Donovan McNabb complained to Eagles head coach Andy Reid and owner Jeffrey Lurie that “no one in the organization ever stepped up and said anything” about the criticism the quarterback endured since his first season in the NFL, according to an interview that appears in the current issue of GQ magazine.
McNabb, who was traded to Washington in April, said he aired his concerns in a meeting after the 2008 season.
“We sat down and talked, and I got everything off my chest from [1999] on,” McNabb said. “It went all the way back to the [Terrell Owens] situation, it went back to us not winning big games, me being criticized for whatever, leadership. . . .
“They’ll say something to you in the building, but not publicly. My feeling was, ‘I’m out here getting cut up, where are you? I’m always defending and helping you guys, but where’s that support?’ ”
The meeting itself isn’t news. It was held in February 2009, but Lurie wasn’t present. McNabb and his agent, Fletcher Smith, sat down with Reid and team president Joe Banner, according to an Eagles official. Reid, through a team spokesman, said that he wouldn’t “comment about what was said.”
An Eagles official confirmed that McNabb was critical of the organization in that meeting, and that the team didn’t agree with his characterization.
The full question-and-answer interview with McNabb appears on GQ.com.
The Q&A includes familiar McNabb topics: the draft-day booing; the Rush Limbaugh and T.O. controversies; the matter of did-he-or-did-he-not-puke in the final moments of the Eagles’ Super Bowl loss to New England, and, of course, the Easter Sunday trade to the division-rival Redskins.
Full story: McNabb airs his take on long Eagles run | Philadelphia Inquirer | 08/24/2010