Vick nearly joined the Bengals/Bills

[DJT]

Michael Vick credits the Philadelphia Eagles with making him a better quarterback. But he was not at first convinced that Philly was the best place for him to resume his football career after nearly two years in federal prison, he told GQ Magazine for its September issue.

In an interview, the Eagles quarterback said the Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills initially seemed like better options. Those teams wanted him and might have made him their starting quarterback, while the Eagles, at the time, already had an established veteran starter in Donovan McNabb and a starter-in-waiting in Kevin Kolb.

That was well before the Eagles traded McNabb and Kolb got hurt, setting the stage for Vick's remarkable comeback.

"I think I can say this now, because it's not going to hurt anybody's feelings, and it's the truth ... I didn't want to come to Philadelphia," Vick told the magazine. "Being the third-team quarterback is nothing to smile about. Cincinnati and Buffalo were better options."

Michael Vick is the subject of the next issue of ESPN The Magazine, which goes on sale Aug. 24.

In it, The Mag's David Fleming looks at how Vick transformed the Eagles last season and examines if he can do the same for the NFL. Also included are Fleming's examination about how Vick's crimes still divide fans, plus Seth Wickersham's behind-the-scenes story about Vick's days in federal prison.

"My situation is clearly not a black and white thing, it was a respect and a disrespect for the law thing," Vick told The Mag.

He also address people who still hate him because of his role in dog fighting.

"I dismissed those people the first day I got out of prison," Vick said. "There may still be masses of people who feel that way. Just don't put it in my face. Because I will take the initiative to put it back in your face. They can continue to say this is phony or fictitious, but they should focus on something more productive and positive."

But Vick was convinced, after meeting with commissioner Roger Goodell and other NFL officials, that the Eagles were the best choice. "And I commend and thank them, because they put me in the right situation," Vick told the magazine.

Vick told GQ he was always confident in his athletic ability to play quarterback. But it was in Philadelphia where he became a better football player, he said.

"The problem was that I wasn't given the liberty to do certain things when I was young. The reason I became a better player was because I came to Philly," he said.

In the GQ interview and in another with ESPN The Magazine, for issues scheduled to go on sale Aug. 24, Vick said he needed a change of scenery after six years with the Atlanta Falcons, the team that drafted him No. 1 overall in 2001 from Virginia Tech.

"I had lost confidence and was losing my love of the game. Football wasn't fun anymore," Vick told ESPN The Magazine. "If I had stayed in Atlanta, I'd be a year or two away from retiring."

"In the NFL, schemes make great quarterbacks," he added in the ESPN The Magazine interview. "I love Atlanta, but I wish now I would have been drafted by the Eagles."

It has been widely presumed that Vick's 21 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to financing a dogfighting ring altered his perspective. But Vick told GQ that prison wasn't where he decided to make changes.

"No ... I had changed my life long before then. I was just with the wrong team at the wrong time," Vick told GQ.

"I was turning the corner. I was cutting my braids off. I was changing my life. I wanted to live the life where football and family were the only things that mattered. I was ready to do it. I felt like time was running out on my career. I needed focus," he said, according to GQ.

So, would he still be an elite quarterback if he'd never went to prison or was never discovered to have been involved in dogfighting?

"Only if I had gotten traded to the Philadelphia Eagles," he told the magazine. "They never tried to change me."

Interesting read. Wonder how the Bills and Bengals would have turned out had he went there.

 

[JPDaBeast23]

Didn't read the entire thing but supposedly Goodell pushed him to the Eagles.

Bengals still would suck, Vick would've got hurt after getting nailed when he scrambled. Bengals O-Line Bengals suck really bad.

 

[WHO-DEY-BENGALS_18]

Even Roger Goodell laughs the Bengals/Mike Brown.