Vick needs to be patient

EARLY LAST night, somebody on Twitter asked Eagles center Jason Kelce who has been the better quarterback so far this spring. Kelce replied, "Bill Brasky!!!" He was referring to the character in an old "Saturday Night Live" skit who possessed all of these great and mythical skills and powers that were described in stories told and retold by a circle of drunken friends.

Bill Brasky, then.

Add him to the mix.

There is a body of opinion that all of the conversation about Michael Vick, Nick Foles and Matt Barkley is just a way to kill time until next year, when Barkley takes the job for good. In the meantime, goes that theory, Vick or Foles (or Brasky) is just a placeholder during Chip Kelly's 2013 shakedown cruise.

Nobody really knows, though. So far, the coach is a mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a wisecrack. He does not do depth charts in June. He does not do hints, ever. We are all just going to have to wait and find out when we find out - which is easy enough, apparently, unless your name is Mike Vick.

His public impatience here is interesting, to say the least. After practice yesterday, he told reporters that he wasn't that keen on the idea of sharing first-team snaps with Foles. He also told csnphilly.com that he was hoping that Kelly would make up his mind before training camp so that the quarterback questions do not become a never-ending distraction.

The problem for Vick is that Kelly has made it eminently clear that he is not close to making up his mind. And that if Kelly were to make up his mind based upon what everyone has done so far in shorts and against air, the decision might go Foles' way, not Vick's.

Vick has the better arm, he has the better legs, and they already have paid him $3.5 million, and that is not without meaning. Vick also has a lot more experience, for whatever that is worth. But he is misreading this thing if he thinks he already has demonstrated that he is better than Foles in OTAs and minicamp practices - because Foles is accurate and he gets rid of it quickly, and those are valued traits, it would seem, in Kelly's scheme.

That Vick would allow his frustration to show like this is a mistake. If nothing else is clear, the fact that this is Kelly's show and that the players have little leverage right now is obvious. If Vick thinks he is somehow putting pressure on Kelly to name him as the starter, I think he is kidding himself.

We have already witnessed Vick telling the world that Kelly taught him a new way to hold that ball so that he won't be a fumble machine anymore, and then having Kelly say that he never taught him any such thing, and that Vick has surely been taught by good coaches in the past, and that he merely emphasized that Vick needs to tuck the ball in tight.

So you wonder what's really going on here. It was a little thing, but still oddly discordant. Now, there is the business about sharing reps and wanting a quick decision. Is Vick insulted that he has to compete for the job? Is he worried that he might not win the competition? Only he knows what he is thinking, but it is fascinating to wonder.

I have seen a couple of practices and Vick has looked fine. So has Foles - again, without a pass rush. But there is one thing about Vick that has not changed from last year to this year - his displeasure with dumping the ball off and making the short, quick throw. He just doesn't like to do it and, when he does it on successive plays - as this offense apparently calls for - you can just sense his frustration.

Vick wants to break the pocket and run. He wants to look and wait and find somebody deep down the middle. There is just an energy about him after those kinds of plays, even in practice. The well-thrown quick, short pass seems a chore to him by comparison.

And with that, we wait. No one knows how the new coach might react to what Vick said yesterday. The suspicion is that Kelly will just shrug it off, but we really don't know.

The only certainty is that an interesting situation just got more interesting.

Today on PhillyDailyNews.com: Sam Donnellon writes about Chip Kelly, international man of mystery.
 Also, Paul Domowitch on a frest start for Vinny Curry.

On Twitter: @theidlerich

Blog: ph.ly/DNL