Phil Sheridan: Taking on Vick is a dangerous gamble for Reid

It all became clear Thursday night, during and especially after the Eagles' synapse-searing preseason game against Jacksonville.

Andy Reid's signing of Michael Vick really is all about second chances. It just isn't about Vick. It's about Reid's giving himself a second chance.

Four Augusts ago, Reid felt sure he could manage a Terrell Owens situation that was spiraling into chaos. Even as his team was melting down into pools of toxic sludge, Reid was sure he could handle Owens, Donovan McNabb, the rest of the team, the rabid media, and the sharply divided fans.

Reid was wrong, and it took the Eagles a couple of years to recover fully. Now the coach is asking his employer, his employees, and Eagles fans to trust him as their guide on a forced march through another minefield. It's a second chance for Reid to prove himself some kind of Ubercoach - able to juggle managerial grenades with all the pins pulled out.

The guess here is that this second chance, like the Owens gambit, will blow up in the Eagles' collective face. That isn't based on my initial revulsion at the Vick signing, but merely on what I know about the principals in this little drama and what I saw Thursday night at Lincoln Financial Field.

The postgame news conference was straight out of 2005. Reid was asked about McNabb's apparently signaling "enough" to offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg on the sideline after one of the series that featured the Vick novelty act. Reid gave the exasperated sigh he used to give when a question about T.O. veered uncomfortably close to the painful truth. Then he stammered something about McNabb being fine with the whole Vick package.

"You can ask him about it," Reid said.

So McNabb was asked and he quickly confirmed that the QB rotation made it difficult to get into any kind of groove. After seeing the Vick six, McNabb said, "reality hit as we continued on throughout the game that we need to get the flow of the offense going. That's when you got to just see the offense out there, sustaining drives and coming up with points."

McNabb made a couple of comments about seeing what works in preseason and deciding whether to use it or drop it when the games count. It was very clear to veteran Five-ologists that he wasn't thrilled by the whole exercise.

The "We want Vick" chant that went up during the third quarter could not have helped. In my worst-case vision of how this might play out, this sort of thing would have happened in October or November, if McNabb found himself mired in one of his characteristic slumps. That it happened after a single preseason interception is breathtaking.

To be clear, it wasn't everyone in a crowd that wasn't exactly the regular-season regulars. But it was loud enough to be clear - both to McNabb's well-trained ears and on the television and radio broadcasts - and it sent a message that should be disturbing to Reid, McNabb, Vick himself, and anyone who actually wants to see this team thrive.

With Vick here, you should pardon the expression, McNabb is on an even shorter leash with a significant and vocal percentage of Eagles fans.

Let's try to put the chant in perspective: Any sentient Atlanta Falcons fan would have traded Vick for McNabb faster than Usain Bolt could run the 40. They would have thrown in Peachtree Street. All the Peachtree streets.

That the fans who chanted were dead wrong, comically ignorant of the history of both quarterbacks, and perhaps somewhat intoxicated - all of that is immaterial. One of the lessons of the T.O. mess should have been that fairness and reason do not govern all Eagles fans when it comes to Donovan McNabb. A segment is looking for reasons to bludgeon him, and Reid just handed out blunt instruments.

The most ominous thing about Thursday was watching everyone assuming the all-too-familiar role he will play in the next reel: Vick absorbing the attention and already talking about being a full-time QB soon; McNabb wondering why his decade of blood and sweat and winning doesn't buy him a little loyalty from the attention-deficit cases in the stands, and Reid trying to squeegee it all back into the nice little barrel he figured would contain the situation.

Vick is not the locker-room cancer Owens is. And the Eagles have a bit of a safety net in that the NFL office will yank Vick's hall pass at the first real sign of trouble. The similarity is in the volatile mix of egos with opposing agendas, the potential to split the fans as well as the players, and the temperature-raising X factor of heightened (and not always responsible) media coverage.

Reid tried all this once before. Now he gets his second chance.

Enjoy the fireworks.