Only time will tell but it looks like Easter Sunday’s blockbuster trade with the Washington Redskins is a big Win-Win for both Donovan McNabb and the Philadelphia Eagles.

After 11 eventful years, it’s a well-deserved fresh start for both No. 5 and the Birds. Unquestionably, both the quarterback and the team needed a change after repeatedly coming ever so close to a Super Bowl championship.

Regrettably, Donovan will be remembered by most fans primarily for his failure to win The Big Game, whether it was Super Bowl XXIX against the New England Patriots or the other four NFC championship contests against the St. Louis Rams, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Carolina Panthers, and Arizona Cardinals.

That’s unfortunate because McNabb’s legacy encompasses one of the greatest careers ever enjoyed by a Philadelphia athlete in any professional sport. Just think for a moment: how many other cities would be absolutely overjoyed to have a quarterback lead their team to five NFC championship games in the space of eight years? Hopefully Donovan’s accomplishments will be recognized some day by his induction into the Pro Football of Fame wearing Eagles Green.

In addition to establishing all-time Eagles’ franchise records for a quarterback in every meaningful statistical category—including, among others, 148 games, 32,873 passing yards, 2,801 completions, and 216 touchdowns—Mc Nabb provided fans with a host of unforgettable highlight reel moments. Who will ever forget the magical “4th and 26 completion that helped the Birds edge the Green Bay Packers to advance in the 2004 NFC divisional playoffs. Or his courageous performance in 2002 when he threw for four TDS against Arizona playing the entire game on a fractured right ankle. The list goes on and on.

And even more impressive: unlike too many athletes these days, McNabb embodies all of the admirable qualities that fans prefer in their sports stars. In addition to consistently being accessible and cooperative with the media, he is a class guy, solid citizen, good family man, a generous philanthropist, etc., etc.

And yet, as Ray Didinger, my co-author of The Eagles Encyclopedia, put it: McNabb was respected by the Philadelphia fans, but not really loved. He was never really embraced by the fans of this city like some of his teammates; Brian Dawkins, for example.

So let the Kevin Kolb era begin, hopefully, somehow, sometime climaxed with the successful acquisition of the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

As for the Redskins, here again, only time will tell but one thing’s for sure—Washington took a huge step up in class on Easter Sunday.

One day back in 1946, shortly after he was elected NFL Commissioner, Bert Bell was relaxing with some of his friends from the Narberth Sunrise Society at their hangout at Davis General Store, in Narberth, PA. “Hey Bert,” one of them shouted. “What happens if there is a tie in a championship game? I’m a big pro football fan, but the thought of co-champions really turns me off!”

Bert thought about the problem with tie games for a long time. Then a light came on: We’ll play an extra period….the first team to score wins the game…Sudden Death!

When the owners got together the following January in Chicago, a few of them initially resisted the commissioner’s proposal for Sudden Death. To some, the idea of “co-champions” was appealing. After listening to their arguments for a while, he finally stood up and said, “You realize of course that if you have co-champions, you’ll have to send two teams to Chicago for the annual All-Star game (pitting the NFL champions against a college All America team). That means full pay for twice as many players.”

That did it. As soon as the financial issue was raised with the cash-starved owners, they quickly fell in line and passed a motion that the sudden death method of deciding tie scores for divisional playoff and championship games only is to be included in the playing rules.

Bell’s dream was finally realized when the Baltimore Colts defeated the New York Giants for the NFL Championship, 23-17, at Yankee Stadium on December 28, 1958. Alan Ameche went over from the one yard line to score the winning TD, 8 minutes and 15 seconds into the first overtime game in history.

That game, more than any other, propelled professional football into the national consciousness.

The idea for a player draft was triggered by an incident that occurred in 1933. That’s when Bert Bell, the founder of the Philadelphia Eagles, telephoned Stanley Kostka, an outstanding Minnesota fullback and linebacker, at his home in Minneapolis.

“I asked him point blank if he would sign with the Eagles if I came out there and offered him a contract for more money than anyone else in the league would give him,” Bell explained. “He said yes. So in the situation, I went to Minneapolis. We met in a hotel. I asked him how much he had been offered by other clubs. He told me the top was $3,500. I’ll give you $4,000, I told him. But Kostka hemmed and hawed, said he had to think it over, give my offer more serious consideration. I told him to take an hour to make up his mind.

“Actually in the situation, I knew what was in his mind. He wanted to get to a telephone and call the club (Brooklyn) which had offered him $3,500 to see if they’d top my offer. Apparently, he couldn’t make the connection because when he came back, he still hadn’t made up his mind. I told him, look, I’ll give you $6,000 if you’ll sign now and let me go home. He hedged. So I left.”

Bell, who later became NFL commissioner, said that he thought about the Kostka situation all the way home. “I made up my mind that this league would never survive unless we had some system whereby each team had an even chance to bid for talent against the other,” he said.

After Bell’s Eagles finished with a 2-9 record in 1935, he set out to convince his fellow owners that only an equitable player draft could save the league from going out of business.

He suggested that at the end of every college football season, the owners pool the names of all eligible seniors, then make their selections in inverse order of the standings, with the lowest team picking first. After a long, contentious debate, his idea was adopted unanimously to become effective for the 1936 season.

As one writer said years later, Bell’s idea for the draft “in fact, has turned out to be the single greatest contributor to the NFL’s prosperity over the past 84 years.”

After he became commissioner of the National Football League, Bert Bell went to great lengths to emphasize that the league was so balanced that a team could win any given game at any time—even if it was an decided underdog.

“Both my brother Upton and I heard my father say On any given Sunday…many times,” recalled Bert., Jr., who obtained intellectual rights to the phrase a number of years ago.

On November 30, 1958, Pittsburgh upset the Chicago Bears, 24-10 for the Steelers’ first win over the Bears in 14 games spanning more than 24 years. Afterwards, a sportswriter asked Bell what he thought of the game.

“It doesn’t matter in the NFL how many games you win, what your score is, how well you do,” he replied. “On any given Sunday, any team in the NFL can win.”

“Commissioner Bert Bell had already coined a phrase that was soon to become a slogan: On any given Sunday, any team in the NFL can beat any other,” Tom Callahan wrote in his book “Johnny: The Life and Times of John Unitas.”

But after the Steelers-Bears game that day in 1958, the commissioner’s favorite saying received even more attention and was well on its way to becoming the defining axiom of the NFL. It remains as the league’s most prominent slogan to this day.