Late in September, 2003, you’ll recall, Rush Limbaugh shot off his big mouth on ESPN and said what a number of people in the football establishment were saying to each other but dared not say publicly. According to Limbaugh, Donovan McNabb was overrated because the sports press wanted a great black quarterback to praise; the real factor behind the Eagles’ success, Limbaugh said, was their defense.

The truth of what Limbaugh said was so obvious that I wrote an article in his defense for Slate (even my family avoided me for a couple of days after that). No matter what stats you looked at, the Eagles from 2001-03 ranked much higher on defense than on offense. Through McNabb’s first five years in the league, his NFL passer rating was barely over 80; it had never gotten higher than 86 in 2002. Yet McNabb was getting serious All-Pro and MVP consideration. What was there to argue about?

Well, there was the part about the press wanting a black superstar quarterback. On that count, Limbaugh was absolutely right. I have sat in the company of sportswriters who have said exactly that, and I have no problem admitting that I myself have rooted for McNabb to succeed because he is black. Philadelphia, as many black athletes have had occasion to observe, is a tough town and well behind most major northern cities in its racial attitudes. I’ve been hoping for a great black quarterback to come along and stick it to Philadelphia fans for a long time, and I don’t see why I should have to apologize for rooting for Donovan McNabb because he’s black any more than my father had to apologize for rooting for Jackie Robinson.

I don’t pretend to equate the two, but think of it this way: Robinson broke the first barrier, and McNabb, in a way, is out to break the last. Warren Moon, had he not spent so much time in the Canadian Football League, and if he’d managed to hook up with a better team, probably would have been the first great quarterback. Randall Cunningham always seemed to be on the verge of greatness, but he could never win the big game. This year, the great black quarterback has arrived – almost, anyway – and guess what? His name is Donovan McNabb.

The excuse up to now has been that McNabb hasn’t had any great receivers, and Terrell Owens is supposed to have changed all that. Baloney. Receivers don’t create great quarterbacks – just ask Tim Brown. It’s great quarterbacks who make great receivers.

This past season, McNabb posted by far his highest QB rating, 104.7, while running the ball only 41 times, which is 30 fewer than last season and 45 fewer than in 2000. That’s not a coincidence. This was the year that McNabb stopped trying to beat everyone with his athletic ability and began to mature. He started using his mobility to get his receivers open, and he did a fine job of spreading the ball around.

The Eagles’ much-maligned wide receivers, Todd Pinkston and Freddie Mitchell, caught 58 balls in 2004 and averaged, collectively, just under 18 yards per catch, the best numbers of their careers. They weren’t the heavy-duty wideouts, of course; Owens caught 19 more passes than both of them combined. You can argue that Pinkston and Mitchell were better simply because Owens was attracting so much attention on the other side of the field, but then you’d have to explain why the Eagles’ tight ends did so well – L.J. Smith and Chad Lewis caught 63 passes and eight touchdowns between them. Nor did Owens cause the flowering of scat back Brian Westbrook, who caught 73 passes for just under 10 yards a catch and scored six touchdowns.

In previous seasons McNabb has been overrated, but those who think he can’t win without Terrell Owens are underrating him now. Did Owens’s presence help the Eagles’ other receivers improve? Yes, certainly, but beware of overrating the impact of a single receiver.

In his three previous seasons with the 49ers, Owens averaged just under 14 yards per catch. This season, he had the highest yards per catch average of his career. In 2002, Jeff Garcia, throwing primarily to Owens, averaged 6.3 yards per throw; in 2003 he averaged 6.9. This year, at Cleveland, he averaged 6.9. In terms of effectiveness, the absence of Owens didn’t seem to bother Garcia at all. All this would indicate that Saturday’s game will be won or lost on the basis of McNabb’s performance.

Everyone is asking what McNabb is going to do with Owens out of the lineup. Simple: He’ll continue doing what he’s been successful at all season long, namely spreading the ball around, mixing short with long passes, and, then, in circumstances where he’s flushed out of his pocket, using his mobility to buy his receivers some time.

Don’t be surprised to see Westbrook used as a third wide receiver in the Eagles’ standard offensive set, with more of the rushing chores handled by veteran Dorsey Levens (whose yards per rush average, of 4.4 is only 0.2 lower than Westbrook’s). And don’t be surprised to see McNabb call his own number and keep the ball for a long gainer early in the game just to remind the Vikings that he can do it.

I’m going to assume that the Eagles will win this game by at least 10 points – they certainly should, since the Minnesota Vikings are a bad football team and don’t deserve to even be in the playoffs. But the Philadelphia defense will have to stop a pass-catch combination at least the equal of McNabb-Owens in Daunte Culpepper-Randy Moss, and the Eagles will be concentrating most of their defensive weapons in containing Moss.

Neither defense will have an easy time of it Sunday, but the Eagles are better equipped to stop Culpepper-to-Moss than the Vikings are to stop McNabb-to-anybody.