Eagles offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg layed out his strategy for helping Michael Vick recover the amazing football skills he once had. He's going to do it slowly and consistently. I saw them start things out yesterday.
The coach said they're going to be focused on one particular area of his game at a time.
"We're going to take the thing in steps. He hasn't played football for two year and so it's going to be a process. We'ver going to work with him after virtually every practice on one thing, maybe two. And we've got to get him back to football shape."
Today after the practice there was Mornhinweg, Doug Pederson and rookie wide out Jeremy Maclin. The youngster ran routes and Mornhinweg taught.
A lot of what he taught surrounds footwork. The quarterback's footwork is extremely important in the west coast offense. It's all about timing between the steps of the quarterback's drop and the depth of the receivers routes.
They three step drop routes, five step drop routes and seven step drop routes. Vick "kind of" did this in the past, but he hasn't been around anybody like Reid and Mornhinweg who will demand that he stay disciplined about it.
They had Maclin running ten yard "Outs". Then ten yard "In" routes. It looked like five step drops. Clearly Mornhinweg is sticking to the formula he mapped out this morning.
He would run 40 or 50 yards after every other throw, then run back to mid-field with Marty and Doug simulating that they were defensive players who were trying to tackle him.
Are you laughing? You should be because it looked funny, but they were getting what they wanted which was to get Vick doing football movements.
That was only part of the work, the physical side. After practice it was back into the meeting room
"The learning process will be step by step at the quarterback spot, one, maybe two things a day after practice and then he will be in an intensive learning situation right now and all the way through."
The Eagles have acquired a Ferrari for next to nothing, now they're getting it back in working condition. They may let everyone take a good look at it in the last preseason game.
We may get a glimpse in the third pre-season game.
