NFL: Donovan McNabb Dissed by Eagles’ DE Trent Cole

Posted by Sabrina B. @gametimegirl – Redskins/Eagles play tonight for MNF.  Check back later and let us know who you got!

Donovan McNabb simply cannot find himself getting any respect. While Mike and Kyle Shanahan have alreday jumped on McNabb’s case and made a mockery of him publicly for the last two weeks – they haven’t been the only ones disrespecting Donovan McNabb. Eagles defensive end Trent Cole said in a SIRIUS radio interview last week that McNabb was “not that difficult a quarterback to play against.”

Ever since, Cole has been trying to explain what he meant. But in sessions with reporters in the NovaCare locker room both Friday and Saturday, what Cole ended up explaining was that he thought . . . McNabb was not that difficult to play against.

In fairness, Cole was reacting to a question in the interview about what makes McNabb so difficult to play against, and his larger point was along the lines of, “Hey, it wasn’t him beating us in that Oct. 3 game, it was us beating ourselves.” McNabb completed just eight of 19 passes that day against his former team, for 125 yards, a touchdown and a pick. He was 2-for-11 for 10 yards in the second half, though he did scramble 18 yards on a crucial third-and-4 with less than 4 minutes left in the 17-12 Washington victory.

“We lost a game, we didn’t lose against Donovan McNabb,” Cole said during his attempts to explain. Then he talked about how when you play the Titans, for example, you have to scheme to contain running back Chris Johnson, but when you play the Redskins, you prepare for the whole offense, not for McNabb. Which would seem to be another way of saying McNabb is not that hard to prepare to play.

“He’s good. You gotta worry about him,” Cole said of Johnson. “That’s one guy you’ve got to key on.”

But not McNabb?

“No,” Cole said. “It’s a team thing. I’m worried about winning this game, against the Washington Redskins . . . It isn’t the quarterback you go against.”

Cole, who leads the Eagles with seven sacks, also said “you’ve got to respect” McNabb. If the Eagles win tonight, Cole said, “People are going to say, ‘Oh, you all went down there to get back at McNabb.’ When we win, you can say that at the end of the game . . . But we’re going down there to win against the Washington Redskins.”

Rookie defensive end Brandon Graham didn’t offer any opinions on where McNabb falls in the preparation hierarchy, but he did say that when you’re rushing him, “don’t go for the pump-fake.”

Graham said he scrutinized how the Lions defended McNabb in that 37-25 Detroit victory on Halloween, the Redskins’ last game before their bye.

“D-line got after him. Stopped their run, got a couple sacks, and the game was pretty much over, because them boys got rattled a little bit. That’s what I thought,” Graham said. “I could just see Donovan didn’t trust that he was protected back there. He just looked like — at times, he had somebody there, but the pressure just made him throw it away.”

Max protect

Right guard Max Jean-Gilles practiced Saturday and apparently will start tonight at right guard. Jean-Gilles said his main concussion symptom was blurred vision, but that cleared up early in the week, a day or 2 after the Birds’ victory over Indianapolis.

To get back on the field Saturday, Jean-Gilles had to pass the Eagles’ testing, then be cleared by independent neurologist Dr. William Welch.

“He had me do everything with my eyes closed, walk backwards, heel-to-toe,” Jean-Gilles said.