Expect Eagles' Vick to be on the run

WE ARE going to see Michael Vick running with the football this season, by design, in Chip Kelly's offense, Vick confirmed yesterday.

(Sharp intake of breath by reader here.)

This is a possibility we are used to hearing Vick and the Eagles downplay, for a couple of reasons. One is the accepted wisdom that "running quarterbacks" don't win championships in the NFL. The other is that Vick's lengthy injury history has made keeping him away from crunching hits an obvious point of emphasis as he has gotten older.

But this is truly a new Eagles era, at least until the cart rolls out onto the field to deliver the 33-year-old QB to the X-ray room.

"You guys act like I get hurt once a week. You all did that to me. Made me change the way I play my game," Vick joked with reporters yesterday.

His thesis was that he needs to get back to playing with abandon, instead of worrying about getting hurt. This notion isn't new; Vick brought it up last year, and apparently lived by it until Nov. 11, when he suffered a concussion that caused him to miss five games.

"I'm gonna have my opportunities to do what I like to do within this offense, and to run the football. And yes, I will be a [running] threat," Vick said. "That's exciting. That's what I worked hard this offseason for. I built up the strength in my legs to do that. Tested myself with Shady [racing LeSean McCoy during the spring] and passed that test. Now I'll run [against] linebackers and safeties."

Vick, announced as the winner of the quarterback competition with Nick Foles on Tuesday, feels emboldened by the fitness regime he has followed under Kelly. He has added muscle, says he's up from 215 to 220. It remains unclear how muscle is going to help prevent a concussion or a rib injury, Vick's biggest bugaboos in recent years.

Vick and Kelly might be on firmer ground with the idea that having the quarterback gain some yards with his feet, at least here and there, is a sound offensive concept. When Joe Flacco and the Ravens won the Super Bowl last February, it was written and tweeted that as always, a team with a traditional pocket passer won the big trophy. That was true. What also was true was that the 49ers, with rambling Colin Kaepernick, were 5 yards away from making that truism untrue, with less than 2 minutes remaining. Afterward, it was hard to build a case that the Ravens won because their style of offense was superior to the 49ers' read-optionish attack.

"Watching those guys, you're seeing how far the game has come, the evolution of the game at this position. It's accepted now. Teams want dual threats," Vick said. "Those teams were in the playoffs. And deep in the playoffs. There's a lot of good ones - RG3, Russell Wilson, Colin Kaepernick, those guys are excellent quarterbacks, Cam [Newton]."

They're also all roughly a decade younger than you are now, Mike, so let's hope Dr. Kelly's top-secret sport science lab is all it's cracked up to be.

Someone noted that Ravens coach John Harbaugh has said the way to stop the read option is to hit the quarterback on every play.

"We have something for that. This is 220 pounds you're staring at right here. Soaking wet," Vick said. He said he will continue to wear rib protection.

"Hopefully I'll be able to maintain the hits with the extra weight I've put on. Hopefully that will allow my body to sustain," Vick said. "I've been taking my vitamins. Feeding my body with calcium like never before. Just trying to do things that will give me an edge.

"Now, will that allow me to take certain hits? I don't know. I still have to protect myself. Have to be very cautious."

Vick certainly has embraced the Kelly regimen.

"What I've learned about him is how passionate he is about this game," Kelly said yesterday. "He has not missed a day . . . you listen to our strength and conditioning guys, I asked them the other day, from top to bottom, if you can rank our guys, and he was No. 1 in terms of his attitude, work ethic, helping other players, everything in terms of weight room, off-the-field things."

Asked about this, Vick said: "Coach challenged me to get back into tip-top shape and get back into the playing form that he knows I can be successful at. Jeremy Maclin and me were here every day when nobody else was here. It's just a credit to wanting to be better. And knowing how things ended up last year, wanting to make it right."

Kelly has talked of how impressed he has been in general with the way the veteran players have bought into his new concepts. Vick hinted that might not have been automatic, in all cases.

"We all understood that if we were gonna get better, we had to listen to the guys who know more than us. When you come to that realization, you understand, why not give it a shot? And that's what I was telling the guys all spring," Vick said. "When you had some guys bickering and complaining - what do we have to lose? It sounds good. Let's try it. It only took 2 weeks for everybody to buy into the program. Now we enjoy it. These guys come to work and love to be here every day. That's a great environment to be in."

Blog: ph.ly/Eagletarian