Will Michael Vick return to the NFL?

It’s the talk of the league after Vick was sentenced to 23 months in prison Monday for charges stemming from the dog-fighting ring he ran out of his Virginia home.

 

Nobody knows if or when Vick might return to the NFL. For now, it’s little more than idle talk-show and water-cooler chatter.

 

But a study of the Cold, Hard Football Facts could not be more certain about one thing: if and when Vick returns to the NFL it should be – and, if sense prevails, will be – as a running back.

 

Preferably, he'd come back as a tandem type, one who can play the Maurice Jones-Drew role but with some extreme trick-play abilities. It's not hard to imagine.

 

You could argue already that he’s been one of the great running backs the game has ever seen. His performance as a passer, meanwhile – the foundation of pro quarterbacking – has always left a lot to be desired.

 

In tribute to his verboten No. 7, here are seven reasons why any future Michael Vick redemption story should come with a new jersey number, like 32 or 34.

 

Even though Vick bore the title of quarterback, his most electrifying, memorable and productive plays came when he ran with the ball. In his six NFL seasons, he cranked out 3,870 yards on 527 attempts, an average of 7.34 YPA. Nobody in the history of football comes close to matching that average. Vick doesn’t have the necessary minimum 750 attempts to qualify for the official NFL record books, but his average is so far above and beyond anyone else in history that there’s little doubt he would hold the mark after another 223 attempts. The current record belongs to another famous running quarterback, Randall Cunningham, who averaged 6.36 YPA, nearly a full yard less than Vick’s average.

 

To put Vick’s average of 7.34 yards per rush attempt into perspective, consider that New England’s record-setting quarterback Tom Brady has averaged 7.25 yards per pass attempt in his career.

 

Remember Beattie Feathers? No? Here’s the CliffsNotes bio: he paired with Bronko Nagurski to give the 1934 Bears one of the most devastating ground attacks in history. Feathers that year cranked out 1,004 yards on a mere 119 carries for a single-season average of 8.44 YPA that would stand as an NFL record for 72 seasons – until Vick broke the record last season when he ran for 1,039 yards on 123 attempts, an average of 8.45 YPA.

 

Clearly, Vick’s average per attempt benefits because of his position. If a quarterback, for example, is tackled 3 yards behind the line of scrimmage, the play is recorded as a sack and counts against his gross passing totals, not against his rushing totals. If a running back is tackled 3 yards behind the line of scrimmage, it is, naturally, deducted from his rushing totals. So quarterbacks certainly have an unfair advantage in this category.

 

Still, Vick’s brilliance as a runner is evident by the fact that his career average per attempt, as noted above, exceeds another quarterback, Cunningham, by nearly a full yard. Vick’s single-season record of 8.45 YPA also blows away Cunningham’s best single-season of 7.98 YPA in 1990 which, coincidentally, is the third best single-season average in history (behind Vick and Feathers).

 

The Falcons succeeded with Vick at quarterback not because he was a great passer – he wasn’t even close – but because he ran the ball so successfully. In fact, he inspired the Falcons to become one of the most productive running teams in football history. The 2006 Falcons, for example, were No. 1 in the NFL in rushing attempts (537), yards (2,939) and yards per attempt (5.47).

 

That team-wide average of 5.47 yards per attempt gave the 2006 Falcons the second most effective ground game of the Super Bowl Era. Only the Barry Sanders-led 1997 Lions were more consistently productive on the ground, with an average of 5.51 YPA.

 

The team-wide total of 2,939 yards, meanwhile, was the fourth-best single-season output in NFL history.

 

Vick chimes in at 6-1, 215 pounds – almost perfect size for an NFL running back. In fact, he’s the spitting physical image of the league’s latest superstar ball carrier, Adrian Peterson of Minnesota (6-1, 217). Vick is certainly tall enough to become a modern pocket-passer-style QB – just ask Drew Brees (6-0, 210) – but he certainly doesn’t match up physically with prototypical modern NFL quarterbacks such as Tom Brady (6-4, 225), Peyton Manning (6-5, 230) or Ben Roethlisberger (6-5, 240) ... the same guys who have won five of the last six Super Bowls.

 

NFL quarterback is widely regarded as the toughest position to play in all of sports. Certainly, no position benefits more from repetition – repetition needed to master pass routes and check downs, not to mention opposing defenses, among many other variables. Quarterbacks simply get better with the more snaps they take, usually peaking in their late 20s and early 30s. Just ask the prolific Peyton Manning, who came into the NFL with all the talent in the world, but struggled to grasp the pro game, as evidenced by his 28 INTs as a rookie – nearly the number the 31-year old Manning has thrown in his last three years combined (32). Manning, like every other quarterback in the history of the game, has grown better with the more snaps he’s taken.

 

If and when Vick returns to the NFL after a 23-month prison sentence, it would be for the 2010 season. Vick will be 30 years old then and will have missed three straight seasons of pro football – and will have missed three straight years worth of education learning the quarterback position. It’s doubtful he would be able to produce at a very high level, at least as a passer. Most teams might determine, if they’re stuck with a QB who needs to learn the position, that they’re better off with a 22-year-old than a 30-year-old.

 

However, a body that’s gone three straight years without the train-wreck rigors of NFL football could be perfectly suited to make an immediate impact at running back.

 

Even if Vick were to return to the NFL and match his previous passing production, it would hardly be enough to inspire confidence in a team.

 

Vick’s major problem as an NFL quarterback has been that he simply does not pass the ball nearly as well as the game’s elite quarterbacks. He’s never completed 57 percent of his passes, he’s never thrown for 2,500 yards and he’s never thrown more than 20 touchdowns. And his career passer rating of 75.7 is below average (typically about 80.0) and far below the elite status that might inspire a team to take a chance on him three seasons after he last took a snap from center.

 

Atlanta’s running game has certainly suffered severely this year without Vick (down from 5.47 YPA in 2006 to 3.88 YPA in 2007, entering Atlanta’s Monday night game vs. New Orleans). However, the Falcons passing game, even with a rotating cast of quarterbacks, has fared relatively well, with 2,675 yards through 12 games, just seven yards shy of the 2,682 yards Atlanta’s 32nd-ranked passing attack produced in all of 2006.

 

Major college football has changed drastically over the past decade, with most teams eschewing run-first offenses for pass-happy pro-style offenses. But there’s still room for the running quarterback. Simply look at dual-threat Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow of Florida, or the option offenses employed with great effect by military academies Navy and Air Force, which ranked Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, in rushing offense this season.

 

But the NFL ain’t college football. You'd have to search long and hard through the dusty pages of NFL history to find a running quarterback who won a championship. And those with reputations as running quarterbacks, such as Steve Young and John Elway, were also great passers when they won championships.

 

The pro game is all about quarterbacking play – specifically, it's all about the passing play of quarterbacks. Teams that pass the ball well win games consistently and win championships consistently. Teams that don’t pass the ball well don’t win consistently. There's a reason why just eight Hall of Fame quarterbacks have won 22 of the 41 Super Bowls ever played (Terry Bradshaw, 4; Joe Montana, 4; Troy Aikman, 3; Tom Brady, 3; John Elway, 2; Bob Griese, 2; Bart Starr, 2; Roger Staubach, 2).

 

Vick’s Falcons never won consistently because he never passed well consistently. They were 37-27-1 with Vick as a starting QB, but just 15-17 over his last two seasons. In Vick's four years as a full-time starter, the Falcons' average rank in scoring offense was 15th -- extremely mediocre, when you have such an explosive weapon on your side.

 

And Atlanta’s greatest season under Vick simply proves the importance of passing. The 2004 Falcons went 11-5 and reached the NFC championship game. Vick, not so coincidentally, had perhaps his best season as a passer in 2004 with career highs in completion percentage (56.4) and yards per attempt (7.2).

 

Yet in a league in which an effective passing game is always the difference between failure and success, those numbers are not great – certainly not great enough to inspire a team to hand Vick the keys to the offense after a three-year absence. But they should find seven good reasons to hand him the rock.