NFL What If?

Quarterback Donovan McNabb has missed 21 starts in his 10-year career due to injury; 5 games in 2002 with a broken Ankle, 7 in 2005 with a sports hernia, 6 in 2006 with a torn ACL and 2 in 2007 with a sprained thumb on his throwing hand. Even though these injuries are completely unrelated and none of them have had lasting effects on his playing ability many people have still (unfairly?) labeled him as injury prone - but that's an argument for another time.

Today my goal is to ask one simple question: What if McNabb had stayed injury free his entire
career up to this point? What kind of seasons would he have had statistically?

I don't have a fancy computer at my disposal like the guys at the real What If Sports do, so I relied on a very simple formula for computing McNabb's overall stats. I figured out what his per-game average for each category was and multiplied it by 16, then rounded to the nearest whole number (except for Completion %, Yards Per Attempt and QB ratings - those I rounded to the nearest tenth.)

I did not weight my calculations based on the defenses that he was facing, injuries to other Eagles or opponent players, weather conditions, home/away games, or any other factors. This is purely an examination of his statistical averages stretched out to an entire season.

The fewest games McNabb has ever started in one season is 9 - meaning that he has always started more than half a season - which is plenty of time to establish a statistical trend. It would be a completely different story if he had only started one game because that's not enough to establish anything. Essentially, the more games you have to calculate season totals from, the more accurate the calculations become.

Another thing to note: I did not account for time McNabb may have missed in a game that he started. For instance, McNabb tore his ACL before halftime against the Titans in 2006. He played less than half a game that week, but my process counts it as a full game. Therefore some statistics may be skewed slightly lower. Maybe later I'll go through and calculate his per-quarter statistics and I might get slightly more accurate totals.

Lastly, I only adjusted the totals for games that McNabb missed due to injury. He didn't play the last week of the 2004 season because the Eagles had already clinched home field advantage. He also didn't play some games his rookie season.

So, how does McNabb fare according to my statistics? Let's take a look.

Here are McNabb's official, unaltered stats (sorry it's kinda small):

Here are his "What If?" stats, with the altered seasons highlighted:
So, had McNabb stayed healthy, how would he have performed? Pretty darn well, actually.

In 2002 he would have ranked 8th in total yards, tied for 2nd in TDs and posted the 7th best QB rating.

In 2005 he would have ranked 1st in passing yards by nearly 350 yards and would have been tied for 2nd in TDs.

In 2006 he would have ranked 4th in passing yards and 2nd in TDs while posting the 4th best QB rating.

2007 was the year Tom Brady decided to rewrite the record books, but McNabb still would have ended with respectable totals, ranking 9th in yards and 10th in TDs with a 9th place QB rating.

All-in-all McNabb at his worst performs as a top-10 QB. At his best he's a top-3, right up there with Tom Brady and Payton Manning.