a scourge on contemporary American liberalism—political correctness. As a liberal, I feel it is a handicap and a shame…
The hallmark of PC is the preclusion of honest (let alone dishonest) discussion on arguable social issues, by raising the specter of evil motivation rather than challenging the merits of a case. It is the enshrinement of ad hominem as an institutional culture…
There is the argument that politics should be kept out of sports. This is quite disingenuous. Liberals are never shy of celebrating how Jesse Owens or the baseball players of the 40s or 50s overcame racism. Do they mean that politics should be kept out as long as it is the kind of politics they disapprove? Limbaugh wasn't calling the Democratic candidates assholes, but raised a point very much germane to the sport he was commenting on. One cost of this episode is that if an unprejudiced sportscaster ever honestly came to a conclusion touching on racial issues, he may be too intimated to express his views. We may have lost not only Limbaugh's voice (good riddance!), but other intelligent ones as well.
Political correctness, by stifling debate, actually favors the status quo. Since liberals, on balance, are in favor of social change, it is in their interest to promote debate, not suppress it. The problem is, you can either promote a culture of unrestrained debate, or one of staid and safe conversation—you cannot pick and choose depending on the issue. Those liberals who are dismayed by the patriotic speech code imposed on us after 9/11, and the pernicious effect of the media's self censorship, should have resisted the urge to hang Limbaugh. Selective indignation eventually bites you in the ass!
What is the operational difference between criticizing the substance of Limbaugh's comments and throwing a PC punch on him? Well, I guess the critical element is whether or not you think he should be fired for what he said...
--Sissyfuss1
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What made Limbaugh's comment useful was that it illustrates his paranoid cast of mind, his tendency to postulate powerful forces pursuing nefarious, white race defeating schemes as an explanation for almost everything--even the Eagles not winning the Super Bowl. After all, it's one thing to say that McNabb is overrated, but an utterly different one to say the reason for this is because the media wants a black man to succeed. What about all the other black quarterbacks? Are they all also willed into success by a wishful media? Will the media's raging hunger ever be sated? How many black quarterbacks will it take?! The fact is, it's much more likely that if McNabb is overrated it's because he plays a dynamic and attractive style of game that happens not to be as effective as one might think. But this explanation doesn't require one to make massive, unverifiable, implausible assumptions about liberal conspiracies, and so would of course not appeal to Limbaugh.
--MaineCoon
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