Thursday, November 18, 2010

Eagles Poised To Dominate

It is difficult to see a team with as bright a future as Philadelphia. I was as skeptical as anyone about Vick's early breakout. I figured the league would adjust and he would go back to being the Vick of old - except not as good.

Boy was I wrong

My prognosticator probably isn't any better now than it was 6 weeks ago, but I am completely sold. With Philadelphia's group of skill players, Vick has resources that he never had as a Falcon. Replace Alge Crumpler and Warrick Dunn with DeSean Jackson, Jeremy Maclin, Brent Celek and LeSean McCoy and Vick has the type of arsenal that makes a player with his skillset extremely difficult to stop.

I understand that Vick's statistics are heavily skewed by Monday's whitewash of the Redskins, but nevertheless they are remarkable.


Att Comp Yards TD INT Rate Rush Yards TD Team Scoring
Vick 153 96 1350 11 0 115.1 44 341 4 165
Kolb 153 97 1035 6 4 85.3 11 56 0 92

While the statistics are a little deceiving, Vick has played a game more than Kolb, the difference in the Eagle offense is remarkable. They have scored 33 points/game with Vick, 23 with Kolb.

Anyhow, this is a long-winded introduction to the idea that the Eagles are particularly fearsome with Vick under center. I think they can get better though.

I am pretty certain that Philadelphia intends to go forward with Vick. The question then is whither Kolb? I'm sure there will be some temptation to keep him and continue to groom him. I think this would be a mistake.

If we look at the recent windfalls that teams have gotten for unproven quarterbacks like Matt Schaub and Charlie Whitehurst. If we look at what teams have gotten for proven busts like Brady Quinn, one trembles at what Kolb could bring.

Add another couple of young star players to a potent nucleus and it is easy to imagine this team contending for the next five years, and not just contending in the way that they have in the past. Philadelphia has the capacity to move into the rarified elite, from a 9-11 win team to a 12-14 win team. Without simply listing off names, it is hard to overestimate how effective Philadelphia has been year in and out at replenishing their talent. They have a mix of players, each in the top half at their spots in all position groups.

While this post wasn't supposed to be about Vick, it does start and end with him. Vick, the player he is now, will carry the team.

2 comments:

  1. It's gonna be interesting to see how long he can last. Running QBs I think would tend to break down quicker because of their likelihood of getting hit more. Vick, while awesome this season, still has missed a good bit of time due to injury taken from a hit he suffered when he was running. Vick has missed a great deal of time in the past due to injury as well.

    But at the same time, because of his prison time, Vick doesn't have the mileage on him that a guy like McNabb had. So it's very reasonable to think that - if he can stay healthy - Vick can be effective if not deadly for another 5-7 years, maybe even more.

    I think the question of what the Eagles do with Kolb will come down to how long they think Vick can play well and stay healthy. If Vick finishes out the season with no other issues, yeah, I think letting him go (via trade) probably comes to pass. But if Vick gets busted up and misses another 2-4 games from an injury? My guess is they keep him around at least another year.

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  2. As I'm sure you know, Kolb is under contract for 2011. And, of course, we'll probably have a lockout year so if we get a shortened season that lessens the injury risk for Vick but tells us nothing more about Kolb.

    So, in short, I think the dilemma comes next year and not this.

    Without a spectacular offer, I don't see Kolb being moved as his cap number is like $2.4m for next year because they bonused him this year to use up some/all of the extra cap space da Iggles seem to always have handy.

    Naj

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