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May the best man win

Vick or Foles? Foles or Vick? The identity of the Eagles' starting quarterback should soon become more clear.

Nick Foles Michael Vick during practice at the team's NFL football training facility, Tuesday, May 28, 2013, in Philadelphia. (Matt Rourke/AP file)
Nick Foles Michael Vick during practice at the team's NFL football training facility, Tuesday, May 28, 2013, in Philadelphia. (Matt Rourke/AP file)Read more

EVERYBODY is waiting for Chip Kelly to name a starter, the guy who will open the season as the Eagles' quarterback.

Maybe the better question is, who's going to start Dec. 29 at Dallas, in the season finale?

The sense I got from the sitdown Kelly conducted with Eagles beat writers last month, looking toward the Monday opening of training camp, is that Kelly sees his quarterbacking situation as a process. Where he starts out might not be where he ends up.

"I reserve the right to change everything. The best players play. Just because you're the starter, you still need to understand that it's always on the line," Kelly said. "It's on the line every single day for you. So if I name Joe Jones the starting quarterback and his first 50 passes are interceptions, I'd better make sure I go to the No. 2 guy, right? Just because they were named the starter, that's not it. What's the next step? Just because you get drafted, you didn't make the NFL. Now you've got to make the team. Now once you make the team, you've got to become a starter. Now when you become a starter, now what do you do? Now what's the next step? You have to be successful."

The Eagles haven't gone into training camp with the quarterback position open since 1997, when Ty Detmer and Rodney Peete were the contenders. Obviously, this is the question everyone fixates on, starting with Michael Vick, who made it clear last month he'd much rather have a defined pecking order. Just as obviously, Kelly doesn't think not knowing the identity of the starter will cripple his team.

"I just got here," Kelly protested, when pressed on the matter during the session with reporters. Then Kelly pointed out that Alex Smith was the 49ers' starting quarterback last training camp, but Colin Kaepernick started in the Super Bowl. Seattle began camp with veterans Matt Flynn and Tavaris Jackson competing with rookie Russell Wilson; Wilson won the job in late August and ultimately took the Seahawks to the playoffs. The 49ers are led by ex-Stanford coach Jim Harbaugh, the Seahawks by former USC coach Pete Carroll.

"Two guys I respect the heck out of, I've coached against both those guys, they're tremendous coaches," Kelly said. "They named their starting quarterback, and then they had competition, and the other guy won the job." (Actually, Carroll never officially declared Flynn his starter, but that was assumed after the Seahawks signed him as a free agent.)

Asked whether the quarterbacks might find the situation frustrating, Kelly said, "That doesn't bother me." He also said "there's nothing to gain" by naming a starter now.

I was also struck by how little weight Kelly seems to be giving to the past, which could work for or against the incumbent. Several Eagles interviewed during spring drills seemed to assume Vick had the upper hand in the battle with Nick Foles, maybe because Vick is Vick - starter here when healthy since 2010, former first overall pick, four-time Pro Bowl performer. I don't think any of that means much to Kelly, who talked of needing to see his QBs make decisions under pressure before properly evaluating them.

On the other hand, a lot of us dismissed Vick as a possibility for this season after the 4-12, 2012 season, in which he was intercepted 10 times and lost five fumbles in 10 games, Vick missing six games, five of them because of a concussion and the last because Andy Reid wanted to see the rookie, Foles. Vick has committed 33 turnovers in 23 games over the past two seasons. Kelly has watched all of that tape, but hasn't drawn definitive conclusions from it, he said.

"It's very hard for me to evaluate the body of work, because you don't know what they were instructed to do," he said. "So when you see the play-call on the bottom of the computer screen , you don't know what Marty told him to do on that play, and when he throws it away, you're like, 'That's a bad decision,' but then he may have been told to throw it away. Unless you intimately understand what they were told to do, how can you make an evaluation whether that was the right thing to do?

"When we evaluated , we were looking at skill sets, arm velocity, did they have the ability. Our evaluation has to be from when we got our hands on them on April 1."

Going into the competition, some observers might have thought Foles stood much less of a chance of winning than Vick and maybe even less of a chance than fourth-round rookie Matt Barkley. That feeling was based mostly on Foles' lack of speed; he isn't much of a read-option run threat. Maybe as practices go live and the competition moves into preseason games, that problem will become pertinent, but Kelly has consistently downplayed quick feet as an important asset of his starter. It also might not matter that Vick clearly has the stronger arm; Kelly seems much more concerned about decision-making.

"They have to be good decision-makers. That's the biggest thing at that position," Kelly said. "How do you make decisions in the heat of the moment?"

It was Vick himself who last month dismissed the notion that the starter will necessarily be the most physically gifted of the group.

"When you have a strong arm, you can attack all areas of the field, but we've got multiple quarterbacks with strong arms; I think that's not the determining factor," Vick said. "I think you've just got to be able to make good decisions with the football. That's what's most important."

One of the things Vick is best at is holding on to the ball, buying time, waiting for a receiver to come clear. From what we know so far, this is pretty much the opposite of how Kelly wants his offense to work. Kelly wants the ball out of his QB's hands quickly.

Kelly also prizes accuracy, another area in which Foles might have an edge on Vick. Foles completed 60.8 percent of his passes as a rookie; Vick's career completion percentage is 56.3. He has bettered 60 percent only once, in his comeback year of 2010 (62.6).

"First and foremost, it starts with their eyes. Where are they throwing the ball? Because the eyes lead the body," Kelly said. "A lot of the accuracy issues that occur with anybody throwing the football goes with footwork. Is your body aligned on your target in terms of where you're trying to place the ball? It's the whole body, in terms of where you're throwing the football, from your feet all the way up to your eyes."

It's also important to assess the defense quickly and accurately, as Kelly's offense usually operates in hurry-up mode. That has not been a traditional Vick strength.

"It's huge understanding what the defense is doing and conceptually what we're trying to get accomplished," Kelly said. "There are certain run plays that we can run against any look, so presnap read isn't important with those. But in pass game and some in run game, you need to understand what you're going against."

The last few weeks, some observers have taken what Kelly said in June, put it together with what they saw in the handful of practices that were open in the spring, and concluded that Foles is actually ahead of Vick, and likely to win the job. I'm not going to go there yet, though when Vick suddenly blurted out that he would like to see a starter named, after weeks of deflecting similar questions, I wondered whether he wasn't looking for some sort of reassurance. He sure didn't get it.

But Vick, 33, seems to realize what is at stake - is he a starting quarterback anywhere again if he doesn't win this competition? His physical gifts remain above those of the other Eagles' QBs, and most NFL QBs. I wouldn't bet on him not winning the job. Given his injury history, though, and the 33 turnovers in 23 games, I also wouldn't bet on him keeping the job. I'll be shocked if Vick starts 16, or even, 14 games for the Eagles in 2013. I think Foles will get a chance this year, at some point. And depending on how the season goes, I could even see Barkley running the team Dec. 29 at Dallas, though he almost certainly won't be the starter for the Sept. 9 opener at the Redskins.

Barkley, the USC star coming off shoulder surgery, doesn't have Vick's arm, might not even have Foles' arm, but all that head-and-eyes stuff Kelly talks about is what Barkley embodies. He's an incredibly poised, polished rookie, a leader of players older than himself since his freshman year at Mater Dei High in Santa Ana, Calif.

Whatever happens, Kelly said he doesn't foresee an entire season of QB controversy, with debate raging over who ought to be at the controls.

"Everywhere I've been, it's played itself out on the field. Does that mean it's going to happen here? I don't know," he said. "But I've never been in a situation where when we've had to make the decision, it's been like it's 50-50, pick it out of the hat. It's somebody over the course of time has stepped up and won the battle. That's what you're hoping to have happen again here. Hopefully, it's evident to everybody, and there's no question that it's this guy, because his game stepped up."

Complete coverage of the Philadelphia Eagles' 2013 training camp

On Twitter: @LesBowen

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