"There are not that many AfricanAmerican quarterbacks, " said McNabb, "so we have to do a little bit extraf I pass for 300 yards, our team wins by seven (and people say): 'Oh, he could have made this throw here or we would have scored more points if he would have done this'. They (white quarterbacks) don't get criticised as much as we do. They don't."

That such an opinion is enough to cause a minor bout of media hysteria is down to historical prejudice.

In a sport in which more than 70 per cent of the players are African-American, and where the late lawyer Johnnie Cochran led a legal campaign to force the league to employ more black coaches, just five of the 32 quarterbacks that started games last weekend were black. Even if at times in recent seasons the number has been double that, McNabb contends the nasty aftertaste from the decades when generations of gifted black footballers were moved to less cerebral and more athletic positions (the bigotry held they weren't smart enough to helm a team) like wide receiver appears to endure.

Although James Harris was the first black player to start a play-off game as a quarterback more than 30 years ago, and Doug Williams marshalled the Washington Redskins to a Super Bowl victory back in 1988, there appeared to be an unwritten rule that "they" couldn't fulfil a role in which the player must plot the downfall of the most sophisticated defensive strategies in a matter of milliseconds. As recently as 1993, black Florida State quarterback Charlie Ward was voted college player of the year, yet found no NFL club willing to take a chance on him. He ended up carving out a career for himself as a point guard in the NBA.

Against that tawdry background, many believed the recent impact of McNabb and a slew of other talented African-Americans, such as Steve McNair, Daunte Culpepper, Vince Young and, prior to his hanging dog escapades, Michael Vick, had helped to finally quash the long-standing bias. One of those in the frontline disagrees. When put on the spot by journalists not exactly thrilled with his characterisation of them as individuals asking him tougher questions than his white counterparts, he wouldn't back down.

"Black quarterbacks have to deal with different things than white quarterbacks, " wrote McNabb in a response on his website. "If you don't think that's true than you are naive. Peyton (Manning), Tom (Brady) and Carson (Palmer), to name a few, have never been asked what it's like to be a white quarterback. They probably have not been told that they should have scrambled more. I bet Fran Tarkenton, Steve Young, Jake Plummer, and Doug Flutie have never been told by a member of any racial consciousness organisation that they don't play the quarterback position white enough. I would love to live in a world where race is not an issue. But it is."

The ironic thing is McNabb has been down this road before. Exactly four years ago, he was the target of a scathing on-air critique by talkshow maven Rush Limbaugh, working part-time as an NFL pundit for ESPN. The darling of the right-wing conservatives, Limbaugh contended the Eagles had started the 2003 season with one win from their first three games because their quarterback was over-rated by a media desperate to anoint an AfricanAmerican in the position with greatness.

"I don't think that he has been that good from the getgo, " said Limbaugh.

"I think what we have here is a little social concern in the NFL. I think the media have been very desirous that a black quarterback do well, of black coaches and quarterbacks doing well, and I think that there is a little hope invested in McNabb and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't really deserve."

It says much for how America has changed that those comments cost Limbaugh his gig on ESPN and McNabb responded by leading the Eagles all the way to the Super Bowl that season. The years since however have not been kind.

Injuries have taken a heavy toll and some critics felt the frustrations voiced to HBO had more to do with his own physical inability to regain the best form of his career. What is pointed is the response of some of his contemporaries.

"Early in my career in college, I felt like people looked at me differently and expected a lot more, " said the Washington Redskins' Jason Campbell. "I felt I had to do a little extra. At that point, I did feel that way. I don't feel that way now in the NFL. That's his opinion, and as an African-American quarterback, I have to support other African-American quarterbacks. But it's something I can't get caught up in. I look at all quarterbacks as the same."

Which is exactly how McNabb wishes everybody else would look at them too.