Report: Grossman Starting on Sunday

[Beemnseven]

Originally Posted by Dirtbag359

Mainly to preserve any trade value that McNabb might grant us. In that case there's to schools of thought with teams that might potentially be interested in McNabb. The first school says we should wait for him to be released and then proceed to attempt and sign him as a free agent. The other school says we have no chance if we have to compete on a level playing field with other teams for his services, ergo we need to attempt and trade for him before he hits free agency.

As long as you have teams in the latter you will have trade value for McNabb but benching him leads other teams to believe that you will release him if all else fails which drives down the asking price towards teams willing to deal. Then again the benching might lead other teams to believe they have a shot at dealing for him in the first place.

Either way I think Sally Jenkins summed it up best in that the benching lets us see not only what we have in our other QB's but also a chance to find out if McNabb is the source of our offensive woe's. Obviously if the offensive starts playing well without McNabb than we know that the QB is at fault for our measly 18.3 points per game.

One of the recurring myths in this thread is that Donovan McNabb's trade value was somehow through the roof up to this point. At best we might have been looking at a 4th or 5th round pick if he'd played the season out as our starter. That might even be pushing it.

His decline was apparent to anyone paying attention much earlier than this. In fact, I remember listening to Trent Dilfer on Colin Cowherd's show talking about McNabb having his worst season as a pro. That was before the benching in Detroit. We were never going to cash in on a bucket full of draft picks thanks to McNabb's performance this year, folks.