No Reason to Root for Vick's Failure if He Stays on Straight and Narrow

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Society benefits the more Michael Vick thrives. Not that his success should be viewed through football's prism -- he can complete 7 for 11 passes for 26 yards, and rush for another 35, and occasionally inspire flashbacks with his elusiveness, as he did Thursday night in the Philadelphia Eagles' 38-27 preseason loss to the New York Jets, and the only people he truly impacts are those who inhale and exhale football.

However his gridiron career finishes, it will be a small footprint to the legacy Vick leaves. No, Vick's true worth should be found in moments beyond the 60 minutes when he earns his employ. This is why we should stand up and root for Vick to thrive, to create a positive ripple, to leave his little section of the planet better than he found it.

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NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell made the right, just move earlier on Thursday afternoon when he announced the game plan to officially reintroduce the league's most troubled soul into what we consider civilization: Vick will be suspended for the first two regular season games, making him eligible to play September 27, when the Eagles host the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 3.

"Hopefully we can have a success story here, which would be good for society in general," Goodell said. "He's realistic about the challenges ahead. And anxious to play football."

There are certainly plenty of folks who'd rather Vick be treated with the same cruel indifference he showed packs of innocent animals during the years he ran an illegal dogfighting ring. These folks would prefer Vick be electrocuted, hung, abused and tortured -- karmic punishment for a man they consider beyond redemption. Reading and listening to their diatribes, you wonder why they bother to live in a country that considers it bad form to stone criminals in the town square.

It's not just a trite cliché to note that Vick served his time -- 18 months of a 23-month prison sentence in Leavenworth, not exactly Club Med -- and should be allowed to return to work as long as his employer agrees. The underlining subtexts here -- forgiveness, salvation, man's capacity to change and become better – are only the traits upon which America rests. If we can't root for those, what's the point of ever crawling out from under the covers each morning?

"I've been doing everything I could, doing all the right things and staying on course, and I was happy with the decision, " Vick said of his meeting with Goodell. "I'm changing my life for the better. [I'm showing Goodell] that I'm doing all the things that a professional athlete is supposed to do on an off the field. I can't get complacent. I have to continue to have faith in myself and trust myself, and I think he believed that."


This was after Vick did some good and not-so-good things on the field against a fine Jets defense, none of which really mattered beyond how they impact the Eagles' roster decisions in the next few days. He was sacked four times for 40 yards in a game where neither team had any interest in adhering to the unwritten code of no-blitzing during the final exhibition.

"I still think I'm a couple weeks away. I'll take this time to get in shape -- to get endurance and to continue to strengthen my legs and to work my mind with the offense, the mental capacity of the game," Vick said. "I just have to try to do all the right things to put myself in the position so that, when I'm called on, I can go out there and do my best."

None of us know whether Vick's core makeup is strong enough for him to overcome the sickening choices he made in the first half of his life, whether he has stopped lying and scheming to commit horrendous acts and surrounding himself with wicked sycophants. Goodell can't possibly know the answer, either, and neither can Tony Dungy, a good, righteous man who now heads Vick's entourage. But there has to be a place in our hearts where we allow for redemptive possibilities, which is the message Goodell seemed to hope to impart when he announced the terms of Vick's full reinstatement.

"Part of this was to help him in his transition from what has been a long and difficult experience for him," said Goodell, who originally planned to offer a decision on Vick's fate no later than Week 6. "I don't want him in a position where he's overwhelmed. He's still relocating his family to Philadelphia. I'm not interested in the football part of it. I'm interested in Michael as a person."

Already we've witnessed plenty of positive fallout in the wake of the abominable acts wrought by Vick and his cohorts at the Bad Newz Kennel. Even clueless idiots should now know that dogfighting is a federal crime in all 50 states. Donations earmarked for animal shelters and volunteer activism has skyrocketed in major cities. Rather than cloak their energy and resources in negative protests, animal rights activists in Philadelphia have mostly chosen to mark Vick's signing with the Eagles as a way to spotlight their noble, often thankless work.

If Vick still has evil instincts, we'll know soon enough. In their meeting Thursday, Goodell reportedly asked Vick to clarify why he became involved with dogfighting in the first place. For some reason, one of Vick's representatives was said to have attempted to explain Vick's role, as if anyone could ever truly articulate a reasonable answer. But at least Vick supposedly interceded, and again took responsibility.

"I have to use good judgment. That's what I've been trying to display and it's what I've been trying to do in my day-to-day walk of life," Vick said after Philadelphia's loss.

On a circuitous trip around the Meadowlands exterior before Philadelphia and New York met, only one lone woman stood out. She held up a sign that read, "Save Dogs, Not Vick," and said she was a Jets season ticket holder. But she wouldn't provide her name, and fans wearing green jerseys barely gave her a side look. If demonstrators want to protest Vick's presence at Giants Stadium or any other NFL fortress, they'll first have to pay outrageous parking and ticket prices.

Even the folks at PETA must realize they can make better use of their funds.

Jets fans greeted Vick's appearance as if he had just kicked their Doberman, which was to be expected. A half-filled Meadowlands booed and jeered Vick when he came in for his first play at quarterback, after backup Kevin Kolb took the first two snaps. (Starter Donovan McNabb sat out the final tune-up.)

Tom Brady has heard worse in these parts, and while the crowd wasn't exactly New York-rude, there were moments when Vick appeared rattled and unfocused. He is clearly still rusty from spending much of the previous two years in courtrooms or prison. But he offered enough flashes of athletic brilliance in a sea of mostly third- and fourth-stringers to remind fans why he once was the league's highest-paid player and one of its most fascinating commodities.

"Jets fans -- they're great," Vick said. "They go out and demonstrate what true fans are supposed to be. They boo, and that's part of the game, but at the same time, I felt some love. I understand it's a part of what I have to deal with. It's part of what any quarterback around the league has to deal with."

In the first half, Vick subbed in and out for Kolb, made several fine escapes from the New York rush, scrambled out of trouble on a second-and-five at the Jets 40 for six yards, scored a touchdown on a two-yard rush up the middle and actually made coach Andy Reid crack a smile.

In the second half, with Vick mostly running the offense, he scrambled in the wrong direction and got flattened by the Jets' Jamaal Westerman for a 22-yard loss, was shaken up on another blitz when Marques Murrell came in from the blind side untouched, got stripped for a fumble, took a couple more sacks and caused Reid to slam down his headset in disgust.

There were times when he evaded trouble, turning the open field into his playground and showing he has plenty of juice in his legs, and times when he failed to settle in and allow his receivers to get set in their routes.

His instincts need fine-tuning on the football field, but as long as he's got them under control off it, we really can't complain.