NFL Rantings: Everything you Never Wanted to Know about Michael Vick

On Thursday, August 13th, maligned-humanitarian and professional square peg Michael Vick signed a one-year contract with the Philadelphia Eagles that includes a club option for 2010. The news came largely by surprise, not because it was under-reported that Vick would soon sign, but because people have always taken the Eagles at face value when they tell you what they're not doing.The Eagles, like pretty much every other team in the league, declared Vick a person of non-interest. At the time, he probably was. The only thing that made the Eagles different is that when it came down to the final few teams who were actually willing to offer Vick a contract, the Eagles decided that he was worth a chance, and Vick decided that being a developmental quarterback on the Eagles is probably a better career move than being one on the Ravens and Bengals. Probably a good move.The first thought about Vick is that he can help the Eagles as a package-specific player, including being the point-man on the single wing/Wildcat package. I'm sure Vick will be able to help the Eagles in that way, but you'll have a hard time selling me on the fact that the Eagles thought they would endure the loads of criticism that come with the territory so that they could not have to see DeSean Jackson behind center in the Wildcat.We don't know exactly when Michael Vick will be eligible to play again, except that it will be at some point between week one and week seven. And when he does come in, I suspect that it won't be as a package-specific player for the Eagles. I'm thinking you'll see him in doses of a drive at a time. You might see Vick once on the third drive of the game, maybe then again in the second half, and also, I think he'll do some package work in the Red Zone where he is more effective than Donovan McNabb. Knowing who Andy Reid is, and what he's about, I think that when Vick does package work, it will be a lot closer to conventional twenty-first century football than anyone is ready for.Vick is not likely to be owned in very many fantasy football leagues before the season, but I think that there would have been no reason at all to add him to the team if he wasn't going to be a statistical monster in one way or another. He's simply not the kind of player that provides the kind of future value that would make the Eagles think they could store him away on the bench for the whole season, and then go into the offseason optimistic about Vick's future in Philly.For one thing, Vick is in his prime years as of right now. He's 29 years old. Quarterbacks, in general don't get better following this age. Vick is a special case because he missed two seasons in the prime of his career, and he's bound to under-perform his abilities in his first year back to the game. Still, Vick's the kind of player who was getting less and less valuable for the Falcons as time went on due in part to two factors: 1) the deterioration of his own physical athleticism from elite to merely extraordinary, and 2) the improvement in athleticism of the average defender in the NFL. Still, Vick recorded his first 1,000 yard rushing season in 2006 right before his suspension, so certainly his legs were his biggest weapon, but his increasing sack rate suggests that his rushing totals more closely correlate to how long Vick holds the ball as opposed to either self-improvement or increased athletic prowess.Secondly, Donovan McNabb was a self-admitted proponent of this deal, because he thinks Vick can help the team without threatening McNabb as the Eagles unquestioned starting quarterback. McNabb seems to be losing his continued battle with logic. Whether adding Vick helps the Eagles as a team is up for debate. Whether it helps or hurts Donovan McNabb's personal career is very much decided. McNabb's correct that Vick is not going to be a direct threat to McNabb's hold on the Eagles' starting quarterback role,* but Vick's presence on the roster limits the traditional value of the starting quarterback position. It's not Brent Celek's playing time that Vick is going to take, it's McNabb's.*unless McNabb plays himself out of the roll. Then, forget I said that.Vick's signing is the latest development in a bee-line of events over the last four weeks that have taken McNabb from being the sixth or seventh most valuable quarterback in fantasy football to a nice backup option. Combine the offensive line injuries with an injury to the prospective No. 2 TE, and a defense that is thinner by the day, and you had a guy who figured to see his touchdown production cut from last year. Now, you add in Vick, who figures to take some of that action away on the goal line, and we're now talking about an easily replacable 13-15 TD player. Fantasy value aside, it's probably correct to assert that if Vick's work as a part-time player goes according to plan, Donovan McNabb becomes incredibly expendable at seasons' end. McNabb's contract provides him more security than the Eagles offense does at this point.It won't be Vick that replaces McNabb in Philly when McNabb's tenure does end, but it's not hard to see comparisons between this story, and the very last story that featured a professional athlete from Syracuse who had another talent who's star power exceeded his production thrust upon him: when Allen Iverson was traded to the Denver Nuggets. Carmelo Anthony did not see the boost to his team that he expected to see when his team acquired Iverson, but he made it through the two-year experiment reputation unscathed, and his team was far more successful this season without Iverson. Perhaps McNabb and Reid could learn a lesson from this: just because you intend to use Vick as a dynamic weapon in key situations doesn't necessarily make your team better off for it.What Vick will do is make the defensive coordinators in the NFC East work that much harder in the week before they play the Eagles. While an optimistic might suggest this this will have a trickle down effect on McNabb, teams across the division already know how to defend the guy who has been in their division for the last ten years. Teams will defend McNabb just how they've always defended him. To the Eagles, that's the allure of Vick: that's he's tough to defend for 2 or 3 possessions a game. It's not like he's been productive enough to win as a passer.Vick has never thrown more than 421 passes in any season, compared to the NFL average over this time-frame, which is 516. In Vick's most recent two seasons, he threw 387 and 388 passes. According to the statistics at Football Outsiders, Vick has not directed a passing offense to acceptable levels since 2002, the last time he played a full season in an offense other than the west coast. He's always added value to the running game, but you can't compete in the NFL doing this. Over 2005 and 2006, the Atlanta Falcons were 15-16 in games started by Vick, and with the mediocre overall offensive totals, it's easy to argue that having the No. 1 rushing attack in the NFL according to yards has little meaning. It's better than not having it, but Vick's rushing totals are due to a boom or bust approach to pocket passing: when he breaks the pocket, Vick becomes a dangerous player, but the desire to turn Vick into a thrower from the pocket has resulted in terrible personal passing numbers, and large amounts off offensive inefficiency.The desire to turn Vick into a complete quarterback de-railed his career long before anyone ever realized that a man with millions upon millions to his name could be foolish enough to engage in dogfighting. The Falcons would not have won with Vick no matter how long they tried to, and it's very much up to debate whether the Eagles are going to learn from the Falcons mistakes. The reason Vick can be such a dangerous player in small doses is because there's nothing, schematically, that can be done to keep Vick inside the pocket except to get him with your pass rush or blitz schemes right away. With that said, Vick has never had an issue with said hot reads. Vick is very short by NFL standards, and thusly, relies on his pre-snap reads for most of his information in the passing game (this coming from a diminutive former quarterback). Well, if he's going to try to make those throws that a traditional quarterback makes, he's at a huge disadvantage doing it from the pocket and he always will be. Drew Brees gets by because he's more accurate than anyone in the history of the league, and he's got an inch or two on Vick. Rex Grossman never did get by. Vick's not in the minority with regards to his height, but his athleticism is his ace in the hole.You can't get 200+ passes out of a guy like Vick, and that longevity limitation begs teams to use him creatively. I think the Eagles will do so, and if Vick ends up turning about 2/3 of his dropbacks into runs, he can be successful in this league. For the Eagles, his role will certainly be simplified this year, and you can pencil him in for at least 4-6 total TDs, most likely concentrated in the weeks where your fantasy playoffs will be played. A word of warning: Murphy's Law suggests that if you're not the guy in the league who stashes Vick away on your roster, the person you play in the playoffs will be the one who did.The bottom line is that the Philadelphia Eagles have created the number one storyline heading into the 2009 football season when they added Michael Vick, and there's hardly any guarantee that this story will have a happy ending. The Eagles' stock had dropped more than any other team since training camp open, and Vick was an easy way to bring back the expectations to a team that thinks it should be contending for a super bowl. It's also created a very difficult situation for it's veteran quarterback, who some observers felt needed a swift kick in the rear anyway.I thought (prior to training camp) the Eagles were very flawed, but just as talent-loaded. With Michael Vick in the fold, the Eagles are potentially even more dysfunctional, but are now even more talented. They compare favorably to the 2008 media-darling Dallas Cowboys, but unless they get Andy Reid's best coaching effort yet, they're going to end up in the same spot at the end of the year, Vick or no Vick.