While Michael Vick has not been a full participant in practice this week, he is otherwise preparing to play like nay other week. According to offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg, it’s been mostly like a normal week with Vick.
“Really, he’s been in mostly every meeting,” said Mornhinweg, “and so all of that has been normal routine, unless he’s had a doctor appointment or [head athletic trainer] Rick [Burkholder] needed him or something like that, but otherwise it’s been routine for him.”However, if Vick can’t play, Marty was asked if he would have a different gameplan depending on which QB (Kafka or Vince Young) play? His answer was actually surprising.
‘Well, the unique thing that we have, although I’ve been through it before, is a left-hander and two right-handers. So that’s a little bit different, otherwise it’s very manageable. That’s what we do, we prepare ourselves, and then if at any position if a man is unavailable, then the next man comes in a plays just as well or even better. That’s what the expectations are, and so that’s what we do. But other than a left-hander and a right-hander it’s business as usual there."That’s actually something I hadn’t considered. That basically everything they would have planned to do with rollout plays and what not, would be flipped with a righty at QB. It also would alter most of what the defense would do. Generally defenses will try to bring pressure to force Vick to roll out to his right, however they will flip all those blitzes if there was a righty at QB. Obviously the preparation for those blitzes has to be different.
Finally, while Vick’s concussion really was a fluke kind of play, Marty did say that they’re working on ways to make sure he isn’t getting hit as much as he has.
“Yeah, and we’ve discussed that and I don’t want to get into details on that but I want to see Mike keep himself clean and minimize [the hits he takes] – now the one that he got the injury on there was nothing quarterback-wise that he could have done, but there’s been others, so I’d like to minimize that and he’d like to minimize that. Some of it is his style of play, and certainly you don’t want to take that style of play away from him, but I do want to minimize the hits and there are several things we can do there.”