Vick's hand bruised not broken, but status still uncertain

ANDY REID did not sound like a man relishing the opportunity to choose between backups Vince Young and Mike Kafka, with Reid's team 1-2, facing an early-season "must" win Sunday against the San Francisco 49ers.

"We'll see how all that goes. I haven't even gotten there yet. I'm still on the swelling of Michael's hand and if he'll be ready to play," Reid said yesterday.

Rough translation: "I'm only going to think about those guys when I'm sure the real, $80 million quarterback can't possibly tape it up and go out there."

Michael Vick's playing against the 49ers seemed extremely unlikely in the hours after Vick's right hand was mashed against him by the Giants' Chris Canty on Sunday. The Eagles announced a hairline fracture, and on Channel 10, Howard Eskin said he'd been told Vick would miss 3 or 4 weeks, probably through the Birds' Oct. 23 bye week.

But yesterday, Reid said a day-after CT scan showed the apparent hairline fracture on the X-ray was just a blood vessel snaking across bone. Reid said Vick has a contusion, not a break. Vick later called it a "deep bone bruise."

The bottom line? Whether Vick plays this week probably hinges on how well the team can get the swelling out of his hand, which remained heavily bandaged yesterday. Dr. Art Bartolozzi, former orthopedist for the Eagles and Flyers, said a bone bruise "does not involve structural bone damage and will not necessarily impair play except for discomfort."

Vick didn't make any promises.

"We'll see how it recovers and how well it gets," he told reporters at NovaCare. "We still have time to figure this whole deal out . . . See how it feels come Wednesday and Thursday, and make some progress in the treatment room."

That sounded like a man who was not ready yesterday to play with the injury, who would need to see some improvement before trying to take a snap. Of course, Vick throws with his left hand, but he handles the ball with both, and he has fumbled seven times in three games, losing three of them.

"It's about the same right now, and it's not to say that he can't play with the swelling, it's just got to be where he can bend his hand where he can work with it," Reid said, when asked how Vick's hand was doing. "We'll see how he does over the next couple of days. We've got to get the swelling out."

Obviously, the issue of whether Vick plays Sunday will dominate, but there also will be more than a bit of discussion of the larger picture. That's the one Vick painted in broad strokes of exasperation following Sunday's game, when he kept saying that he didn't want to criticize officials, but that he takes too many hits after throwing the ball, and that somebody needs to do something.

Vick sounded conciliatory yesterday. "The refs have to do their jobs, and they have tons of things to look over," he said. "I was kind of out of character and being too candid in that aspect."

Not sure you're really backing off the criticism if part of your explanation is that what you said was "too candid," but Vick did conclude with "you won't hear me complaining about it anymore."

That might be a hard promise to keep. The issue of how mobile quarterbacks are treated, and how important it is for the Eagles to keep Vick upright - you probably haven't heard the last of that. In fact, Vick and Reid said many of the same things last December, following a Dec. 2 home victory over Houston in which Vick suffered a bruised quadriceps.

"Every time I get hit, I look up at the ref and I see no flag," Vick said that week in a WIP radio appearance. (Vick did not do his WIP radio show last night, by the way.) "And I see other quarterbacks standing in the pocket - the minute they get touched, there's a flag on the field.

"This has been happening for the last 4 or 5 weeks, and I haven't complained. I haven't said anything, but it's getting to a point where I'm getting tired of getting up off the canvas."

Back then, Reid's point was that just because Vick runs sometimes, that doesn't mean he can be treated as a running back under the rules - special quarterback protections should still apply. Yesterday, Reid said: "I know he's a marked man, and so I think it's important that we all keep a close eye on him when he's playing."

Undoubtedly, the Eagles have sent and will send tape of hits they didn't appreciate to the NFL. But there really aren't many obviously illegal hits on Vick that are just being ignored. The problem is more subtle and much harder to legislate. It is cumulative.

On the Eagles' first series Sunday, Vick scrambled 10 yards on second-and-11 from the Giants' 35. He gained 10 yards. As Vick was about to step out of bounds, Giants rookie linebacker Jacquian Williams lunged and tripped Vick, sending him sprawling over the Giants' sideline. It was a legal trip, but served no real purpose except to ensure Vick did not end the play standing up. That seems to be the main objective of just about every defense the Eagles face; it would be what their defense would set its sights on, if Vick played for another team. In fact, that was how the Eagles approached it when Vick played for the Falcons - just ask Brian Dawkins sometime.

If Vick is going to make it through the season, it's the Eagles who must make the crucial adjustments. Reid and offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg can roll him out more. They can throw more off three-step drops, rather than having Vick stand in the pocket and survey a bunch of options every snap, as enticing as that idea is, given the Birds' weapons. They can run the ball more, as they did Sunday.

"There are a bunch of things that we can do, and we can say other people need to do, and all that," Reid said. "But we're going to keep working on things on our end, and I know people will keep working on things on their end."

Daily News wire services contributed to this report.