I promised earlier this week that I would go into greater detail on exactly why I think the Bears would be ill-served in trading Lance Briggs for Donovan McNabb as very, very, very vague rumors have proposed. You will have to bear with me, as it is currently just short of 10PM on the East Coast, it's Memorial Day and I am slightly intoxicated and working my way to full-on drunk. So there won't be any links because I am not very motivated to be a responsible blogger.

Donovan McNabb is not the answer to the Bears problems. I don't think that the team would be any better served with him under center than they were/are with Rex Grossman. I am not saying that Rex is a more talented pure passer than McNabb, or a better quarterback. I just don't think McNabb can win a Super Bowl, so to pick up a high profile, expensive, aging player would hurt a team on the brink like the Bears more than it will help.

Yes, McNabb is a Chicago native, but that seems to be the sole virtue he would bring to the table in this equation. The pressure on him to push himself and the team over the threshold will be astronomical. Anything less than a Super Bowl championship would probably close the window for the player and the team.

This is a very difficult situation for a Caucasian blogger to express any negative sentiments about Donovan McNabb. Thanks to Rush Limbaugh's comments, McNabb is essentially untouchable. Since Limbaugh was so wrong, so far behind the times and so out of his element, it has made it nearly impossible to offer any kind of analysis of McNabb's game that does not take on any taint of racism.

The real problem, in my way of thinking, when evaluating McNabb is that no one stops to ask the question what if McNabb were the quarterback of my team? No matter what you might think of him battling through the broken leg and throwing 5 TDs against the Cardinals some years back or tbat famous episode where he scrambled for 15 seconds and cost the Cowboys a playoff spot, one must consider at least one unpleasant fact.

At the end of the day, there is the denouement to the thirty ninth Super Bowl. Donovan McNabb was vomiting and too ill, apparently, to lead the Philadephia Eagles on a drive that could have tied or won the game. If that doesn't alarm the football fans who venture into this space, I wonder what will.

Donovan McNabb is supposed to be a world class athlete. I might be wrong, but I find myself remembering moments of extreme stress which find athletes prevailing against the odds. Montana's game winning drive against the Bengals, Havlichek steals it or Bird's steal and pass to DJ to win Game 5 against the Pistons leap to mind. Then one must consider the varied late game heroics of Michael Jordan.

If one takes the time to do all that thinking, one should realize that there is one common denominator. Never, in any of the instances I have mentioned, has the hero been so wracked by intestinal difficulty that he could not call a play in the huddle. And yet there was more than a minute left on the clock when the Eagles got the ball for the last time in that game against the Patriots, but he couldn't mount any kind of drive. But Donovan McNabb couldn't manage to bring his team to overtime, let alone a win.

Not only did McNabb fail to accomplish that goal, but he failed to do it in any of the three years prior to that when the Eagles made it to the NFC title game, but never reached the Promised Land. When one considers the fact that the Eagles had the best player on the field in that game against the Patriots in Terrell Owens, the ball and time enough to accomplish what they, as a team had presumably been contracted to do, one has to wonder exactly why they lost. And McNabb vomiting and being too ill to call plays in the huddle has to be at the top of the list.

Perhaps I am too much of a pessimist, but I subscribe to the theory on aging first propounded by Marsellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction. People age like wine only in so far as they deteriorate and turn into vinegar. The overwhelming majority of athletes fall apart as they get older. The only sport where that seems no longer to apply is baseball, where players can pitch into their 40s. Somehow, if Clemens had to dodge 300 pound lineman, 250 pound linebackers and 200 pound defensive backs each time he threw a pitch, I don't think he'd be back at age 44. But that's just me.

So with his age, his injury history and his lack of performance in big games taken into consideration, I'd rather the Bears played Grossman for another year. Even if the team has to scramble to replace him in the next offseason, he's younger, cheaper and less likely to get hurt than McNabb (I am not overlooking the fact that Grossman has for all intents and purposes played about a season and a half in his 3 seasons to date). The team had a nice run in spite of him killing them in key moments last season. And when you get right down to it, I don't think McNabb is a champion.

On an unrelated note, I turned off the Sox game when it was 2-0, right after the Lowell double that plated the second run. It was too depressing to watch and Die Hard 3 was on one of the Encore channels. So I don't know how it has turned out, and I am afraid to look at the score. There has been so very little for me to be happy about in the baseball season to date that it's really taking a lot away from my favorite holiday weekend pastime (a bender that would kill 4 lesser men).

But tonight, Remy and Orsillo had a bald loser who appears in ads for the new state insurance coverage system. It was inordinately amusing to me, even though I hate the Remdawg. I don't know how many picked up on it, and I'd try to YouTube it if I were more motivated and maybe a bit less buzzed. But Remy had no time for the loser. I can't say I blame him, because the guest of honor was a tool. Absolute tool lacking even the credentials to become a tool of note on this site.

And watching Remy pretend like he gave a damn and wanted to ask the bald dude who called himself an actor despite only appearing in two commercials for the state health insurance program some questions made it slightly less painful to see the Red Sox take yet another early lead. The Remdawg had his hands in his pockets, he only half-looked at Baldie when he and Orsillo were doing the interview. Remy may have even rolled his eyes once or twice. It was probably his finest hour as a Red Sox broadcaster, very nearly reaching the point where he said: "Look, douche, you're a bald waste of space and you have no business appearing in the booth during the damn baseball game." If only he had more balls to tool on the guest for more than an impending marriage that will last a mere six months.