Vick is breathtaking, but he's still an incomplete QB

	For all his jaw-dropping plays, Michael Vick is 18th in the league with an 83.0 quarterback rating. Bill Frakes/SI
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Remember the line in Bad Day at Black Rock, when Spencer Tracy tells Ernest Borgnine, "You're not only wrong, you're wrong at the top of your voice?" That's me, folks.

Our Co-E-mailers of the Week, Dave Sobush of Clearwater, Fla., and then, in more detail, Brendan Powers of Orange, Calif., pointed out the true origin of the quote I mentioned the other day and attributed to Keith Jackson. You remember, the one about the ball not being heavy and the ball carrier not belonging to a union. Of course I knew that John McKay was the author of the quote. It was attributed to Jackson by some TV guy, probably from the Monday night show. Just another thing they got wrong, and it plugged right into my brain cells, which were fast asleep.

Sorry for the rip, Keith old boy, well, actually the major rip concerning the demeaning of unions. And thank you fellas, for your research on the subject.

A couple of interesting queries about Michael Vick. Joe of Ceres, Calif., wonders what the outcome of the Falcons-Patriots game would have been if a healthy Vick had participated. Chad of Dakota Dunes, S.D., feels that maybe Atlanta would be better off with Matt Schaub at QB and Vick as a runner.

Well, I think the Falcons would have won with Vick. There were times when the Patriots defense broke down and Schaub just couldn't exploit it, either with arm or leg. Vick would have gashed it. As far as the position switch, the question we have to ask is will Vick ever become an accurate QB? Randall Cunningham did. Remember that great comeback year he had with the Vikings? He was a complete quarterback then. Right now Vick is incomplete. Breathtaking, but inaccurate, despite the jive those guys at ESPN keep feeding us about how he has to do his own thing, etc. Could a great quarterback coach fix the problems? I'm not sure. They're in short supply, and some of them are too timid to mess with a superstar's fundamentals. And I don't know of a head coach brave enough to take him out of the spotlight and assign him a lesser role. And then we have to mention the following, as touchy as it is. There would be a racial undercurrent, too, hints of the old belief that goes back many years, that black quarterbacks automatically have to be converted to another position. Thanks for what you wrote, Chad.

Bill of Stuttgart, Germany, is annoyed at the practice of teams writing off a season to give a young QB more experience, the kind of situation the Bills' players hinted at. Well, that's kind of rough, and if the team is wrong about the youngster, that's when coaches lose their jobs. But let's look at this situation. The coach knows he's got a middle of the road team, nothing much better. He's got a young quarterback with tremendous potential, but right now a journeyman vet is better able to win a game, to get the team to, let's say, .500. Which way do you go? Put the kid on hold to buy another couple of wins, or give him his baptism of fire, looking ahead to a great return on the investment? Every case must be looked at individually, of course, but it's not that easy, right?