As everyone surely knows by now, Mike Vick has restructured his deal with the Eagles and will return to Philadelphia in 2013. The deal is basically a 1 year 7 million dollar contract with an additional 3 million in incentives that include playing 90% of offensive snaps and winning the Super Bowl.
Why bring back Mike Vick? One of the main reasons is because of the current landscape of available QBs via trade, free agency, and/or the draft. There are not a lot of prime options available out there. Alex Smith could be had in a trade, but is he worth the money and pick(s) that would be required to get him. While he does offer certain traits Chip Kelly is looking for, he is not a franchise QB. There are no sure fire QBs in the draft to take with the 4th overall pick. Mike Vick was the best option out there.
If you look at Chip Kelly’s entire coaching career, he has always preferred to have a QB with some mobility. Contrary to popular belief, he does not run his QB early and often but he does like the added dimension of a mobile QB and does have designed QB runs in his offense. It allows him to have an expanded playbook and give the offense an added dimension that defenses must account for. Mike Vick offers him this flexibility.
What about Nick Foles? In Chip Kelly’s press conference on Monday he stated that there would be an open competition between Vick and Foles. However, when pressed on the issue, he failed to commit to both definitely being on the roster come training camp. I believe the Eagles will look to trade Nick Foles as he does not fit the mold of QB that Chip has preferred in his career.
Chip’s offense should take pressure off of Mike Vick and allow him to be a serviceable stop-gap until Chip Kelly finds his guy for the future. Andy Reid’s offense was based primarily on the passing game. They were a vertical offense and wanted to grab chunks of yards at a time. The offense relied on 5 and 7 step drops and time-consuming pass patterns. It put pressure on Vick to drop back and make multiple progressions, often times into defenses that were expecting the pass. This led to many mistakes. In a Chip Kelly offense, the prime emphasis is on the run game. This alone will take pressure off Vick. In the new offense there will be many passing plays off of play-action where Vick will have only one or two progressions. I think an offense like this could be more suited to Mike Vick than the one run by the previous regime.
The other important aspect of keeping the mobile Vick is that it allows Kelly to implement the full offense that he envisions. This will allow all other offense players to get a grasp of the offense from the get go. If he were to go with Foles, he would surely have to run a different offense than he one he will install once he inevitably finds his mobile QB. By keeping Vick for this season it would allow a potentially seamless transition to their next QB for the offense.
The two biggest concerns with Vick are his durability and turnovers. He will definitely be susceptible to big hits in this offense when running. However, many of Vick’s injuries the past few years have been from inside the pocket. I think the lessoning of the long developing plays and the emphasis on the run game, coupled with an improved offensive line, could help prevent some of the injuries by reducing the sheer amount of hits Vick takes. I will not debate that Mike Vick holds onto the ball too long but I think the offense Andy ran helped enable that. I also believe an offense based on the running game and a more streamlined pass game could reduce the amount of turnovers. The fumbles are an issue and play calling will not fix that but running the ball more and not having Vick drop back 40-50 times a game should reduce interceptions.
No one is expecting Mike Vick to suddenly recapture the magic he had in 2010. However, he should become a serviceable QB for the next season for Chip Kelly. Under Andy, Vick was the centerpiece of an offense that put an immense amount of pressure on a QB and Mike was simply not able to consistently function at a high level. I think Chip will be able to take some of the pressure off Mike and allow himself to implement his offense from the get-go. All the while, using a QB in Vick that has a similar physical skill set to the guy Chip will start looking for to run his offense for hopefully the next decade.
After the restructuring of Mike Vick, the Eagles have about 25 million in cap room. This does not include any other potential cuts such as Nnamdi Asomugha. Cap flexibility will not be an issue for the Eagles. www.eaglescap.com is an excellent website for Eagles cap information.
There is much talk about the type of defense the Eagles will run. New defensive coordinator Bill Davis has experience with both the 3-4 and 4-3 schemes. In his last stop as coordinator with the Arizona Cardinals, he ran a “4-3 under”. This is a hybrid defense that looks similar to a 3-4. In this particular scheme, the strong side linebacker plays the TE and is similar to the 3-4 outside linebacker. Under Davis, this position rushed the passer about 70% and dropped into coverage the other 30%. On the weak side, the player is more of a traditional defensive end. Davis calls this guy the “Predator” and he is tasked with getting to the quarterback most plays. What’s good about this particular defense is it allows current Eagles players Trent Cole, Brandon Graham, and Vinny Curry to play that role in base defenses instead of playing a true 3-4 outside linebacker. This better suits their skillset.
The Eagles do not have an ideal strong side linebacker for this scheme on the roster. He will be an integral part in making this defense work. This player needs to have good height and length, pass rushing ability, and athleticism to drop into coverage. This leads me to the draft. There are two players the Eagles could target with the 4th pick that would be excellent strong side backers in this defense. LSU’s Barkevious Mingo and Oregon’s Dion Jordan. They are not widely considered top 5 picks at the moment, but I think after the combine and as we get closer to the draft they will climb on peoples boards. Both have excellent height and length and freakish athletic ability but are fairly raw. Jordan played a very similar defensive role with Oregon last year. Mingo does not have the pass coverage experience that Jordan has but has the athleticism to do it.
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