Michael Vick Reinstated.

He's rumored to join the Patriots. And I thought being a dog killer was bad enough.

As long as they keep him away from Tomlin and the Steelers.

Any team he joins, will immediately undergo a metric fuckton of protests, rallies, and e-mail barrages the likes of which even God has never seen...

And God has seen 'wormsign', you know...

If he's lucky, he can get a gig in the CFL... but I don't see it happening. I doubt the Montreal Alouettes or the Calgary Rough Riders want bad press either.

I think you guys might be overestimating how much outrage Joe Public still carries over this issue. The majority opinion around these parts is that he was a dick for doing what he did, and jail time was absolutely necessary. But now that his term has been served, he should at least get a shot at landing a job (provided he avoids any future tomfoolery).

I’m not sure I understand your point, unless you’re saying you’ve read his court documents and have found him to have broken the terms of his release.

Don't underestimate the warped moral righteousness of Americans. We don't bat an eye at babies being cut out of their mother's wombs but kill a dog and you're a pariah for life.

I think the thing that bothers most sports fans is the idea of Vick making millions again. I say fuck it, he served his time and most of that money is going to lawyers and for punitive damages anyway. Hopefully he can rebuild his life.

His days of making a ridiculous amount of money are over; he'll end up as either a back-up or in some other capacity. No team is dumb enough to make him a starting QB again.

Sure, he probably won't make near what he was before, but the NFL Player's Association will make sure he's not signed on the cheap. I can easily see him making 2-3 million a year as a backup QB/WR-HB hybrid. Even if he doesn't make much over the veteran minimum, just the idea that he COULD make millions will drive people nuts. And I think you're giving GMs and owners around the league too much credit. The history of the NFL and other major American sports leagues is riddled with questionable/unpopular signings.

I just can't see people getting up in arms of Michael Vick returning punts for St. Louis or San Francisco as an afterthought. Leonard Little (and now, Dante Stallworth) killed people while driving drunk. I don't see picket signs lined up around their training camps.

This guy was an extremely overrated QB to begin with. Sure, he can scramble, run, but if you need him to pass downfield, forget it. You're going to lose. There's no way I'd take a major gamble on this guy in anything resembling a one or two spot on the roster.

Also, he spent two years in a federal prison. He's been punished enough.

Pete Prisco at CBS Sportsline summed up Vick perfectly: "For Vick, it was look to the first read, check down to Alge Crumpler, and then take off."

Until someone besides a classic drop-back passer wins a championship, you're not going to convince me that mobile QBs like Vick are the future. They excel in college because they play plenty of schools with no speed at linebacker. That changes in the NFL.

Abortion shoehorn scorecard:
Subtlety: 2
Irrelevance to topic: 5
Level of outrage: 2
Trolling factor: 2
OVERALL: 2.75

Try harder next time.

Yeah, it's like those who compare dog fighting to UFC, as if the UFC fighters aren't fully aware of what they're doing and well-paid for it.

I didn't read that as an abortion agenda, I thought the post was talking about the crazy cases of kidnapping an unborn child.

EDIT: I could see Jerry Jones signing Vick in some capacity. I haven't kept up on the situation, but that man is all about publicity.

I think the "fury" over Vick's return has a short window. Eventually people will find something else to be righteous about. But there is just that small percentage of the population, those people who would just as soon have loved to see Vick get the same treatment those dogs got, or those who think a life sentence would have been appropriate, who will make noise no matter where he signs. I expect some small, annoying protests and plenty of news coverage. Little and others should definitely have paid greater prices for their actions, but their lack of name recognition was their best defense against public scorn.

What's ironic is that the city I believe would have welcomed him back the quickest, Atlanta, is the team that he'll never get a chance to play for again. Those folks down there loved the shit out of Vick.

And I agree that the NFL won't be revolutionized by these scrambling QBs. When these guys are plucked out of high school, they're basically treated by their college coaches as RBs. They don't learn the fundamentals they'd need for the next level, and the systems they run just increase the amount of time it would take to "reprogram" them for an NFL system; no pro teams want to waste 3-4 years teaching a guy how to QB and then try to teach them their system all the while spending millions. Until they start demanding that they be treated like QBs with extra talent instead of RBs with strong arms, they won't get the respect they deserve from college programs.

Vick's biggest impact may be in revolutionizing how EA's programmers design their QBs not to be able to dominate a game with their feet. He was almost as dominant as Tecmo Bo...almost.

This wasn't a reference to abortion, which I support, this was a reference to a recent story about a mother who was killed and her unborn baby cut out of her womb and stolen.

Ah. My mistake, I guess.

No prob. Wonder if we'll get invited to the White House for beers now.

Not when it's as negative as what Vick would bring. They just cleaned house by cutting Tank Johnson, Pacman and T.O. because of their character issues, so I seriously doubt Vick will even be considered... no matter how cheap he'd go for. Romo doesn't need three backups.

People were supposed to show up and protest that somehow?

Of course not. People see stories like that, they talk about it for a few hours, and they get on with their lives. People hear about Mike Vick being involved with dogfighting, they talk about it for years, protest, threaten not to watch NFL games if he's reinstated, etc. People are assbackwards sometimes.

But what would you have someone horrified with that news story do? With Vick, they can take a concrete action like protesting, unlike a random baby murder.

And people have familarity with and actual feelings for celebrities involved in scandals like this. That ups the impact it would have on their lives.

I think you're overstating the outrage. Hell, PETA and the Humane Society haven't made a peep since he was reinstated.

Just because some one did something worse then what Vick did, doesn't mean people shouldn't be mad at him.

From a football perspective, I wouldn't sign him. He was never that good, any team that needs a QB could just wait for the draft or make a trade with no bad press.

I've read reports that Vick has told friends that he realizes he didn't commit himself enough to improving his play when he was with the Falcons, and that he's going to make the most of this second chance. Could just be lip service to appease Goodell, but if he's serious about this and really applies himself, he could surprise a lot of people. It's a question of which teams are willing/in a position to take that chance.

I wholeheartedly disagree with this. He wasn't good as a traditional drop back and read passer, and I personally would rather have one of those over a runner. But to say he was "never that good" is ridiculous. Teams in his division (Tampa Bay and Carolina in particular) built their defenses with the specific focus of stopping him in mind. That tells me those team seemed to think he was pretty good.

Ok, this is what people could/should do...

1) Not continue to make more of the Vick incident than it is. He tortured/killed dogs and financed a dog fighting ring. He got what he deserved legally and financially and in the eyes of the public his image is irreparably damaged. To pile on at this point is either insincere or obsessive. If we still value rehabilitation as we say we do, let the man get on with his life. Protesting at this point would be counterproductive. What more could we get out of keeping Vick out of football than we could by letting him play?

2) Reserve their venom for people and acts that deserve it. No one is saying people shouldn't be upset with Vick, but when that is seen with more disgust than a homicide and theft of a fetus, something is wrong with our society. The more attention we give to Vick, the less goes to items that deserve it. The media reports on what we signal to them we want to see, and if they're talking about Vick we must want more Vick. Thus, when we complain that the media is obsessed with a story like his, they roll their eyes and toss on another Vick segment.

3) Not get so caught up in the idea of celebrity. This is the main factor warping our idea of criminality and justice. If Michael Vick were some no-name kid who worked at a gas station and did what he did, no one would have given a rat's ass about the act after the first 24 hours. We have it in for famous/rich folks. Dog fighting/killing/torture has been going on for centuries. We continue to do little about it and public sentiment is fairly non-existent.

As for the outrage, I could be overstating it, but in comparison to the outrage I see for Vick versus that for other criminals, it doesn't seem too close. Some people just like to latch onto a story or person and ride their "outrage" to death. Maybe it makes them feel morally superior. In fact, if most of these people thought about it, they probably would admit that they're not that outraged about the whole situation anymore. PETA always tends to latch onto a case like this for publicity as much as anything else. When the Vick publicity train started to peter out, PETA moved on.

That tells me those teams seemed to think that Vick was all the Falcons had, so if you shut him down, you shut the Falcons down.

Which was absolutely true, but for a team to design their defense with one player in mind tells me that they thought he was pretty important. They weren't doing that for Delhomme or Chris Chandler.

I think Vick just didn't have enough complimentary players around him. Good TE, decent RBs, mediocre WRs, bad O Line. I think you put him on the Vikings and in a year he's a top 10-12 QB in production.

His problem has always been accuracy. He has a cannon for an arm, but couldn't hit the ground without gravity's aid. But coaching has a lot to do with it. His numbers were better under Reeves than with Mora, so the right coach might help.

Edit: NM. Wrong Thread

Funny that you mention this. We were talking about whether this would be a good idea at lunch today. He has the potential with the right team to be something special, and we certainly have alot of talent for a qualified quarterback to work with.

The main question is, would he draw in or repel attendance at our games. I can really see that going either way.

Tarvaris Jackson's completion percentage and QB rating last season were both higher than Vick's career high in both those categories.

Yeah, accuracy was his main drawback. And like Richard Dickson mentioned earlier, he wasn't that great when he had to go to his 3rd or 4th options. I think the West Coast Offense was a poor fit. Some of it, I think, has to do with coaches waffling on whether they wanted to make him a more traditional drop back passer (with great legs ala Steve Young), or play him almost as an option QB. I think with a team that has a good RB like Peterson to bring the 8th guy into the box, Vick would see more man coverage or deep zone and have more space to throw in.

I just don't see attendance taking much of a hit anywhere. To give up season tickets because of the presence of Vick would be a BIG sacrifice for football fans on a contending team. I think people irked by his presence would grudgingly go.

I was just going to say that they already had a poor man's Vick on the roster...

I'm certainly not a Vick apologist, but he brought (and maybe still can) something to the table at the position that Jackson doesn't. I don't know what it is exactly, but dude had it.

I thought Tarvaris had good potential. I think coach panicked a little after a 12 interception season. But his stats last year were very good. I just don't know if Childress is sold on him. What Vick did with the Falcons was make his teammates and opponents think that every time they hiked the ball, he could make a big play. Tarvaris doesn't inspire that kind of fear/respect yet.

Well, if you haven't heard by now...

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/...Vick_deal.html

And predictably, every soccer mom and animal activist who lives on the Main Line is going batshit insane...

How many NFL players have killed people?

At least three I can think of off the top of my head -- Leonard Little, Dante Stallworth (both DUI incidents), and Rae Carruth (murder). Counting players who were actively playing when the incidents happened.

Thank God Philly picked him up and not us (us being Baltimore).

I can't help but believe this won't end well.

My puppy is very depressed at this news. We should have sent him to NK with Mr Clinton and then left a little early while Vick was buying stuff at the duty free shop. Mr Jong Il could have had a new pal.

It won't. My fiancee and I had friends over after a fundraiser yesterday, and we were all watching the Steelers/Cardinals game, when they broke the Vick news.

We all stared at each other for about 10 seconds or so, then my fiancee just said "Oh shit...".

Other papers in the tri-state area are running the story, and based on opinion from "Joe Average-Guy", and the die-hard Eagles fans...

Let's just say this does not bode well for the Eagles front office.

Ray Lewis also may or may not have murdered someone. Oh and OJ. Who could forget OJ?

He served his time. Much as I don't care for animal cruelty, I also believe in second chances. They should at least give him the opportunity to screw up, THEN go after him. Otherwise, just like any other crook he has earned his second chance.