Local NAACP head isn't running from his criticism of McNabb

PHILADELPHIA -- Donovan McNabb is still taking shots -- the latest from an NAACP leader who criticized the quarterback's leadership skills and said he "played the race card" in explaining why he no longer runs the ball.

J. Whyatt Mondesire, who publishes a newspaper for blacks and is the president of the Philadelphia branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, recently wrote that the Eagles' star quarterback failed as a team leader and choked in the Super Bowl.

McNabb responded sharply, but Mondesire hasn't changed his stance.

"He doesn't get it," Mondesire said Wednesday. "If he got it, I wouldn't have written the article."

Mondesire, publisher of the Philadelphia Sunday Sun, criticized McNabb in a column in his newspaper on Dec. 4.

He wrote that McNabb's tendency to run the ball early in his career "not only confused defenses, it also thrilled Eagles fans," but that abandoning that element "by claiming that 'everybody expects black quarterbacks to scramble' not only amounts to a breach of faith but also belittles the real struggles of black athletes who've had to overcome real racial stereotypcasting in addition to downright segregation."

Mondesire said the bottom line is that McNabb is "not that good."

This season, Donovan McNabb stayed in the pocket -- maybe too much. (Getty Images)

"In essence Donny, you are mediocre at best," Mondesire wrote. "And trying to disguise that fact behind some concocted reasoning that African American quarterbacks who can scramble and who can run the ball are somehow lesser field generals ... is more insulting off the field than on."

McNabb was stunned by Mondesire's comments.

"Obviously, if it's someone else who is not African American, it's racism," McNabb told reporters attending his annual holiday party last Saturday. "But when someone of the same race talks about you because you're selling out because you're not running the ball, it goes back to, 'What are we really talking about here?'

"If you talk about my play, that's one thing. When you talk about my race, now we've got problems. If you're trying to make a name off my name, again, I hope your closet is clean because something is going to come out about you ... I always thought the NAACP supported African Americans and didn't talk bad about them. Now you learn a little bit more."

McNabb's season ended last month when he decided to have surgery for a sports hernia. It's been a miserable year for the five-time Pro Bowl selection, starting with his feud with now-banished wideout Terrell Owens.

Mondesire wrote that McNabb shared the blame for Owens' departure.