Maybe the reason Michael Vick looked so bad last week against Cleveland stems from the fact he doesn’t quite know what he’s trying to accomplish.
After saying earlier this offseason he had to try to avoid so many hits in hopes of staying healthy, the Eagles quarterback is apparently back to adopting his old, reckless style.
“I sorta said to myself, ‘You know what? Stop worrying about playing not to get hurt,’” Vick told Albert Breer of the NFL Network. “Two weeks in a row, against Pittsburgh and New England, my mindset was just to play cautiously and not get hurt and get through the preseason to the regular season. And I just told myself, ‘I can’t play like that.’ I can’t play with so many different things on my mind. . . .
“If the good Lord don’t want you out there, and you’re gonna sprain an ankle or tweak your thumb, that’s what’s gonna happen. Go out there and play lights out. That’s why we have backups.”
Maybe Vick’s just taking a pragmatic approach.
Without Jason Peters, the Eagles line is struggling to protect him anyway. He took 11 hits against the Browns, and he happens to live in a division with some of the league’s best pass-rushers.
But Vick’s also 32 years old, and seems no closer to figuring out what he wants to be when he grows up than he did when he was a rookie. It’s as if he wants to be cautious after he gets hurt, and as soon as he feels better, changes his mind again.
Which keeps the cycle going.