Vick returns to Atlanta a changed man

In one of the greatest favorite-son-returns stories in sports, Michael Vick goes back to the Georgia Dome for Sunday Night Football. And if Atlanta were any kind of sports town, the fans would boo him unmercifully.

Look what this guy did to that town.

The Falcons were sailing along as one of the perennial contending teams in the NFC - a far cry from where they usually flew, which was at a much lower altitude - and Vick decided to get into that dogfighting nonsense. Behind Vick, the Falcons had upset the Green Bay Packers in the playoffs in subzero weather at Lambeau Field, at a time when it was unheard of for a dome team to do something like that. Vick led the Falcons to a division title in 2004, and they walloped the Rams in the playoffs before losing to the Eagles that season in the NFC championship game. But the quarterback had brought that city promise of better days and perhaps NFL dominance.

And then two years later, with Vick spending more time in the planning room at Bad Newz Kennels and considerably less time in the film room; with Vick doing things like trying to carry a fake-out bong on an airplane, giving the finger to his own fans; and then being led in handcuffs to jail, the Falcons were forced to make do with Joey Harrington, Chris Redmond, and Byron Leftwich, for crying out loud. If I were an Atlanta Falcons fan, I'd be ticked off. And the promise of Matt Ryan still wouldn't be enough for me to get over the whole thing.

If Vick had gone through all those things in Philadelphia, had joined another team after a two-year prison sentence and was returning to play the Eagles, The Inquirer would have had a special 20-page insert section for Sunday's newspaper. I was scanning the Atlanta-Constitution Journal this week, and I found more stories about the Georgia Bulldogs and NASCAR than Vick's homecoming. Atlanta is not a real sports town, certainly not like Philadelphia, so I'll have to do a bit of enlightening for the folks down there.

When you watch this Michael Vick on Sunday Night Football, it's going to hurt. You're going to see him hit DeSean Jackson for a big play down the sideline early to put the Eagles in scoring position. He's going to bust out of the pocket on a third and 10 and grab 19 yards quicker than Carl Edwards can do a flip off the roof of his Ford. He's going to dip under a blitzing safety, shift to an open space, then set and throw a tight spiral to Jason Avant for a first down. And you Falcons fans, if you have any sports soul at all, are going to feel sick to your stomach.

Also, if you haven't been paying that much attention to this Eagles situation from way down south, Vick is a different man from the one you knew. Certainly, more chapters of his life are to be written before we can call him Gandhi, but Vick appears more resolute and earnest about his existence in this world. He's become a man who survived a major fall and not only lived to tell about it, but is delighted to tell about it with a sort of new-age perspective of better things to come. I get the impression that he's really sorry what he did to himself, what he did to Atlanta. But I also get the impression that had he not gone through his fiascoes, he may not have found that path to growth.

Vick sat next to me last week for a live radio interview, with a standing-room crowd gawking at him in a polished hotel lobby. Some kid in the crowd was wearing a T-shirt he obviously had specially made. It was black, and on the front was a white silhouette of a pit bull with Vick's face. Emblazoned on the front was "Vick Is My Dog." It was as offensive as spitting on that lobby floor. Maybe the shirt shouldn't have made me uncomfortable for Vick, considering he's the guy who did the misdeeds that prompted such venom. But it did. Vick saw it, but didn't react.

A little later in the show - partly because as a sports-talk host I'm a bit of a rascal, programmed to get a nice sound bite out of an interviewee - I played for Vick a critical assessment of his abilities by ESPN football analyst Merrill Hoge. You know Hoge. He's the former Steelers running back, the guy on the Countdown set whose tie knot, for some reason, is as big as his head. Anyway, on ESPN, Hoge kind of insulted Vick's ability to pick up blitzes by saying this:

"When you look at all of the hits that Michael Vick took, there's no way he's going to finish a 16-game season," he said. "As far as these free blitzers go, it's evident that he hasn't gotten over the mental hurdle that he'll have to avoid a lot of those hits he took."

I looked at Vick for a reaction. He smiled and acknowledged that perhaps Hoge was right, that he really had to do a little more film study and get better at recognizing blitz schemes. He admitted that he was ticked at himself, especially when former Eagle Quintin Mikell got him on a well-disguised safety blitz. He added that he should have seen it and it was nobody's fault but his own. Donovan McNabb would have blamed everybody but the peanut vendor.

On the subject of Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, Vick talked about how much he still loves Blank and how Blank had been almost like a father to him. He said they still very close. And I started to think, gee, wasn't Blank the guy who helped put Vick in bankruptcy by suing him to get back about $20 million of guaranteed money he had awarded him? At the end of the day, wasn't Blank more about Home Depot profits and public perception than the welfare of his surrogate son? I'm not so sure I could be as kind to such a former boss.

Which I guess makes Michael Vick, still traveling the road to perdition, a better human being than a lot of us.

Atlanta Falcons fans, I do feel a little sorry for you.