Michael Vick is hurt. Again. I'm shocked.
Nick Foles is still trying to shake off the cobwebs from a concussion. Before he left the field, he was suffering maybe his worst effort as a pro in his biggest moment. With a chance to cement himself as the Eagles' starter against the Cowboys, Foles instead came up small, flopping in front of the Linc faithful.
Matt Barkley is a rookie, meaning he is going to do rookie things, like hold onto the ball entirely too long on a crucial play at the goal line, and get caught from behind and fumble, instead of just throwing the ball away.
Of course, you could make the argument that this rookie did not exactly get helped by his rookie coach, who had one of the league's best running backs standing behind Barkley. With a first down at the 2-yard line, you think maybe Chip Kelly would have fed the ball to LeSean McCoy a few times? Nah!
All of the questions now surrounding Kelly and the Eagles got me to thinking.
I'm not sure Kelly did not make his biggest mistake before this season ever started.
No one should be surprised that Vick is on the shelf again. I set the over/under on the number of games Vick would play at nine, and made it clear I was taking the under.
In a word, he's brittle. And the older he gets (he's now 33), the more that is going to be an issue.
We have seen that regardless who is behind center, Kelly wants to run the run-option offense. That means he needs at least the semblance of a threat to run from his QB. That would seem to rule out Foles.
On Sunday, Barkley had several occasions where the Giants were daring him to pull that ball out of the running back's gut and run himself. They knew he wasn't going to do it, and so they ignored that possibility, instead focusing on shutting down LeSean McCoy.
So my question is this: Does anyone else think Dennis Dixon should be the quarterback of this team?
He played for Kelly at Oregon. He's intimately familiar with the run-option.
But he was released by the team during training camp.
Dixon was one of 12 players axed as Kelly trimmed his roster to 62 players at the end of August.
The Eagles had signed Dixon from the Ravens practice squad, but he never really got much of a shot with the Birds. He played in just one preseason game, and threw all of three passes.
His fate seemed to be sealed once the Eagles used their fourth-round draft pick on USC quarterback Matt Barkley.
The last I saw, Dixon was signed by the Bills to their practice squad.
But I wonder what he could do running the offense he's so familiar with, and with which both he and Kelly had so much success at Oregon.
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