I am extremely loathe to employ a word as overused and misunderstood as “choke.”
But the truth, it says here, is that certain athletes lose their comfort zone in pressure situations. Think of the ex-Phillie Bobby Abreu, an excellent ballplayer at his peak.
Abreu normally had sort of casual, milk-the-strike-zone approach that made him a .400 OBP guy. But when he came up late in a close game with men on and drawing a walk really wasn’t an option and everyone in the park knew the game was pretty much coming down to this moment, he couldn’t assume that approach, and he was simply a different hitter is those spots.
Again, you can’t quantify this, because the situations are too rare and objectively indefinable to be expressed statistically. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
And Abreu almost never succeeded in such situations. I don’t know if that’s choking, or becoming too self-conscious, or trying too hard, and just being turned a quarter-turn too tight.
Donovan McNabb, I am now convinced without question, is the same way. The “EaglesPost-Game Live” crew was just saying that McNabb “caught a rhythm,” in the third quarter today. I believe the reality is he caught a comfort zone, because the Eagles were so far behind the pressure was off. As soon as it was on again, McNabb became the scattershot QB he usually is when it counts most.
This does not have to be a permanent thing, although at this point in his career the odds are against McNabb overcoming it. It’s not something you can really practice.
But it’s ridiculous to say the Eagles will never win a Super Bowl with McNabb, because that assumes the only way to win a football game is for your QB to play heroically. McNabb “choking” is better than Trent Dilfer.
