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Michael Vick Playing Like NFL's MVP
By Kevin Blackistone
National Columnist


05:25:00PM (ET) Wednesday,November 17,2010.

In a sense, Michael Vick is like Kurt Warner, the greatest passer in Super Bowl history who early this year retired after a dozen mostly sparkling seasons quarterbacking in the NFL.

Vick is not necessarily the God-fearing, evangelizing Warner who often began his postgame interviews with an apology for first thanking his lord and savior before answering reporters' questions.

Vick isn't particularly the remarkably accurate and efficient passer Warner was in directing high-flying offenses in St. Louis, especially.

David Steele: Michael Vick's Career Day Spoils Donovan McNabb's Party

Where Vick mimics Warner is in defying expectations.

Like Warner, Vick was written off by the NFL and most of the media and fans that follow it. Time passed him by, so many said, much, of course, because of his own well-documented criminal undoing.

But there Vick was on Monday night at FedEx Field Stadium doing what Warner did years before him at almost as latent an athletic age. He was stunning the football world by igniting an offense that was lighting up the scoreboard as if the scoreboard was a pinball game screen gone haywire.

Warner wound up winning the first of two league MVPs in his second season with the Rams after replacing its chosen first string quarterback, Trent Green, who was felled by injury.

Vick got his chance again in this season's first game when his new team's chosen starter, Kevin Kolb, got knocked out with an injury.

Like Warner, Vick could win a league MVP, and should, if he continues to play as he has this year.

"I played against him when I was in St. Louis [and Vick was in Atlanta] and he's a much better player than he was then, a much better quarterback," Washington's linebacker London Fletcher reflected on Tuesday, less than 24 hours after Vick lit up Fletcher's side by throwing for four touchdowns and running for two more while amassing 413 yards of offense and a near perfect quarterback rating of 150.7.

Vick became the first player in NFL history to put up at least 300 yards passing, 50 yards rushing, four passing touchdowns and two rushing touchdowns in a single game. It earned Vick a consecutive NFC Offensive Player of the Week Award. The Hall of Fame reportedly requested his game jersey.

"He couldn't make those throws," Fletcher said after witnessing Vick open the game with a perfect 88-yard touchdown strike to DeSean Jackson. "He couldn't do the things in the pocket he's able to do. He always could run, but now, nobody else has a weapon like him in the National Football League."

Nobody.

That would include the most-decorated NFL player of the first decade of the 2000s, Colts' quarterback Peyton Manning. That would count the most-successful player during the past 10 years as measured by Super Bowls, the Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady, who reminded at Pittsburgh on Sunday that he, too, is having another MVP-type campaign.

But neither Manning nor Brady stood first in the league after last weekend in passer rating. They weren't first in yards per pass completion, either. They weren't perfect in keeping their passes out of would be defenders' mitts with zero interceptions.

And they certainly weren't No. 1 in value-per-entertainment-dollar in the league, if not all sports.

Vick topped all of those lists. And his team is 6-3 and, like Manning's and Brady's, at least tied for the division lead.

(I'm compelled to acknowledge when talking about Vick of the heinous crime for which he was convicted: dog fighting. I'm an animal lover and have come to know the righteous people who run the Humane Society of the U.S.A. since Vick's conviction. I don't feel sorry for what happened to Vick after hearing details of his criminal operation and I know there are those who can't, or refuse, to allow themselves to embrace him or anything he does, including his quiet unpublicized work on behalf of the Humane Society. But I've come to believe in Vick's redemption story and the work he's doing to stop kids from following the dark path he once cut.)

There was but one knock against Vick this season, but it had more to do with his versatility and valor than anything else. He hasn't started every game this season because he got hurt doing what really separates him from his peers: running with the ball. Earlier this season against Washington, he got sandwiched diving for the end zone after a nifty only-Vick-can-do kind of run. He suffered rib cartilage damage and was forced to sit out three games.

Still, through five starts -- including a quarter of the game in which he was injured -- and half of the season opener, Vick has accounted for 1,350 yards passing, 341 yards rushing and 15 touchdowns, including four on the ground. Along the way he's helped turn the Eagles into the most-potent offense in the game, not unlike what Warner did for the Rams.

"He's pretty amazing as an athlete," Brady said Tuesday on Boston's WEEI radio station. "I was watching the pregame and Steve Young said, 'He's the greatest weapon at quarterback that there could ever be.' I totally agree with that. With the way he can move the football and his style of play, and when he throws the ball like he did last night, he's damn near impossible to stop."

There is a lot of football left to be played this season and that makes it premature to hand out awards just yet. The Eagles and Vick are scheduled to play their division rivals, the Giants, with whom they're tied for the division lead, next weekend. Vick could finally have a bad game that would dump cold water on this firestorm for the MVP his play has ignited. He could, gasp, actually throw an interception.

Until then, however, what Vick has proved so far this season is just how wrong so many were about him on the field: he is actually good enough, matured by age and humility, to wind up with the NFL's MVP. More from NFL.com:

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