Early in his career, Mike Vick’s God-given skills allowed him to avoid contact by outrunning it. Now that he has gotten older, he can’t simply turn on the jets and speed away from other players.
As a result, a major flaw in his game is becoming more and more evident: He lacks the basic awareness to avoid contact.
Vick can’t and won’t slide, for example, not because he lacks the ability to do it, but because he lacks the ability to know when to do it. As I’ve said once or twice (or more often) this week, Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III displayed in his first NFL game the ability to know when to hit the deck after running a read-option play and getting into a position where he could have tried to blaze past defenders but opting to simply slide. 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick did the same thing out of the same formation on Sunday.
For Vick, it’s not a question of flipping a switch. The switch simply isn’t there. For all the great things he has, the one thing he doesn’t have is an innate sense of when and how to protect himself.
And so it’s just a matter of time before he gets yet another injury, especially since he has now re-embraced the reckless style that worked very well when he had the wheels to run past those who would plant him into the ground.