By Chris Sherman
http://www.phillysportsport.com/

Joining the countless opinions you can find on the internet about the Michael Vick > Kevin Kolb move, I’ll start by saying that I’m 100% against it.  After calming down a bit, I do find parts of this vaguely amusing.  I’ve always been an advocate of Andy Reid and Donovan McNabb while he was here, despite the objections of many fans, because their history of winning individual football games made me think that a Superbowl would come eventually.  Any given game day they gave us a chance to win.  Now I’m still on the opposite side of many fans, but this time I’m saying that the guy who gives us a chance to win individual football games now isn’t the correct choice, that we should look further down the line to someone else even if it means giving up on this season.

I base my argument of Kolb over Vick on 3 major points:

1: I’m leaning towards Vick being better than Kolb in the short term, but I’m not convinced that’s true.

2: As much as I hate to say it, I don’t believe the 2010 Philadelphia Eagles are a Superbowl caliber team, so why go with a 2010 solution.  Playoffs?  Certainly.  Best team in football?  I doubt it.

3: Kevin Kolb has a higher Superbowl winning upside for the future than Michael Vick ever will with the Eagles.

 
1:            On my first argument, I’d like to point out that in Michael Vick’s 6 quarters of excellent play, 4 of those quarters went against one of the worst passing defenses in the league (and not just this season, for a few now).  Kevin Kolb got to play only 2 quarters against arguably the best team in football.  And yes, you say that Michael Vick played 2 quarters against the same team, but the Green Bay Packers weren’t prepared to play against Vick outside of the wildcat formation.  We might disagree about the impact of that preparation, but certainly we can all agree that a team would prepare drastically different when expecting Vick than when they expected Kolb.  To me, that leaves a ton of mystery as for how Vick will be for the remainder of the season.  What happens if he gets shut down against Jacksonville this Sunday?  What he if has two bad games, or even mediocre games?  Will fans shout for Kolb?  Will they beg for Kafka?  A.J. Feeley again?

                As for Kolb, his ability is shrouded in mystery too.  In the preseason, Kevin was working with a bland playbook so a lack of success there can be understandable.  Vick was no better himself there so it is unfair to judge either by those games.  Against Green Bay, Kolb looked awful.  True.  How quickly we forget how good those Packers look this year.  But two quarters of football doesn’t mean a damn thing as far as reading his potential.  We didn’t see Kolb’s ceiling.  We didn’t see his middle.  All we got to see before his benching was his floor value.  We saw the worst in his potential play and we jumped ship.  So is Vick better than Kolb right now?  Maybe yes, maybe no, but Reid made this decision so early that we can’t possibly know.

2:            Not looking at the quarterback position, does this really look like one of the top-tier teams in the NFL?  Some of the potential is there with offensive skill players and individuals on the defense, but that’s it.  The offensive line probably gets more flak then they deserve, but they are not a Superbowl offensive line nonetheless.  The defense falls apart on running plays when Stewart Bradley isn’t in the game.  That’s a lot of pressure on one player to save your team when considering if this is a Superbowl caliber defense.  Against Detroit, their rookie running back racked up over 200 yards alone because the linebackers couldn’t handle him in the slightest.  Detroit has a better offense than many, but how do you think this defense will fare against New Orleans, Indy, or Green Bay again?

                Where am I going with this?  Well, if we’re not going to win the Superbowl, then why be so desperate to make the playoffs.  This year wasn’t supposed to be about winning, it was supposed to be about developing a young team into a Superbowl winner like the Saints did.  With so many young, high-ceiling players, they could have spent the season learning how to gel.  Kolb learning exactly which targets to look for and trust in different situations would allow this team to be a devastatingly cohesive unit in either 2011 or 2012, with too many offensive threats for any defense to cover.  Now, assuming ‘The Plan’ will leave Kolb with the team next season, he will be in the last year of his contract still learning how to play in the high-tempo world of the NFL, and at the same time knowing the fans will turn on him in a second and that Andy Reid won’t back him up.

3:            Everyone remembers how dynamic Michael Vick was with the Atlanta Falcons, but doesn’t anyone remember how little they accomplished?  The farthest they got was their loss to the Eagles in the 2004 NFC championship game.  Philadelphia had a top tier defense then and Vick couldn’t come close to dismantling it.  Remember how Vick got crushed on a QB draw up the middle when Hollis Thomas was waiting for him?  Vick never ran again in that game and never posed another serious threat.  Many Eagles’ fans acknowledged how good Donovan McNabb was, but many arguments for ditching him was that he wasn’t capable of getting us all the way through a Superbowl.  I’m betting many of these fans are screaming for Vick now, and you have to wonder why they’re picking a guy whose style has never been able to win championships in the NFL.

                Kevin Kolb is the more conventional QB and those are the ones who win it all.  Combine that with the fact that he is 26 and Vick is 30 (no, Vick is not the style of QB who can play like Favre) in his last season of his contract, and I firmly believe that Kolb is the only one with the upside high enough to bring us an NFL championship. 

Honestly, I can’t respect Andy Reid anymore.  I think he betrayed Kevin Kolb, but I also think he betrayed the only fans who still liked him.  Those who already hated him aren’t going to forgive his past mistakes even if they agree with this decision.  Many of those who supported him, like me, because of the winning culture he installed in Philadelphia (despite his inability to take two hours out of his life and study how to properly use timeouts), are going to feel betrayed by his short-sighted decision.  I honestly wouldn’t write a single word in protest if he were fired tomorrow and that is something I would have found hard to believe a week ago.