Donovan McNabb tends to be a very politically correct person when he talks on his weekly radio show on ESPN 980, so much so that I often just skip it because he doesn't really have all that much to say. But this week is different. This week, McNabb had to talk about Mike Shanahan's decision to bench him in favor of Rex Grossman, and said he was still very upset about the way the whole thing was handled.
"Everything was handled awkwardly, somewhat to a disrespect to me and the team," he said. "Because of the timing and all the leaks and everything that was put out there. ... Someone says something and an issue is out. There was no 'He's our quarterback, this is what we're doing, bla bla bla.' Everything else was like ... wow 'I'm hearing everything throughout the media.'"
McNabb said it was the way the decision was handled that bothered him more than the decision itself. He said he learned he was the third-string quarterback through the media, and that bugged him.
"The way this whole thing went down, to me it was off. It was something I strongly disagree with," he said. "You get in that situation and all of a sudden you get this news a couple days before the game, you do feel somewhat disrespected."
McNabb seemed to imply a few things that indicated his displeasure. For example, he agreed that going from first-string to third-string quarterback was a bit "demeaning," and said that he didn't really understand why he was the only player who had to be pulled for "evaluating" someone else.
McNabb still says he wants to remain in Washington D.C. and says his relationship with Mike Shanahan hasn't been damaged. He said he wants to finish what he started, and that he wasn't looking for an apology for how things went down ("let's just move on").
However, he didn't have the same kind of things to say about Kyle Shanahan, his offensive coordinator. He was asked how reports that he and Kyle don't get along got out, and McNabb said he had an idea of who leaked them, but wouldn't say. Then, he said this:
"Believe me, I know where some of it is coming from. I thought we had a good relationship. I don't know. From my side of things, i thought we had a good relationship."
McNabb also said that he hasn't talked to Dan Snyder or Bruce Allen about the decision, but has talked to "the janitors, cooks [and] chefs." So there's that.