A tame debut for Eagles' Vick

As with everything else that has transpired since the Eagles signed quarterback Michael Vick two weeks ago, even his first step onto the football field last night was the subject of disagreement.

If you were listening for cheers, there were cheers, augmented by a portion of the crowd that chose to stand while delivering them.

If you were listening for boos, there were some of those, too, although not many by Philadelphia standards and definitely not many by dog-killing felon standards.

This was a football crowd, after all, and it came for playmaking not politics, for spectacle not speeches.

The sideshow was outside the stadium, where the skimpy band of knee-jerk protesters on one side of the issue matched rhetoric with the skimpy band of knee-jerk protesters on the other side.

It was a good show for the television cameras, but although the medium can add weight to those on the air, it's hard to add sheer numbers. There were perhaps a dozen pro-Vick enthusiasts marching around for the cameras, and maybe a half-dozen on the other side, although that counts as 42 in dog supporters.

The pregame bluster was as predictable as it was perfunctory, and Eagles fans attending the game mostly ignored it. More interesting was the simple curiosity about what would happen in the game, how Vick would be used, how he would play.

Aside from his well-crafted introductory news conference, there had not been much of a way to judge Vick before last night. He hasn't spoken to the media, has been seen briefly in snippets of film from the practice field, and the only stir he had created came from a swizzle stick in a Grey Goose-and-pineapple.

He has been in bubble wrap for the most part. When a let's-be-friends confab between team officials and a number of animal-rights groups was held at the NovaCare Center last week, Vick wasn't even required to cross the hallway to say "Hi" to the folks. Somewhere on the scale of possible risk and possible reward it was decided that an extemporaneous forum with that audience wasn't in Ookie's best interests.

The Eagles prefer a more controlled environment, and that's what Vick was given when he played last night against the Jaguars. He took part in each of the first four offensive series of the game, getting on the field for a total of six plays.