The moral implications of the Philadelphia Eagles' signing of Michael Vick will be debated long after he returns to the field early this season. The football implications, though, are already pretty clear: The Wildcat is here to stay. The Eagles incited anger among some of their fans -- the team sent a letter to its premium seatholders essentially asking for patience and understanding -- and created a potentially season-long distraction for a Super Bowl-caliber team, all for the tantalizing prospect of what Vick can do for the offense in a package of plays that last year was widely viewed as little more than a charming gimmick. No other team will take as much of a risk as the Eagles did to deploy the Wildcat this season. But no other team might receive as much reward as the Eagles could either. The Eagles were one of the teams that ran the Wildcat last year, after the Miami Dolphins stunned the New England Patriots and the rest of the league with it. The Eagles' results in just a handful of plays were mixed with DeSean Jackson as the wildcat. He ran 9 yards for a touchdown against the Giants out of the Wildcat, but he also was intercepted on his only passing attempt. Coach Andy Reid calls the Wildcat 'a good wrinkle,' and the Eagles had already bulked up their Wildcat package of plays before Vick was even signed. But Reid is one of the NFL's most innovative and aggressive offensive minds, and you could see the twinkle in his eye when he was asked if the progress of the Wildcat influenced the Vick signing. 'To say that I've added to it since we signed him? I wouldn't say that, no,' Reid said. 'He's got to get back into the swing. But at the same time, I can't tell you that things wouldn't be padded to a package here and there.' The Wildcat in the NFL has so far been almost exclusively about the run. Ronnie Brown, the Dolphins' wildcat last year, attempted only three passes and completed two (one for a touchdown). Vick can run with the ball, of course, although his preferred scrambling style is to the edges, while Brown feasted on running behind his tackles in the Wildcat. A straight-ahead run will not be Vick's strength -- his forte is his shiftiness, and the stout defensive linemen in the National Football Conference East (hello, Giants) have had an entire off-season to study up on the Wildcat. That means the next generation of Wildcat -- heavy on the pass -- is coming, and Vick should excel at it beyond what Jackson or Brown or any other wildcat around the league can do. Vick, of course, is a quarterback first, and while his poor accuracy -- his completion percentage was 52.6 percent in 2006 -- bedevils him in traditional offenses, it might not be as glaring because the Wildcat provides the luxury of deception. In Miami, the Dolphins drafted Pat White, the former West Virginia quarterback, to run the Wildcat, but even another quarterback probably will not be able to match Vick's unparalleled improvisational skills. And the Vikings' Percy Harvin is devastatingly fast, but he is a wide receiver first. They will be fine running the Wildcat, but their teams will not have the opportunity to evolve the package of plays as quickly as Reid does now. Last year, the Dolphins introduced the Wildcat to get the most talented players from a thin roster on the field at the same time. That is what makes the Eagles so frightening: they have loads of offensive talent. Pick your poison: Donovan McNabb, Vick or Jackson. Last year, when the Dolphins unveiled the Wildcat, the Steelers' former coach, Bill Cowher, said that if he were defending it, he would bet against a pass, put eight men near the line of scrimmage and blitz to try to disrupt the play. That might work if there is a running back receiving the snap. But it is not such a good bet if Vick is there, particularly because his arm has shown no ill effects from his layoff. Or suppose Vick is sent out wide as a receiver, and then McNabb or Johnson gets the ball to him so Vick can pass it. As McNabb told reporters on Monday: 'I'll be a receiver. I might be a tight end. You never know where I'll be.' For now, the Eagles are moving Vick along slowly to allow his legs to strengthen. They want him to be comfortable with lateral movements before they start the trickery. But with four weeks until the start of the regular season -- and an undetermined period after that until Vick is fully reinstated to play in games -- the Eagles have plenty of time. 'To run that kind of offense you have to commit some time to it and you can commit some time to it in training camp where you have more of it,' Patriots coach Bill Belichick said. 'I think it's a little bit harder to commit that time during the regular season, so depending on how much you do in preseason that might tell us a little bit about what teams are going to do during the regular season, once it's kind of unveiled.' BRADY LOOKS LIKE BRADY It took a stunner of Vickian proportions to do the previously unthinkable: render Tom Brady's return to the game an afterthought. Brady was on the field when word of Vick's deal with the Eagles broke, so maybe everyone missed it. Here is the recap: Brady looked frighteningly good, considering it had been nearly a year since he last played and it was just the first preseason game. Brady had one deep pass that he did not step into with his previously injured left leg, and the pass hung in the air and was intercepted. Otherwise, Brady put to rest any questions about whether he would be tentative. He threw two touchdown passes, seemed comfortable in the pocket, and even ran a sneak for a first down. If the Patriots, with their off-season roster overhaul, were not already penciled in as the American Football Conference favorites, they should be now. And Josh McDaniels might be wondering why he ever left Foxborough. McDaniels, Denver's rookie head coach who was the Patriots' offensive coordinator last season, seems dangerously close to being sucked into the same post-Patriots vortex that has already chewed up Charlie Weis, Romeo Crennel and Eric Mangini. After his first game as a head coach, McDaniels was in the position of having to give a vote of confidence to his starting quarterback. That was something McDaniels did not learn about with New England. In a preseason game that might have gone a long way to reassuring fans their new coach knew what he was doing when he ushered the Pro Bowler Jay Cutler out of town, the starter Kyle Orton threw three interceptions. Cutler might be a bit of a diva -- in Chicago, he has implied he would like some say over the makeup of the final roster -- but Orton's debut only makes McDaniels' job tougher. 'He certainly made a few mistakes that we don't want him to make,' McDaniels said Sunday. 'He's definitely got to do better than he did in terms of some of those situations he was in, but I think he has a great attitude and he understands what was wrong and he'll work hard to fix them.' McDaniels might brace himself for more coaching agita: a potential quarterback controversy. His backup Chris Simms threw two touchdown passes. 