Weekend Reading: Vick’s Market



A few links to pass along. Hope everyone is having a good weekend (complete with power).

Judy Battista of NFL.com spoke with an NFL exec about the prospects of Michael Vick landing a starting job.

One NFL personnel executive said teams undoubtedly will rate Vick the best of a middling quarterback free-agent market — one likely to include Matt Schaub, Matt Cassel and Mark Sanchez — and the exec said he would rate him as a mid-tier starting quarterback, somewhere between 13 and 16. In a league with 32 teams, that’s better than half.

“There are too many teams that are in need of an upgrade for him not to be looked at as a starter,” the personnel executive said. “I could see a team signing him, and developing a young guy. Vick could be a very good bridge starter for two to three years.”

Andrew Brandt over at MMQB says now is the time when teams’  draft boards are getting put together.

In the player evaluation business, February is when scouting staffs gather to combine their work from the past seven months. It is now, at the height of winter, when vital and lasting evaluations of players are applied toward potential selection in May. While there are always surprise showings at the Combine and at pro days, those performances merely adjust, not re-write, evaluations prepared in the thousands of man-hours teams have already allocated to the process.

February also is the time of year when teams put together The Board…

Teams assemble The Board in different ways, but the most common configuration is grouping player cards—which feature all measurable attributes—by position and separated by rounds.  As you read this, player cards are being affixed to The Board according to a team’s evaluators, perhaps not to be touched again until draft day when the player is selected.

And finally, NFL.com’s Marc Sessler gives his offseason forecast for the Eagles.

With ample cap room to play with, the Eagles likely will try to churn the bottom of this roster continually all spring and into summer. Roseman is on record saying that Philly will add talent through the draft with a “best player available” philosophy, meaning that May could bring a surprise or two — even at the quarterback position.

Kelly deserves plenty of credit for what he accomplished this season with a roster he largely inherited. With another draft haul and round of free-agent signings, his plan will crystalize further, and we expect the Eagles to go into next season as the favorites to win this down-and-out division.