Rich Hofmann: What's the Eagles' plan for Vick? We still don't know

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. - Kevin Kolb put up 24 points in the first half last night and didn't once give Eagles offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg a throat-slashing gesture to knock it off with the Michael Vick experiment. So the mad science of the mad scientists continued.

It cannot possibly be like this in the regular season, can it?

The Eagles snapped the ball 39 times in the first half against the New York Jets. Vick was on the field for 10 of them. (This was before he took over the offense and did normal quarterback stuff in the second half - and unusual stuff, such as taking an absurd 22-yard sack.) Ten out of 39 snaps is a bunch, somewhere between twice and three times as many as most people expected when the Eagles acquired Vick.

But now that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has signed off on Vick's full reinstatement for Week 3 of the regular season, we are left to ponder football things above all else - because the rest of it has already been decided, it seems. Eagles president Joe Banner said last night that they're about to get Vick involved in some kind of public appearance involving animal rights, and there was much talk about what everybody has learned, and it appears as if everyone has determined that this will be declared a success off the field.

Which leaves us with the on-the-field. And wondering how close Vick might be to the Vick of old.

"About 90 percent - I'm almost there," Vick said at one point. At another time, asked about the two-game suspension he still must serve, Vick said that he didn't feel as if it was a suspension, that he viewed it instead as "an opportunity for me to get myself together." Still another time he said, "I still think I'm a couple of weeks away." And, still another time, he said, "I think I played fairly well. A lot of things could have been better."

So, you are free to choose your time frame.

Both Andy Reid and Kolb said they saw flashes of the physical player Vick was before his incarceration. Reid said, "I think you got a chance to see he's got a little juice in those legs."

Kolb said, "He showed that burst I think we all wanted to see . . . You can tell the athleticism was there tonight . . . The reads will come."