Rich Hofmann of the Philadelphia Inquirer speculates that if the Eagles lose their Wild Card matchup to the Cowboys on Saturday that the team will look to dump Donovan McNabb in the offseason.

Is this the last go-round for Donovan McNabb, the man who has done everything a Philadelphia quarterback can do except for the one thing that everybody so desperately wants him to do?

Personally, I think this is it. I think the club made that clear without saying it by giving McNabb a raise during the offseason but declining to extend his contract past the 2010 season. If they win a Super Bowl, of course, things change. If they get to another NFC Championship Game, and McNabb plays great, things change. Short of that, though, I think it’s over.

Eleven years is a long time for a quarterback in one city. Five years is a long time for a fan base to be locked in perpetual debate about a quarterback – and that is how long Eagles fans have been burying me in a digital avalanche every time I type the guy’s name, pro or con. Ever since that achingly slow fourth-quarter drive in the Super Bowl, when McNabb either did or did not throw up in the huddle, the town has been thoroughly divided. During the flash points, you can read the exhaustion on everyone’s face, including McNabb’s. Another flash point is coming, maybe as soon as tomorrow night. When this season is over, there is nothing that anybody will say concerning McNabb that hasn’t already been said a million times. The answer here is not obvious until you look at the contract. McNabb has trade value only as long as he is under contract – which means you trade him now or you have to extend him for X-number of years after the season, with a new signing bonus and plenty of color and pageantry (and a likely one-way ticket out the door for Kevin Kolb, whom you have previously identified as your future).

If the Eagles lose tomorrow, does anybody really think they are going to do that? Or that they should?

This has been a heated debate for years. Some feel as though Eagle fans should be happy getting to the playoffs on a regular basis, even though they come up short of a Super Bowl victory every year. But when you watch the same product repeatedly fail over and over again, you get tired of it.

Personally, if you have a quarterback that can consistently get a team to the playoffs every year, or every other year or whatever, they have to hold onto him. But I understand the frustration that Eagle fans go through in that the team is always knocking on the door of more and never producing.

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