Not sure who has the bigger Michael Vick fetish – the UVA Football media, or the head coach at Virginia, Tony Elliott.
Another reporter asked Elliott, this time after Virginia’s 59-3 beatdown of Vick’s Norfolk State team, on Friday night, about the high esteem that the UVA coach holds for Vick, the convicted, and not at all contrite, dogkiller, who, for years, has said he thinks everybody just needs to move on from him being a dogkiller, presumably so that he can continue to bask in the glow of having once been a superstar athlete.
This was what passed for a question from, keep this in mind, a credentialed member of the media:
“Coach, I know you talked about it earlier this week, but what was it like looking to the other sideline, and seeing Michael Vick, for Norfolk State?”
I didn’t see Michael Vick Illustrated on the seating chart for the press box at Scott Stadium on Friday night, but I’ll concede, I may not have looked that closely.
“Yeah, I took time in the team meeting earlier this week just to show the guys who Michael Vick is, and the quarterbacks that we’re talking about, for the most part, the quarterbacks that I’ve been fortunate enough to be around in my career, you know, they’re all who they are, in essence, the way, their style of play, is because of Michael Vick, like, he revolutionized the position, right?” Elliott said.
The idea that Michael Vick “revolutionized the position” is romanticizing what was supposed to be with him – in reality, his actual numbers were pedestrian.
Even in college, his two years at Virginia Tech, Vick completed a replacement-level 54.5 percent of his passes, with 20 passing TDs and 16 rushing TDs, and 11 INTs, in his 20 starts, averaging 153.7 yards passing and 60.1 yards rushing per game.
The idea of what we could see based on glimpses of potential greatness from his brief run at Tech was what led the Atlanta Falcons to select Vick #1 overall in the 2001 NFL Draft.
Didn’t work out so well for Atlanta – over five seasons, Vick led the team to two playoff appearances, and a 38-28-1 record, before the dogkilling landed him in prison for 19 months, forcing him to miss the 2007 and 2008 seasons.
He returned to the NFL in 2009 with Philadelphia, and would go on to play for seven more seasons after his prison stint, with one playoff appearance, in 2010.
For all the ballyhoo about what he could be, Vick ended up being, stats-wise, a borderline barely average QB.
Which is to say, hardly revolutionary.
ICYMI
Elliott seems to be confusing Michael Vick with Lamar Jackson, a running QB who is a two-time league MVP, or the guy the NFL ran out of the league for refusing to kneel for the national anthem in 2016, Colin Kaepernick – who not only led a team to the Super Bowl, but lapped Vick numbers-wise.
The difference in between how the NFL – and society – treats Vick and Kaepernick says a lot about how out of whack the world is anymore.
We laud and fete the dogkiller who only apologized under financial pressure, while the guy who got in trouble for protesting for racial justice is the social outcast of the two.
Imagine Colin Kaepernick as the head coach at an HBCU.
That’s who I’d have been calling, if I’m Norfolk State.
“Man, he’s not only did, you know, things that that, you know, hasn’t been done, you know, since him, and so to have an opportunity to meet him, and then also to illustrate to the guys that this guy’s a winner, right, and you can see evidence of that now in the way that his team is progressing,” said Elliott, again, missing the mark – Vick’s first Norfolk State team finished with a 1-11 record, and after Friday’s loss, he’s 2-13 as a head coach in parts of two seasons at the school, with both of the wins over D2 programs.
“It was a real honor to share the field with with Michael again, and I’m hopeful that going forward, you know, we’ll be able to build a relationship, because if early indications of what he’s doing there is, you know, a predictor of what’s going to happen in the future, they’re going to win a lot of football games, and he’s going to be a very successful head coach in the future,” Elliott said.
Guess I need to say it again here: dude, have you no shame?
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Chris Graham
