Sam Donnellon of the Philly Daily News, in a dynamite column on why Reid and McNabb deserve more gratitude:
"We wanted Ricky Williams. We got Donovan McNabb. We wanted Dick Vermeil. We got Andy Reid. Both have been gifts, the former molded into one of the NFL's premier quarterbacks by the latter...Most cities complain that their quarterback can't play (which is currently true in Oakland, Washington, Miami, and about 15 other cities.) Philly complains when their quarterback smiles at a charity event the next day. Perspective, people. Please. Posted by Stephen Silver at November 14, 2006 06:06 PMSo why don't we like either? Why, when McNabb smiles in the huddle during a late-game collapse against the Giants, does he spend the next day explaining he was trying to keep himself and his team loose? Why, when he is filmed smiling at a pre-arranged children's charity event the day after that loss to Jacksonville, does a segment of the population express outrage in e-mails and over the airwaves? How dare he laugh? This is serious stuff. He doesn't care as much as we do. He doesn't take the losses seriously enough. Why, when I played in high school...
We know now what a disaster picking Williams over McNabb would have been, or even Tim Couch over McNabb would have been, or even Daunte Culpepper over McNabb would have been. So we got lucky. In McNabb, we got a gift we didn't want, but one that was better than anything we were asking for. And one that has been consummately more fun than those other, um, gifts would have been."