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Listen. In 2001, the world changed forever. When the Falcons traded up from pick No. 5 to the top of the NFL Draft, excitement hit the league as the city of Atlanta received a quarterback that perfectly represented its ethos: captivating, dramatic, a little rough around the edges and Black as all can be. It was lightning in a bottle as Michael Vick immediately became one of the faces of the league, and he was just different from all the other quarterbacks with his 4.3 speed and cannon arm that let him make top 1% plays when he was dialed in.
Vick’s athleticism had been known and fawned over the entire time he was at Virginia Tech, but harnessing that level of horsepower for the NFL quarterback position was a completely different animal. However, Vick, for a brief moment in time, was arguably the first modern example of a team embracing a truly rare skill set at quarterback from the second the draft card was turned in — and building the whole damn plane centered around a superhuman center of gravity.
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To say Vick was electric in college would be an understatement. He was a phenom for Virginia Tech, making dazzling plays with a level of athleticism that hadn’t been seen at the quarterback position. Every bit of the eventual 4.33-second 40 time that he would run at the 2001 NFL combine showed up on the field and his otherworldly talent led the Hokies to a 22-2 record and BCS Championship Game berth over two seasons as the starter. He was never the most polished passer in college, but that didn’t stop him from being viewed as one of the top players the year he came out. Truly elite, gamebreaking speed with comic book-level arm strength just doesn’t come along often — or at that point, ever.
The time period in which Vick came into the league didn’t feature a whole lot of offenses geared toward making the mobility of the quarterback a core function of their play style. For example, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Kordell Stewart, famously known as “Slash” for his versatile playmaking, led all quarterbacks in rushing in 2001, the year Vick was drafted, with 537 yards. This year, four quarterbacks had more rushing yards than that, with Lamar Jackson (915), Jayden Daniels (891), Jalen Hurts (630) and Kyler Murray (572) being integral rushing threats for their respective offenses.
Truly elite, gamebreaking speed with comic book-level arm strength just doesn’t come along often — or at that point, ever.
The idea of Vick was tantalizing, prompting the Falcons to trade up and make him their future franchise quarterback. At the time, the Falcons still had veteran Chris Chandler as the starting quarterback, who took the bulk of the snaps during Vick’s rookie season before moving on prior to the 2002 season. Vick only started two games as a rookie, taking a backseat to the veteran while he tried to get up to speed on head coach Dan Reeves’ offensive system and the depth of NFL passing games.
That Falcons offense didn’t resemble anything like the NFL or college offenses we see today. Modern spread offenses are much more wide open and the use of option football is more common, but the Falcons did have some cool designer plays to take advantage of Vick being the most athletic quarterback in the history of the game at that point. For example, here’s a cool twist on a quarterback draw the Falcons ran in their 2002 win over the Minnesota Vikings, a game that has entered regular season lore ever since. Vick takes the snap from under center, fakes a handoff and then takes off with a fullback in front of him and wide receivers down the field.
Vick’s speed made him a threat to score any time he took off with the ball, but in the red zone that speed opened up some new play-calling ideas that most NFL defenses weren’t seeing. Reeves liked to get Vick on the move near the goal line, implementing sweeps and bootlegs to take advantage of his ability to stress defenders in tight quarters. Atlanta would even throw it back to the roots of the sport with single wing formations near the goal line and have Vick sprint toward the pylon with a wall of blockers. Bootlegs were also a favorite of the Falcons with Vick because his speed made an incredibly formidable rushing threat to defenses when he was out in the open field. The physical aspect of Vick’s game was just so overwhelming it would’ve been crazy not to bend norms and adjust the playbook for him — shoot, that’s why they traded up anyways. To have something rare and different.
While the vast majority of the Falcons’ offense still featured drops from under center, scanning defenses and quarterback tasks that were standard for that era, they did start to shift what the definition of an NFL quarterback could be. Of course, Vick is as unique a talent in the history of the sport, but what he and Reeves were able to accomplish during the first couple years of his career ended up becoming a foundation that quarterbacks today can stand and thrive on. In 2002, Vick (in his first year as a starter) finished fourth in MVP voting and second in MVP votes in 2004, when he led the Falcons to the brink of the Super Bowl, losing the NFC championship game to the Philadelphia Eagles.
There still aren’t many quarterbacks as athletic as Vick that have started a substantial amount of games, but teams are certainly catering their offenses more to their quarterback than there was in the past. Nowadays it’s an expectation. In the early 2000s, rock star athletes at the position like Vick and Donovan McNabb were put into uncomfortable spots and had to figure out how to mold their game to fit what the NFL was as a traditional, pro-style league. With college football pumping out more and more quarterbacks with the ability to run the ball, entire schemes are being made around quarterback mobility level, instead of a few designer plays sprinkled into a standard dropback like Vick had with the Falcons.
Ultimately, the pinnacle of this journey and what the Falcons were able to show to the rest of the league was found in 2019, when Lamar Jackson took over as the Baltimore Ravens’ starting quarterback. He was paired with former San Francisco 49ers and Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator Greg Roman, who has been known for his ability to build an offense centered around the quarterback being a major rushing threat. That commitment to taking use of all of Jackson’s gifts only resulted in a unanimous MVP for a 22-year-old first-time starting quarterback. When the vision and the commitment to sticking with the growing pains are there, magnificent levels of play can be found. Josh Allen has had a similar renaissance in Buffalo as he is used as a piece of the run game at times, as are many quarterbacks in this age, and Patrick Mahomes in Kansas City uses his legs to create in different ways for that offense.
Perhaps this would have been the endpoint for quarterback development whether or not Vick existed — at a certain point, the talent being pumped up from college football is what teams have to work with. It’s just hard not to think of Vick and the excitement he brought with just how different he was from every other quarterback. A different style of play was possible, even if Vick wasn’t nearly as refined as the top mobile quarterbacks in the game today (at least prior to his dogfighting convictions and subsequent joining of the Eagles in 2009).
In layman’s terms: Vick walked so today’s quarterbacks could run — literally.