The Eagles had not been on the Vick reinstatement radar, for good reason: Donovan McNabb was their established quarterback, the organization frequently trumpeted the importance of character, and team officials, including Banner and Reid, repeatedly indicated they weren't interested.
Banner said yesterday he had two different reactions that afternoon of Aug. 6, when he got in touch with Reid and heard directly what his coach had in mind - bringing into his locker room the most vilified figure in sports in 2009, the man who served 18 months in federal prison for hanging and drowning dogs and running a dogfighting ring. Also the man who was picked for three Pro Bowls before all that happened.
"From a football perspective, I was immediately, 'Wow that would be unbelievable.' From a nonfootball perspective, 'Holy cow. We've got to really research this; we've got to think it through; we've got to understand all the possible pluses and minuses and ramifications of this; we've got to move slowly to make sure there aren't things we don't think of, things we should be looking into that we don't,' " Banner, the Eagles' president, said yesterday, leaning against a wall of the NovaCare auditorium after the news conference that introduced Vick to Philadelphia. "Then I was very methodical about creating a process to make sure that if we decided to do this, it was a very informed decision, and therefore, the risk was relatively small."
From the outside, it sure seems the risk of a giant distraction derailing the season is huge, the reward hard to quantify. From Reid, Vick, NFL-appointed adviser Tony Dungy, and an anguished, eloquent team chairman Jeffrey Lurie, we heard a lot yesterday about second chances, not so much about X's and O's.
