Eagles quarterback Michael Vick was sacked five times in the loss to the Cardinals, but coach Andy Reid said Monday Vick is still the team’s starter.
Reid gives vote-of-confidence despite awful Arizona adventure
PHILADELPHIA — Ever challenged to avoid contact, Eagles quarterback Michael Vick eventually may be forced to scramble for his starting job.
A day after Vick was sacked five times in a 27-6 loss to the Arizona Cardinals, Andy Reid was asked when, if ever, he would consider a quarterback change. Though Reid technically committed to Vick, the confidence-vote was less than sturdy.
“Right now, right now, we’re with Michael,” the Eagles’ coach said at his Monday press conference at the NovaCare Complex. “And that’s where we’ll go and see. We will evaluate as we go.”
The Eagles are three weeks into a 16-game regular season, and are 13 months removed from signing Vick to a six-year, $100 million contract, even if it was smothered in escape clauses.
But Reid expressed the same concern Monday that Vick has heard recently, literally from the White House down. That is, even in the violent society of pro football, he over-engages in contact.
“I’ll tell you he is getting hit way too much,” Reid said. “That’s what I can tell you. At this point, it’s way too much. So that part has got to end. We’ve got to limit that.”
The spirit of Reid’s remark was that the Eagles, as a team, need to better cushion their quarterback. Already, they have lost their starting center, Jason Kelce, and their All-Pro left tackle, Jason Peters, to injury, thus complicating that task.
But in addition to the contact that Vick cannot avoid, he had thrown six total interceptions in the first two games, and has yet to mount a reasonable Player of the Week candidacy. Despite his 2-1 record, Vick is the 25th-ranked NFL quarterback.
“We’ve got to look at a couple of things,” said Reid, of the quarterback protection. “But I thought we had a few things set up there. We’ve got to do a better job with protection and I’ve got to make sure I put the guys in the right position to start with and make sure that we get the right routes and the ball out on time and all those things.”
Clearly, Reid’s preference is to buffer — not replace — his quarterback. That’s why he is planning to maintain his method of in-week quarterback preparation, which is to give the No. 1 quarterback the overwhelming number of practice reps — if not all of them. Asked Monday if, given the on-field jostling that Vick receives on a downto-down basis and his yellowed career injury list that he would give Nick Foles some reps, Reid thought for a second and delivered a firm response: “No.”
Yet in what was a departure from his usual press conference demeanor, Reid did not attempt to suppress any discussion of his quarterback, but was open in an order for improvement. He did not blame Vick, and, as usual, hastened to blame his own coaching. But he acknowledged the need to reconsider a big-play attack in order to keep Vick better protected.
“We never did get in rhythm yesterday,” he said. “That’s a legitimate question there. When you go in, you want to try to establish some form of rhythm that we never established. Whether that’s a short passing game, we have a wide variety of things we can use. But along with the run game, we need to make sure that our mix is better than what it was yesterday and that’s my responsibility to make sure that happens. I didn’t think I did a very good job with that.”
The Eagles are 2-1 and have the Super Bowl champion Giants next. Should they be 2-2, they would be on the 8-8 pace that Jeffrey Lurie explicitly said would not be enough to preserve Reid’s job in 2014.
Evaluations, plural.