Ten years after Super Bowl 39

The Super Bowl was five days ago, so you’re probably sick of reading about quarterback legacies and all the exhausting debates that go with them.

But today happens to be February 6, 2015— the 10 year anniversary of the Eagles and Patriots meeting in Super Bowl XXIX.

Since I already took one deep dive into a game from that season, when I wrote about the 10-year anniversary of Week 1 for The 700 Level in September, why not end the season the same way?

We saw in this year’s Super Bowl how guys like Malcolm Butler or Tharold Simon could make plays that would forever alter the way we talk about Tom Brady and Russell Wilson.

So I went back and watched the game that, fairly or not, defines Donovan McNabb’s career.

I entered this project with no agenda. It was not my goal to defend McNabb or roast him. I just wanted to watch it with an open mind and see what I thought. Did McNabb really blow the game, or were there long-forgotten Malcolm Butlers and Tharold Simons of his career?

Let’s go to the tape and draw some conclusions.

[Note: You can watch the whole game on YouTube too. Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4]

Conclusion #1: McNabb was a great quarterback through his first six years.

This game was the pinnacle of McNabb’s career, though we didn’t know it at the time. The Eagles started with the ball. As the broadcast crew (Joe Buck, Troy Aikman and Cris Collinsworth) introduced him, Buck said he was the first QB in history with a season of 30+ TDs and fewer than 10 interceptions.

It’s been done 12 times since, by 6 other QBs, but he did it first.

Aikman raves about him: “And as good as he was during the regular season, Joe, he’s been that much better here in the playoffs.”

At one point in the second quarter, McNabb made a beautiful play to avoid the rush, rolled out and lobbed a ball up for Todd Pinkston to go make a play on. Collinsworth gushed after play, “Boy this is Donovan McNabb at his very best. They come with the blitz, and he’s gonna move around and buy just enough time to get this thing off. This is what he can do that a Peyton Manning or someone like that can’t do. Just buy that time and find the wide receiver in man coverage down the field.”

Yeah, Peyton Manning is a big stiff who just stands in the pocket and can’t get his team over the hump in the playoffs! Give me McNabb! OK, maybe not for the 10 years that followed. But McNabb had made five straight Pro Bowls and consistently had the Eagles deep in the playoffs. If he had won this game, the whole second half of his career would have been spent discussing whether or not he was a Hall of Famer.

Conclusion #2: McNabb kept the Eagles in the game through three quarters.

I think people forget what a close game this was because of the lasting image of McNabb needing to carry the Eagles down the field trailing by two scores. This game was tied after each of the first three quarters. It was 0-0 after one. It was 7-7 at halftime, making it just the second Super Bowl ever (at the time) to be tied at the half. And it was 14-14 after three making it (somehow) the first Super Bowl ever tied going into the fourth.

Blaming McNabb for his inability to finish the job obscures the credit he deserves for bringing them within range.

The Eagles dominated the game early, getting 13 plays in Patriots territory before New England had one play in Philly’s. But McNabb started the game unevenly. He threw an interception to Asante Samuel in the end zone on a ball he shouldn’t have thrown into double coverage. That play was wiped out by a penalty, and then on the very next snap he threw another interception on a fairly easy ball for Rodney Harrison to step in front of while offering safety help.

That was ugly.

The Eagles’ next scoring chance was killed by an L.J. Smith fumble after he’d made a reception.

Finally, on that 13th play in Patriots’ territory, McNabb threw a TD pass to Smith to give the Eagles a 7-0 lead.

But McNabb wasn’t the only QB in the game who had his sloppy moments. After the Eagles scored first, Brady took the Patriots into the red zone and fumbled a handoff.

In fact, McNabb and Brady had pretty similar games through three quarters. Both struggled early and then found their rhythm in the second quarter. But because Brady evened the game at 7 (and already had two Super Bowl MVPs), the halftime crew praised him for his poise. The whole halftime story was about how he could bring the team back and tie the game up. Then the Patriots went up 14-7 and McNabb did the exact same thing, bringing the Eagles back to a tie at 14-all.

The touchdown was a very nice pass to Brian Westbrook, who looked more like a receiver than a running back coming out of the backfield.

“Impressive throw by Donovan McNabb,” Buck said.

“Falling backwards,” Aikman added. “For him to have the arm strength to fit that ball in there… Unbelievable throw by Donovan McNabb.”

The point is that the Eagles were in a winnable game and McNabb was a key reason why. Andy Reid went with his typically pass-heavy game plan and McNabb was running the offense. He was not a game manager by any stretch. On a day when the running game never got going, he was the reason the Eagles had any points on the board at all.

Meanwhile, the defense had been mostly effective early but started giving up points. I say “giving up points” to be neutral. It’s hard to determine the ratio of blame on the defense against credit to the Patriots’ offense, when it’s clearly a combination of both.

But Brady and the Patriots scored on four out of five possessions to take a 24-14 lead and build the hole McNabb was asked to dig out of.

Conclusion #3: Other players were winded too.

McNabb was famously winded on that fourth quarter drive that took forever. Or he was sick. Or he was throwing up on the field. It depends who you believe.

Stories come out every single year before the Super Bowl about it. Former teammates offer contradictory stories about what happened, McNabb denies throwing up and the whole cycle repeats.

One thing I noticed while watching the game again is how many other players were affected.

Todd Pinkston had a [surprisingly] good first half, with four catches for 82 yards and then left with cramps. Jevon Kearse went down at one point with what looked like cramps. Rod Hood left the game with cramps.

Most interestingly—for those watching the game 10 years later, looking for a villain—was T.O. himself, one of the most vocal McNabb antagonists ever.

But at the 2 minute warning on that final drive the cameras showed Owens just before the commercial. He breathed heavily, and hunched forward. With the camera still on Owens, Buck said, “Trying to catch their breath are the Eagles,” and then it cut to commercial.

This was a team-wide epidemic, which often gets overlooked in the McNabb blame game.

Reid and the Eagles training staff had famously used pickle juice to hydrate before a season-opening win in Dallas a few years before, but the training staff didn’t seem to have the Eagles prepared for the conditions in Jacksonville.

Conclusion #4: McNabb did not have his best personnel at the most critical juncture of the game.

The Eagles took over for that famous drive— “the 10-minute drill,” as Bill Simmons called it just this week— with 5:40 to go. And it went really slow. But why?

Everyone always talks about his conditioning, but I think at least some of the reason comes down to the personnel on the field. The skill position players McNabb had to work with were not used to playing together.

Chad Lewis missed the Super Bowl after breaking his foot in the NFC Championship Game. L.J. Smith had played a decent amount that season but was pressed into a much larger role in the Super Bowl.

Todd Pinkston, as mentioned above, came out of the game, and was replaced by a combination of Greg Lewis and Freddie Mitchell.

Owens had been out since breaking his leg in Week 15, and hadn’t played until heroically coming back for the Super Bowl.

Watching the Eagles break the huddle at one point with Smith at tight end, Lewis and Owens as wideouts, Westbrook split as a wide receiver and fullback Josh Parry in the backfield, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Eagles would have moved quicker if McNabb was surrounded by players he’d been in a better rhythm with.

Instead of having continuity, McNabb was asked to drive down the field with a crew that might never have played a snap as a five-some until the final minutes of a Super Bowl. That can’t make it easy for the quarterback to communicate a no-huddle offense.

To be fair though, I’m offering this as more of an explanation than an excuse. With two weeks of practice before the game, the whole team should have been prepared for any role. And you can laugh at the thought of applying this logic to a Belichick team, since Belichick could seemingly take any player and make them succeed in any role.

Conclusion #5: It was a team loss.

I won’t go through the entire play-by-play of the famous drive, although now is a good time if you’re interested in doing so yourself (starting around 19:50 in the video above).

But the one thing that stood out to me was how much the loss fell on the whole team.

The popular opinion is to dump a lot of it on No. 5. Clearly he deserves as much of the blame as anyone, but probably not as much as he usually gets. Many others contributed.

The Eagles wasted one of their timeouts on defense in the third quarter, which cost 40 valuable seconds late in the game.

Westbrook dropped a wide open screen pass in the middle of the field, on a play when he had 20 yards of running room. Hank Fraley snapped a ball before McNabb was ready. McNabb recovered the fumble, but it cost more time.

I already mentioned that the personnel wasn’t optimal for McNabb on the drive. The other striking thing was how often the team changed personnel. It seemed like every other play, Reid was shuttling between Greg Lewis and Freddie Mitchell. At one point he pulled out fullback Josh Parry and put in backup tight end Jeff Thomason (who was a former Eagle, signed off the street after Lewis got hurt).

Much of it fell on McNabb. He threw an ill-advised screen pass to Parry for 2 yards because nobody was open deep, when he would have been better off throwing it away and saving the time.

But why was Parry in the game? Reid spent much of the drive with two backs and a tight end. He should have had Owens, Lewis and Mitchell all in to spread the field. It’s not McNabb’s fault that Reid sent in two backs who lined up split behind him in the pro set.

So the Eagles went 13 plays for 79 yards in 3:52. On paper that doesn’t look as agonizing as it does when you watch the video and hear how incredulous the announcers are.

McNabb could have done more. And it’s hard to defend some of his check downs, and his play action fakes on that drive that probably had Teddy Bruschi laughing while chasing him down. But it was a team effort.

The Eagles scored a touchdown, on a nice throw and a catch by Greg Lewis. With 1:48 to go, David Akers’ onside kick wasn’t great and the Patriots took over.

The defense held New England to a three-and-out. They used two timeouts, and let a full play clock run down once because they had burned that timeout earlier in the half.

But as the Patriots got set to kick it away with about 55 seconds left, Collinsworth started getting excited. The Eagles had a chance to win the game. They had Brian Westbrook back to return a punt. They had McNabb hoping to finally break through on the biggest stage. They needed only a field goal to tie it, and Collinsworth noted that David Akers thought he could break the NFL record long (which he would actually tie 7 years later).

If the Eagles could have just gotten a field goal to send the game to overtime, nobody would have ever talked about that 13-play drive negatively again. The narrative would have been that McNabb stayed calm, and poised and led the Eagles on two scoring drives.

Of course, that didn’t happen.

The Patriots let the play clock run all the way down and took a delay of game penalty. At this point, Reid inexplicably decided not to leave anyone back to return the punt. It was one of the most baffling tactical moves of the game. The ball landed at the 15, took a great Patriots hop and was downed at the 4 with 46 seconds left.

On the first play, McNabb was stuck scrambling in the end zone. He needed to get rid of the ball, so he threw it at Westbrook right at the line of scrimmage. Westbrook caught it, when he should have batted it down. McNabb signaled a new play, and Aikman said he couldn’t believe they hadn’t called their first two plays in the huddle before first down.

That comes down to coaching.

McNabb threw one final interception to sully his stat line, but the game was already over.

Patriots win 24-21.

In conclusion: McNabb the Tragic Hero

I ran through the game mostly in chronological order, but did save one piece for the end. Because you can find interesting tidbits in any of the 60 minutes of game time, but my favorite discovery from the entire broadcast came from Pam Oliver’s sideline report on McNabb just before kickoff.

Take it away, Pam: “As for the possibility of a quarterback— first time in a Super Bowl— the game going too fast for him… He said he acknowledges that but he’s gonna make it a point that when he steps on the field, to consciously slow his mind down.”

That’s a pretty amazing quote. Donovan McNabb said before the game that he would consciously slow things down for himself. And now we all know what happened next.

I don’t really blame him though. That’s a pretty normal athlete quote. It’s exactly the kind of thing Tom Brady gets praised for—slowing down, not panicking, remaining poised in the big moment.

But that is almost spooky to read, knowing how much has been said about that slow drive over the last 10 years.

It’s as if he took his own advice too literally, and it inevitably was his downfall.

In some sense I feel bad for McNabb. Much of Philadelphia never truly appreciated him. That stems from a variety of reasons, but many of them point back to this game.

And McNabb has since served as a convenient scapegoat. Whether because of his Twitter feed, or his knowledge of overtime rules, it’s just easy to use him as a punchline.

But similar to what I wrote about his ability to keep the team in the Super Bowl through three quarters, blaming McNabb for his inability to win a Super Bowl distracts from the credit he deserves for getting them close so many times.

I spent some time today wondering what would have happened if the Eagles had just gone three-and-out instead of slogging through that entire drive. It’s hard to say if people would have simply accepted the fact the Eagles lost to a better team, or if they would have found something else to fixate on.

It seems some people see their legacies tarnished more for getting closer to the big moment. It’s like when fans compare Joe Montana to Tom Brady and take away points from Brady because he lost two Super Bowls. But isn’t it better to have lost than to never have made it at all?

Would McNabb’s legacy be better off if he had lost the Super Bowl quietly, like Kerry Collins or Matt Hasselbeck? Or if he had never reached it like, say, Philip Rivers might not? Or Randall Cunningham or Mark Brunell?

McNabb was so good, that he made people care so much, that people are still mad at him for how he played at crunch time.

It’s a far cry from winning a Super Bowl, but there are worse legacies to have than that.

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