MDS posted a blurb on Wednesday regarding Mike Vick’s interview with 790 The Zone in Atlanta, and MDS focused on the money point -- Vick’s admission that he was “somewhat lazy” when playing in Atlanta.
I finally had a chance to listen to the whole thing, and there was something else that caught our attention. Asked whether he will be back in Philly in 2010, Vick said, “Wherever I end up I’m gonna be happy.”
It’s a dramatic shift from his attitude of only ten days ago, when he offered up a far more lukewarm assessment of his desire to return to Philadelphia in an interview with Dan Patrick, who asked Vick right out of the gates whether he would be able to continue his 2009 role with the Eagles: “It would be a tough decision to make,” Vick said. “I would really have to take a lot of things into consideration. The fact that I want to be a starter. And the fact that I’m blessed just to be back playing football. You know, I’d really have to think about it. If I had to then I would, just because I’m thankful. [If] another opportunity presented itself, it would be even better.”
The change in Vick’s attitude makes us even more convinced that last week’s report that the Eagles won’t be trading Vick was aimed at getting Vick to adopt a more humble posture and to refrain from commenting publicly on whether he wants to be traded to the Rams or to the Bills or to some other team, which could screw up Philly’s chances of sending Vick wherever they choose to send him.
Meanwhile, we continue to be confused by the total purging of Vick’s soul. His former coach in Atlanta, Jim Mora, recently has defended the very work ethic that Vick is now knocking. And so we can’t help but wonder whether Vick’s current strategy is to get a team interested in trading for him based on the notion that Vick can be even better than he was with the Falcons if he applies himself.
If sort of like a student who says at his college interview, “I didn’t study in high school and I still got C’s, so if you let me into your university I’ll do better because I’ll try harder. Trust me.”
Though there’s a chance that Vick’s assessment of his own flaws is accurate, there’s an equal if not better chance that he’d simply confess to anything if it means becoming a starting quarterback again.
In unrelated news, O.J. Simpson would like to talk to Vick regarding his whereabouts on the night of June 12, 1994.
