His greatest strength is a weakness--Michael Vick looks invincible. Whether it's the 20 and 30-yard passes he floats with the flick of his wrist or the 10 and 20-yard runs he breaks off on would-be broken plays, about 75 percent of the time, football just looks too easy for Vick. When he gets injured, it seems like the Football Gods' way of reassuring us he's human.
Michael Vick, Referee Complaints, And The Politics Of 15-Yard Penalties
Michael Vick left the Eagles-Giants game with a broken hand, and afterward he complained to the media about the way referees call his games. And he’s absolutely right, but not for the reasons you think.
As his critics love to remind us, nagging injuries have been Vick’s Kryptonite throughout his career. “He’s great,” they all concede, “But can he stay healthy?” they ask with an arched eyebrow.
We're all used to this by now. But after Sunday and the latest injury, Vick added a new wrinkle to the cycle. He got hurt on a 23-yard pass to Jeremy Maclin, when Giants lineman Chris Canty drove his helmet straight into Vick's chest and drove him into the ground.
“I felt like I got hit late,” Vick said afterward. “No flag. Broke my hand. That’s it. Trying to protect myself. Didn’t get a flag. And that’s pretty much been the story for the last three weeks. Obviously, at some point something catastrophic is going to happen, and I broke my hand.”
“Everybody saw the game,” Vick said. “I’m on the ground constantly. All the time. Every time I throw the ball, in all my highlights and just watching film in general, every time I throw the ball, I’m on the ground, getting hit in the head, and I don’t know why I don’t get the 15-yard flags like everybody else does.” He makes a good point, too, not that it’ll matter.
Remember when Vick and Peyton Hillis were finalists for the Madden 2012 cover? It came down to a 50-50 vote, with America sharply divided between two polar opposites. And now, in case you needed a reminder that Michael Vick's the most polarizing player in the NFL...
A controversy like this is tailor-made for another symbolic showdown between the two insane extremes in America. On one hand, the 51 percent of America that voted for Peyton Hillis on the cover will say something like this:
"Look at this clown. Blaming someone else, just like always. He doesn't want to get hit? He wants to cry about the refs? WAHHHHHHHH WAHHHHHHH WAHHHH... Somebody call the WAMBULANCE.
I'm so SORRY Mr. 100 million dollars, but this is FOOTBALL, not BASKETBALL. The reason he gets hit more than Tom Brady is because he spends so much dancing around back there. He wants to play his way, then he's gotta learn to live with the consequences."
And then the 49 percent of America that voted for Vick:
"It's allllllllllll a conspiracy, man. NOBODY WANTS TO SEE MY BOY MIKE SUCCEED. If somebody breathes on Tom Brady or Drew Brees--that's 15 yards, right? What's the difference? You tell me: Because Mike Vick's not endorsing Uggs? Because he doesn't do NyQuil commercials? [/pulls out ESPN Magazine, begins reading aloud] 'What if Michael Vick was white?' Hmmmmmm.... RIDDLE ME THAT, ROGER GOODELL."
For better or worse, everything about this clip is political now.
What’s too bad is that lost in the back-and-forth is an important point about the way refs officiate quarterbacks that scramble. It’s tricky, though. Obviously, you can’t scramble 10-15 times-a-game and expect to come out unscathed. But even when Vick doesn’t scramble, he still looks like he’s scrambling in the pocket--the way he carries himself, the way he’s constantly eyeing running lanes, his feet constantly moving.
Scrambling QBs have always gotten officiated differently. The same way Dwight Howard and Shaq spend entire NBA games getting shafted by the refs, NFL defenses get graded on a curve against someone like Vick. He seems so impossible to catch that when a lineman finally does pin him down, calling a 15-yard penalty would just be cruel.
Maybe it’s not part of some evil, league-wide conspiracy against Vick and QBs like him, but the phenomenon still probably exists. And watch the video above: if any lineman, ever, tried to drive Drew Brees or Tom Brady into the turf like that, wouldn’t that be a 15-yard penalty?
Because this is Vick, race is the elephant in the room for any conversation about anything. Some will go out of their way to downplay it and pretend it means nothing--“if he’d just throw the ball away and slide, he’d be fine”--and others will exaggerate it to say it means everything--“if he was white, wouldn’t the league be more vigilant about protecting its superstar?” The truth’s probably somewhere in between.
But lest we get caught up in too much cable news shouting, any prejudice among the officials has less to do with race than with a quarterback that spends most of the game darting in, around, and beyond any defensive pressure. Quarterbacks like Tom Brady get the benefit of special rules meant to protect them, because they look vulnerable next to a 6’6”, 260-pound lineman with 4.5 speed. Michael Vick’s biggest problem is that most of the time, he doesn’t.
Every other week, though, it seems like Vick takes an especially nasty hit that leaves him hobbling off the field. Despite all indications to the contrary, he’s clearly not invincible. He may survive twice as many hits as Tom Brady, but not four and five times as many.
Eventually it all takes a toll--even before the injury on Sunday, Vick had been pounded all day. The same way Shaq and Dwight Howard get hacked every time they touch the ball. Nobody claims that phenomenon’s racist, because it happens in a league full of black superstars.
So yeah, maybe it’s not really about race or politics. You can definitely blame Vick’s spectacular running for his injuries, and you’d be 100 percent right. But for the record, when Vick says he’s officiated differently because of the way he runs, he’s probably right, too.
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