Michael Vick to Eagles...eh

Vick signs with the Eagles. A bunch of people are impressed, think it is a good move, etc. I don't know anything about "the stability of the Eagles organization," or even the stability of the coaching staff (wasn't Andy Reid on the hotseat much of last season?). I don't know whether Vick has ties to the Philly community, or how much money played a factor, or any of that. I do know that, if I was Michael Vick, Andy Reid would not be all that high on my list of coaches who I thought knew how to use me correctly. Indeed, Vick sought "continuity" I guess with some of the coaches who had been with him in Atlanta, and, yeah... that worked out -- his productivity mostly came from the added dimension of his feet, not through unworkable attempts to teach him a byzantine version of the west coast offense.

Neither am I convinced that Reid can employ him any better, whether or not he "knows how to use people in space." One of my beefs is that people still just say "well, they'll just put him in the wildcat." Ahem, but you have to understand the Wildcat, what it is, and why it works, to use it well. We saw a lot of copycats last year (and maybe Reid has studied it and can prove me wrong), but there's more to it than just putting an athletic guy at QB. It's a series, the schemes fit together in a certain way, and you've got to be able to teach it to guys who might be unfamiliar with such schemes, including linemen. I agree that Vick could thrive in a spot where he could be a true dual-threat, but throwing him in there to run a few quarterback draws is more likely to be an injustice than anything else. Again, Reid is a smart west coast offense coach, but he is no student of football history, nor of trends outside those he has been familiar (and successful) with in his career. (Assuming the normally reliable Mark Bowden can be believed to be accurate, Reid makes many glaring historical and other errors in this bit for The Atlantic.) That's fine, but to get this right, you need to be able to think outside of the box.

So maybe this is the right move for all the right reasons, none of them having to do with scheme. And I'm not saying that Vick shouldn't ever drop back to pass, or the like. Yet I was legitimately excited to see where Vick might end up. I am happy that he has served his time and appeared ready to get back into the league, and he's clearly a special player. But just don't be surprised if Andy Reid attempts to repeat Vick's first run in the NFL, with a lot of square pegs being forced into round holes.