Decide for yourself. Here's Vick against the Patriots (click for bigger):
Here are other quarterbacks this preseason:
Worthing noting: Vick is a sponsor and stockholder of this company. On the other hand, though.
UPDATE: Vick will wear more padding!
Photos from Getty.
Sam Farmer, LA Times:
Two NFL insiders, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said that Philadelphia Coach Andy Reid was ready to walk away from the Eagles if he didn’t get more personnel control, and now he has it. We’ve seen a flurry of decisive moves by the Eagles in recent weeks, including finally cutting a blockbuster deal with receiver DeSean Jackson; extending two good soldiers, defensive end Trent Cole and right tackle Todd Herremans, outbidding the Ravens to keep guard Evan Mathis; and trading for Pro Bowl linebacker DeMeco Ryans.
Something else about the Eagles: Reid wanted to jump in the Peyton Manning sweepstakes, despite the signing of Michael Vick to a six-year, $100-million contract last season. Talks never got too serious, the insiders say, because Manning didn’t like the idea of playing against his brother Eli, quarterback of the New York Giants, at least twice a season.
Drama on Broad Street.
Ray Didinger:
If Jeff Lurie really is the risk-taking, outside-the-box owner that he professes to be, he should sit down with his cabinet today and say, “Let’s talk about this.” You don’t get the chance to bid on an all-time great quarterback very often and when you haven’t won a championship in more than half a century – and your team has made a habit of coming up just short year after year – then you have to seriously discuss this.
Peyton Manning would take ownership of this offense in a way no quarterback in the Andy Reid era could. That could very well make it better in the critical fourth quarter, clock-ticking-down moments when the Eagles so often break down. All those wasted timeouts, all those valuable seconds lost with the quarterback waiting for the play to come in from the sideline, it all would be a thing of the past with Manning running the show.
It solves everything!
Jonathan Tamari:
Grigson would take the GM job a team facing huge decisions, with the number one pick in April’s draft and a choice to make on franchise quarterback Peyton Manning.
Grigson, 39, was promoted to director of player personnel in 2010 after spending four years as the team’s director of college scouting. He helped scout top college players and NFL free agents. He previously worked with the Rams.
Tough to tell: will the Eagles drafting improve or get even worse?
Last year, I questioned Bobby April’s track record as a genius special teams coach. His results were not quite as stellar, nor his turnarounds as quick as many people seemed to suggest at the time.
This offseason we have new darling, genius, best-in-the-NFL assistant coaches in Philadelphia. Most notable is offensive line coach Howard Mudd, whom Andy Reid was delighted to lure out of retirement.
Certainly he’s had a lot of success. Mudd’s tenure in Indianapolis from 1998 to 2009 was simply brilliant. In fact, if you’d gone through Football Outsiders offensive line rankings (I have), you would think there’s been a mistake. The Colts were either first or second in the NFL for Adjusted Sack Rate in ten of the twelve years he was their coach. And the only two years in which the Colts weren’t that high, their offensive line was still ranked in the top ten.
Mudd must be doing something right in order to orchestrate such great protection. Unless… it wasn’t actually the offensive line. Unless it was the quarterback. See, it just so happens that Mudd’s first year in Indianapolis corresponded with Peyton Manning’s arrival. And guess what? After Mudd retired following the 2009 season, the Manning-led Colts didn’t skip a beat. In 2010 they were ranked number one yet again in Adjusted Sack Rate.
Furthermore, while the Football Outsider numbers don’t cover years before 1996, we can still look at basic sack rates at Mudd’s previous job. From 1993 to 1997, Mudd was the offensive line coach for the Seattle Seahawks. Only in his final year did the team allow fewer sacks than the NFL average.
None of this is conclusive evidence that Mudd isn’t a great coach. But it does bring into question the evidence for Mudd’s ability to single-handedly mold the Eagles offensive line into a great unit. I hope he can upgrade the Eagles offensive line, but that’s a hope — certainly no guarantee.
Photo from Getty.
There’s been one NFL team for most of the last decade that employed steady stars across the offensive skill positions, including a top five quarterback with special intangibles, two Pro Bowl-caliber wide receivers, and a cadre of complementary weapons for their pass-heavy system. This team had a speed-oriented but relatively simple 4-3 defense with lots of player turnover. And the overall system, touted for years by a steady veteran coach, was in place for season after season as the team won multiple division titles and always pushed closer to the Super Bowl — before finally making it over the hump.
I’d ask you readers what team I’m referring to, but my title probably gave it away. The Indianapolis Colts, with Peyton Manning, Marvin Harrison, Reggie Wayne, and others were one of the best teams of the 2000s. After 10 victories in Tony Dungy’s first year as coach in 2002, the Colts won 12 or more games for the next seven years.
Perhaps this is a stretch (and feel free to call me out on it if so), but in many ways haven’t the Eagles become a mirror image of those Colts teams?
Start on offense. Clearly, Michael Vick isn’t the same type of quarterback as Manning, but both are dominant stars at the position that make defenses adjust to them. DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin are the new Harrison and Wayne. LeSean McCoy can be Edgerrin James and Brent Celek can grow into Dallas Clark’s shoes. Along the offensive line the Eagles now have the same “genius” position coach in Howard Mudd — so presumably that unit will start looking similar.
On defense the Eagles are apparently moving away from the complex blitzes of Jim Johnson to the opposite read-and-react style that marked Dungy’s defenses for years. New defensive coordinator Juan Castillo has praised Lovie Smith’s work in Chicago, and the Bears defense is derived from Dungy’s Tampa Two. That new philosophy should fit the Eagles personnel fine since the Colts have cycled through young linebackers at almost the same rate.
NFL teams are built in all sorts of ways, and it would have been difficult in the past to characterize these two teams as particularly similar. Suddenly though, there are these similarities and coincidences. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing.
I’ve always admired the Colts from afar for their strategy, as well as for the consistency of their success. Part of that success comes from an adherence to one of Football Outsiders’ basic principles: “Offense is more consistent from year to year than defense, and offensive performance is easier to project than defensive performance.” Colts GM Bill Polian built a consistently above average offensive unit from Manning on down, and then allowed the defense to shift around and eventually luck into a few good games in a playoff run.
Intentionally or not, the Eagles front office seems to have replicated that formula. Over the last few years they’ve focused on building a formidable offense for the foreseeable future and then started searching for defensive solutions. While the past is written for those Colts, it remains to be seen what kind of future this team has going forward.
Photo from Getty. Originally published at NBC Philadelphia.
Andy Reid endorsed McNabb as the 2010 starting QB a few days after the playoff loss to Dallas:
“I was asked” late Saturday night “if Donovan [McNabb] would be my quarterback next year, and I said yes,” Eagles coach Andy Reid said yesterday as he continued to sort through the remnants of his team’s lopsided first-round playoff loss to the Dallas Cowboys. “That’s what I’m saying now.”
When pressed on the issue, however, Reid admitted that there is a lot to consider between now and the start of training camp, and a lot of time to consider it.
“We’ll look at all of this,” Reid said. “Obviously, I haven’t gotten to the points that you’re asking here with comparing players, contracts, and everything else. I’m not at that point right now. We like Kevin Kolb and we like Michael Vick and we like Donovan McNabb. I think it’s a pretty good situation to be in. The rest of the things will take place as we go through the off-season.”
“That’s what I’m saying now.” What a calculated statement. Sure, on the surface he’s quelled ideas that McNabb is on the outs. Andy said what needed to be said to calm the ravenous hordes down. But saying that he still has to look at “comparing players, contract, and everything else” means he really hasn’t made a decision at all. Everything is still up in there air.
Here’s what a real endorsement sounds like, from Joe Banner c. 2007:
“I can’t envision a situation in which he is not our quarterback next year … I believe there is a very, very sizable silent majority who realize how lucky we have been to have Donovan McNabb. I mean, we are talking about a quarterback who went to four straight championship games. There are only four quarterbacks in the history of the league that have done that. You are talking about a quarterback who has had a higher winning percentage in his first 7 years in the league than Peyton Manning. You are talking about a quarterback that has one of the highest quarterback ratings over the first seven seasons, one of the best TD-to-interceptions ratios of any quarterback in the history of this game in his first seven seasons in the league … My expectations, and I can’t really even picture a different scenario, is that he’ll be the quarterback [next season].”
Banner couldn’t “even picture a different scenario” than one in which McNabb was back in midnight green. This was a “yes, he’s our QB next year no matter what and stop asking.”
Banner had a similar guarantee for McNabb (and Reid) after the 2008 season ended:
“The reality is, my view and our view is unambiguous, that we can win a championship with those people, and they will be back. We believe we’re very lucky to have them.”
See that — unambiguous support.
Andy’s endorsement, on the other hand, reads “we’re going to investigate all our options, including trades.” The very fact that the front office is hedging its bets is a clear sign they are going to consider jettisoning Donovan. They don’t want to be caught with their own words guaranteeing the future of the franchise will be back if there’s a solid chance they’ll be shipping him off to Cleveland or St. Louis or somewhere. Especially considering the uproar when management indicated Brian Dawkins’s return was likely last offseason — right before he signed with the Broncos.