Donovan McNabb’s mother is wrong — or maybe it wasn’t McNabb’s mother but the guy on “Saturday Night Live” who played her last year in a sketch on Weekend Update where she — I mean, he — said, “Brett Favre is better than you!” That, of course, was a play off Terrell Owens’s comments last fall that the Eagles would be “better off with Brett Favre at quarterback.”

What in the world was TO thinking? (But then, what in the world is TO ever thinking?) Possibly he was just echoing the collective thoughts of millions of Philadelphia Eagles fans who always seem to be looking for reasons to dis McNabb.

Last year, Brett Favre was about the worst quarterback in the league, with a 6.4 yard a throw average and 29 interceptions with a mere 20 TDs. McNabb, though he played only nine games because of injury, averaged 7.0 yards a pass with nine interceptions and 16 TDs. And, by the way, 2005 was the second straight season that McNabb was better than Favre, though TO no doubt thinks that McNabb’s 2004 performance, in which he averaged 8.3 yards a throw with 31 TDs and eight picks, was due to the presence of Terrell Owens.

Well, there was no TO in the lineup Monday night when McNabb rebounded from a mediocre first half performance to shred the Packer secondary in the second half, passing for 288 yards overall and two second half TDs in a 31–9 rout of Green Bay. (For the record, Favre was miserable, throwing 44 passes for only 205 yards with no touchdowns and two interceptions.) In fact, it’s time to acknowledge that Donovan McNabb has become what experts were saying six or seven years that he ought to be, namely, one of the best quarterbacks in the league. Through four games, he has a sensational 106.0 passer rating, third in the league behind Houston’s David Carr and Kansas City’s David Huard, neither of whom has thrown nearly as many passes as McNabb.

For those who put more stock in the simpler statistic of yards per pass, he is averaging slightly over 8.7 yards a toss, tops in the NFL so far. He has nine touchdown passes in four games, with just one interception. He has also run for two TDs, both in the Monday night game against Green Bay. Put it this way: If the NFL season ended tomorrow, Donovan McNabb would be the leading candidate for MVP.

Partly because he performed poorly in the closing minutes of the 2005 Super Bowl and partly because of all the nonsense surrounding Rush Limbaugh’s comments about him, to say nothing of Terrell Owens’s own, a lot of people snicker at the idea that Donovan McNabb is a great quarterback. In refutation to this were some stats posted on Monday Night Football comparing Favre’s first 92 NFL starts with McNabb’s. Over the his first 92 games, Favre’s teams were in the playoffs four times, won two NFC titles, and went to one Super Bowl. McNabb’s teams, over his first 92 games, were in the playoffs five times, won four NFC titles and were in the Super Bowl one time. Favre went 61–30, McNabb 62–29. Favre has a Super Bowl ring to show for those games while McNabb doesn’t — if that’s all that you place your value on.

For their careers, they are remarkably similar in their quality numbers. Favre’s overall QB rating is 86.0, while McNabb, after Monday night’s game, is 85.1. Favre, for most of his career, has thrown more often than McNabb, though the gap is not as wide as many think, with Favre averaging about 34 passes a game to 31.5 for McNabb. Mc-Nabb has been a far more productive runner — 2,600 yards and 23 touchdowns in eight seasons including this one. In his entire career, Favre has rushed for 1,740 yards and 12 TDs. Offhand, I’d call it a jump ball: There is no objective evidence that Favre was better then than McNabb is now.

Where does McNabb go from here? Unlike most quarterbacks with a reputation as a great runner, he may be looking at his best seasons beyond the age of 30 (which he will turn on November 25). Most quarterbacks who rely too much on their legs go sharply downhill in their late 20s because of all the wear and tear, but McNabb has gotten smarter with age and learned to use his speed and mobility to give his receivers more time to break into the open. In his first five seasons, he passed 2,117 times and ran 349 times, one run for about every six passes. Since then, over the last three seasons, he has been far more judicious, throwing 969 passes and running 82 times, or, one run for every 11.8 passes.

In other words, McNabb is running only half as often as he used to, and consequently, he’s become a far more effective passer. For the first five years of his career, he averaged 6.2 yards a throw, and since then, 7.9. If he continues this pace for another couple of seasons, he should be able to convince Terrell Owens and even his own mother that he’s a great quarterback. Eagles fans, no doubt, will take a little longer.

Mr. Barra is the author of “The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.”