Mike Vick knows he needs to stay healthy. And he thinks that he hasn’t been healthy in recent years because he has tried too hard to stay healthy.
So what will he do in 2013? It sounds like he’s taking the advice that Hulk Hogan routinely gave to all the little Hulkamaniacs. Vitamins and prayer.
“I can’t give you no explanation for that,” Vick told WIP radio in Philly regarding his injury history. “It’s probably one of the toughest questions you’ve asked me since we’ve been talking. I don’t know. I think just to train -- train hard and pray to God. That’s gonna be my motto. Hopefully I can sustain 16 games. If I’m out there -- go out there and put forth your best effort and see what happens.”
Vick has appeared in 16 games only once in his career. It was 2006, his final season with the Falcons.
“We also have to realize, and I think you guys need to take into account that I was hit 170 times last year before I even went down,” Vick said. “That’s the most I ever been hit before I even got hurt. So, I kept getting up. My body was trained and conditioned to go the distance last year, it was just the fact that I got a head injury and that kind of took me out. That was kind of an out of the blue concussion. It just happened.”
The issue isn’t whether Vick is prone to injury. The problem is that he’s prone to contact. While it’s impressive that he went 170 hits in nine games before getting hurt in 2012, he shouldn’t have been hit that many times.
And while we doubt that he was actually hit 18 times per game last year, the reality is that, if he can find a way to avoid contact, he can find a way to play all 16 games.
It’s not a matter of training or prayer or vitamins or anything else. It’s about knowing when to hit the deck or run out of bounds or throw the ball away.