AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > July > 28 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USFalcons are Vick’s team, good or bad
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Flowery Branch —
According to owner Arthur Blank, whose team is in the midst of a barking storm created by You Know Who and illegal dogfighting, the Falcons aren’t about one player. Head coach Bobby Petrino echoes his boss. The same goes for players throughout the roster.
Said offensive tackle Wayne Gandy, analyzing the situation with his 14 seasons of NFL wisdom on Saturday after practice at the Falcons training camp, “Eventually, [the media] is going to have to report on somebody else on this team. We have Warrick Dunn and Keith Brooking and Lawyer [Milloy] and Alge [Crumpler] and Todd McClure. Plus, whenever you hear something or read something now, it’s always just ‘Michael Vick.’ It almost has stopped being ‘The Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick.’ “
Yeah, well.
Sounds good.
How else can you respond when your team, your franchise and your whole essence in the minds of everybody else really is about one player?
There was 2003, for instance, when the Falcons did something they hadn’t done in 22 years. They sold every ticket for all of their home games before a season began. Soon afterward, Michael Vick — as in the starting quarterback, Mr. Electric, You Know Who and that one player who has spent his six NFL seasons as absolutely everything for the Falcons — broke his leg during that preseason. Just like that, courtesy of an epidemic of empty green seats at the Georgia Dome, the Falcons challenged the league record for no-shows.
Translated: Vick IS the Falcons. That’s for good and for bad. Among other things involving the bad these days, Vick just was indicted in a highly explosive federal case involving the strangulation, drowning, electrocution, hanging and beating of losers in dogfights held on his Virginia property. So, since all of this is threatening to have Vick’s image kicked, sacked and punted for just shy of forever, that means the image of the Falcons also is headed for ugliness from now into the unforeseeable future.
With apologies to Blank and the rest, Vick has helped turn the Falcons into a PR mess, because everybody associated with this organization is joined to the hip of Vick’s controversies. We’re talking about all of them, and there have been many, but none worse than this one that could make Norman Bates cringe.
As a result, with animal-rights groups and U.S. congressmen still howling their disgust across the country, Reebok did the unprecedented by announcing it is halting the sale of jerseys bearing Vick’s name. The Reebok folks didn’t do such a thing regarding Ray Lewis, the Baltimore Ravens linebacker who was cleared but nevertheless associated with a double-murder case. Or regarding Pacman Jones with his various arrests, near arrests and pending arrests. Or regarding any Bengals player in Cincinnati, where a felony is always waiting to happen.
Just regarding Vick, the same player who also had Nike stop selling any of his products. Others also have joined the anti-Vick moment, including the Falcons organization in a subtle way.
You almost needed a magnifying glass to find Vick stuff inside the large tent that serves as the Falcons merchandise store at their training camp. It’s called “Falcons 365,” and you’ll find two prominent pictures on an inside wall of Brooking and Dunn. There are pennants featuring DeAngelo Hall, and more than a few jerseys with the names and numbers of Jerious Norwood, D.J. Shockley, Jamaal Anderson, Joe Horn and nearly anybody else who isn’t You Know Who.
Well, there is that obscure section of the tent that has enough Vick jerseys to fill about a fifth of a rack. Said Gandy, shaking his head, “When I started in 1994, people used to kind of celebrate bad boys. Not that Vick is a bad boy. It’s just that it used to kind of be the thing to be the tough, hard-nosed leader who might curse the cab driver out or something like that. Now they want to outcast the bad-boy image.”
The bad-boy image can become the bad-team image.
See the Falcons.
Permalink | | Categories: Falcons / NFL, Terence Moore
Services »
