IF The Good Lord had intended football to be an 11-man game, he wouldn’t have invented Michael Vick. To make things fair, to allow the Giants to have the ball and a chance in the final minute, all He could offer them yesterday was the penalty, which ruined three of the six Falcon possessions after they jumped up 14-0.
We don’t know if the Giants really figured anything out, other than if they had the ball, Vick didn’t. Left for dead, face down in his zig-zagging wake on 30-50 yard swatches of the scorched Giant Stadium turf, they used 9:50 of possession time in the third quarter to get back into a game they might have won if not for some of their own penalties and clock mismanagement.
Still, it didn’t have to wind up a rout, the way it had seemed headed, for the NFL’s eye candy to have beaten the Giants in the end regardless, 14-10. Vick had a first half that was a career for some guys.
“No. 7, he makes the whole thing run, makes the whole thing turn,” said Will Allen.
Vick put New York’s head on swivel, making its hair stand up too, during 30 minutes in which he ran for 91 yards and passed for 103. On Atlanta’s first possession, he ran left end for seven yards, right end for 20 yards, burst up the middle for 24, in addition to throwing for another 11 and seven more before finishing the drive off with a 2-yard toss to Alge Crumpler.
Two possessions later, Vick, ducking, tucking, chucking, took the Falcons 12 plays in 74 plays before hitting Crumpler with another two-yard deal to finish it off.
In practice last week, Vick was played by Jesse Palmer. The media are no longer allowed to watch, so we don’t know if Tom Coughlin’s simulations included having The Bachelor chased by women or by Norman Hand. Either way, it’s not quite the same thing as tailing Vick. That’s because there never has been anything like Vick.
“He’s everything they talk about,” said Osi Umenyiora. “Honestly, I didn’t know he was that good.”
He wasn’t the only guy living in The Great White Way’s vicinity left in the dark. This was the first time Vick, previously injured, had played the Meadowlands, even though the Falcons win here every year.
“I was thinking about that,” Vick smiled. “About time the starter came here and won.”
About time, too, he played a full season and the Falcons put a team around him that could put the most breathtaking presence in the game into a Super Bowl. With only a flick does the ball leave the hand of Vick, actually the lesser of the two things he can do to you. He is even quicker than Coughlin to get mad when asked to explain what he is thinking, not that there is a football brain alive that can shut such a talent down.
“A guy like that, how you going to prepare?” asked Carlos Emmons.
Containment? Vick got outside Lance Legree and Umenyiora so fast, the Falcon quarterback must have been having trouble containing his laughter. Spy? You have any volunteers for Coach Coughlin? Any number of Giants could handle the job of waiting for Vick to pull down the ball and run. What happens next becomes the real problem.
As the Falcons, a suspicious 8-2, increasingly backed themselves up, the Giants hurried Vick’s passes, collapsing his pocket. There still were plays he didn’t need one, stepping up, then back, then up again, pulling in the football, producing a rabbit in its place, the rabbit being him. We swear we once saw him pull a quarter from behind Legree’s ear.
The only thing missing on the way to his fifth 110-yard-plus rushing day of his career, an NFL record for a quarterback, was the old confetti-in-the-water-bucket trick. Seeing Michael Vick and the ball within arm’s reach, isn’t believing you got him. Broadway finally has seen that.