I was fully intending to write about baseball tonight, but two things changed that – the opening night game between the Yankees and the Red Sox was a total dud with abysmal pitching on both sides, and the Eagles lost their minds. There really is only one story tonight, and it’s a good one.

Let’s start with Philadelphia. I absolutely support their decision to cut ties with Donovan McNabb. He’s been a good quarterback for a lot of years, but he has never won anything for them, he’s fragile, and he’s become more and more of a diva with each passing year. Kevin Kolb has some obvious talent and the team clearly believes in him as do the nfl odds makers, so this is a good time to extract maximum value from McNabb while they can while putting themselves in a good position moving forward. It also helps out their salary position as well. So far, so good.

Where they totally lose me, though, is with the decision to trade him to Washington. There is not a single good reason for them to trade to a division rival. That’s just plain stupid. They have to play Washington twice a year, and the Skins have some nice pieces to play iwth this year, so they aren’t going to be easy for Philly to beat against the nfl point spread – even without the added incentive from McNabb to play well against his former team. There are only two possible reasons to justify this deal, and neither seem to be relevant here. First, it would be okay if McNabb were clearly and obviously unable to contribute at a high level. That’s not the case. He’s coming off a good year, and if he can stay healthy he’s still a top 10 quarterback without a doubt – and a massive upgrade over anything the Redskins had. Second, you could justify it if the price was significantly higher than anyone else was willing to pay. I just don’t believe that to be true, either – enough teams were interested that the second pick could have been gotten from someone else somewhere. This might not work out as a bad deal, but there is a big chance that it will, and there’s no good reason for the Eagles to take that unnecessary risk or nfl gamble. Bad deal.