Responding to a question asking him to assess his play this season during his weekly press conference Wednesday, Eagles’ quarterback Donovan McNabb responded that he feels he’s played great.

“I think I’ve played great,” McNabb said. “I don’t look at the stats aspect of it, but if you do, then it is better than it has been in years. Offensively, we’ve been able to do some good things, and some things, obviously, we would love to change. I don’t regret any of the things that I’ve done this year. I’d love to do better in this game coming up … Certain things are just an inch away, not getting a first down here, or whatever it may be. Obviously, if we were able to get that done. we wouldn’t be sitting in this spot right now.”

Huh? Great? Really?

To be fair, McNabb has been much better than his critics have claimed this season, and over his career for that matter. But the leader of a team who tied the Cincinnati Bengals, lost to a Washington Redskins team with the self-claimed “worst coach in the NFL,” and was benched midway through a game in which his team was only down by one touchdown cannot claim to have played great.

Yes, his performance against the Cardinals, Giants, and Browns was very good, but his performance against the Bengals and Ravens were seven of the worst quarters of his career. And the Cardinals are clearly a fraud, the top team in the most abismal division in football; the Giants were reeling from the Plaxico Burress crisis; and the Browns are just plain terrible.

McNabb is a good quarterback, and at times a great quarterback. At 32 he is still one of the top-10 QBs in the NFL and is definitely who I want leading this team. But his me-against-the-world (i.e. the press) attitude is really getting old. As Les Bowen of the Philadelphia Daily News put it:

McNabb probably feels that he can’t betray any weakness, show any vulnerability, before a media corps he feels treats him unfairly. He learned that stubborn, willful refusal to engage on a human level at the feet of the master, Andy Reid.

While I think a lot of people want McNabb to be the Eagles’ quarterback, and he wants to be the QB here, I think a lot of people would be ok if both him and Reid moved on. Eagles fans are sick and tired of the same old song and dance. We are sick of Reid’s inability to adapt, to come through in the big game, and his infuriating press conferences. We are sick of McNabb’s overly defensive attitude.

We are sick of the dance. Are we ready for the Kevin Kolb era to start? No, I don’t think so. But we are ready for the current version of the McNabb/Reid era to end. It has definitely not been great.