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McNabb answers critical column from NAACP leaderESPN.com news services


Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb has expressed surprise and disappointment after hearing of racially charged criticism made by Philadelphia NAACP president J. Whyatt Mondesire in a Nov. 27 column in the Philadelphia Sun.


Mondesire, the Sun's publisher and editor, wrote that McNabb is a "mediocre talent" who tries to disguise his ineffectiveness behind "some concocted reasoning" that African-American quarterbacks who scramble are somehow lesser "field generals."

McNabb, who endured Rush Limbaugh's comments just a few years earlier, was baffled by Mondesire's remarks.

"Especially being the same color I am," McNabb told the Philadelphia Inquirer. "Obviously if it's someone else who is not African-American, it's racism. But when someone of the same race talks about you because you're selling out because you're not running the ball, it goes back to: What are we really talking about here?

"If you talk about my play, that's one thing. When you talk about my race, now we've got problems. If you're trying to make a name off my name, again, I hope your closet is clean because something is going to come out about you ... I always thought the NAACP supported African-Americans and didn't talk bad about them. Now you learn a little bit more."

Mondesire also claimed that McNabb's "failure as a team leader off the field" led to the Terrell Owens situation. If McNabb "had the courage to offer only a tiny fraction" of his bonus to Owens and running back Brian Westbrook, Mondesire wrote, the "media circus" could have been avoided.

"When you go deep into that, or say I didn't stick up for someone, or why didn't I give a little bit of my money to someone else who is making money, you try to find an answer for that," McNabb told the Phialdelphia Daily News. "There's no answer that I've found."

McNabb plans to move on from Mondesire's column, but for the first time in his Eagles' tenure, McNabb has to answer questions about locker-room leadership.

"This season was a tough season from the beginning," McNabb told the Inquirer. "People may blame it on just one particular person, but ... it's something that kind of spread in the locker room.

"There's never been a question of me losing the locker room until this year. If I've lost the locker room, then the question goes up why. Is it because now people are starting to look at me sideways for what I've been doing, or what I make, or whatever he had a problem with? That's the question I'm trying to get answered: If I've lost the locker room or not? No answer has come my way.

"But I do know the main reason we're not a good team is because we don't play as a team. Everybody has to realize that in order for us to get back to the Super Bowl and win it, we all have to play well together. You never heard anything like this coming from the Indianapolis Colts. You never heard anything like this coming from the New England Patriots. Baltimore, when they won the Super Bowl, they never had anything like this."