Yesterday over at Pro Football Talk, Florio and company took a look at former Falcons quarterback Michael Vick and whether he should demand a starting job as he attempts to make a comeback in the National Football League. In doing so, PFT listed all of the NFL's teams and determined whether their current starting QB is better or worse than Michael Vick.
I find this to be a fairly ludicrous exericse, quite frankly. For starters, the Vikings' current quarterbacks are listed as being "worse" than Michael Vick. I'm not exactly sure why this is, to be honest. As far as the type of quarterback the Vikings need, Vick shouldn't be anywhere near the conversation (and, thankfully, he's not). Throw in the fact that I'm pretty sure that Tarvaris Jackson, Sage Rosenfels, and John David Booty have never used the words "rape stand" in casual conversation, and it's pretty ludicrous to think that the Vikings should be entertaining the thought of Michael Vick in purple at all.
In the bigger picture, though, here's the thing. You're not going to hear a lot of people say this out loud, but Michael Vick was a bad NFL quarterback when he was in the National Football League, spending all year with his team, going to camps, watching film, and so forth. Quite frankly, at the NFL level, Vick is nothing more than Tarvaris Jackson with a better PR team. Now, Vick has spent the past couple of seasons in a prison cell, and he can't possibly be in anything even remotely resembling football shape. He also hasn't attempted to read an NFL defense in two years.
(Okay, so maybe not everything has changed.)
PFT estimates that Vick is either comparable to or better than 19 of the 32 NFL starters. This means that, even after a couple of seasons on the sidelines in the Virginia Penal League, the folks at PFT think that it's possible that Michael Vick is an upper-half-of-the-league starter. I say there's absolutely, positively no way. I think the list of quarterbacks at any position on anyone's depth chart at this point that Michael Vick is better than is very short, and the list of starters he's currently better than ranges from somewhere between "miniscule" and "non-existent."
What say you, ladies and gentlemen? Is Pro Football Talk correct in their assessment of Michael Vick's current abilities?