Don Pierson

The facts in Michael Vick’s latest encounter with questionable behavior are still coming to light. No matter how this dog-fighting mess turns out, Vick would appear to require all his considerable broken-field running ability to avoid stepping in you know what.

Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank already has provided notice that his quarterback is “on a short leash.” If his phrasing was intentional, Blank has missed his calling. Clearly, Vick is in the doghouse.

The more pressing question for NFL fans is whether Vick is actually the dog. When a player’s career slides past six seasons without fulfilling hopes, the word “potential” almost becomes pejorative.

Vick is on his third head coach as he enters his seventh season. Bobby Petrino spent his first mini-camp dodging questions about Vick that are beginning to validate comments by NFL Network commentator Jim Mora last season. Mora’s son didn’t appreciate the timing or the sentiment of his dad’s radio conversation about a “coach killer,” but sometimes, father still knows best.

It was painful to listen to Vick talk during the draft about how he is finally going to start taking his profession more seriously, how he is going to work harder to change his image as a great athlete with little clue of what it takes to become a great football player and apparently no obvious desire to put as much time into the art of quarterbacking as say, Peyton Manning, Donovan McNabb and most others do.

As ESPN commentator Ron Jaworski, a former quarterback, said of Vick: “When all is said and done, more is said than done.”

Although facts about Vick’s involvement with killer dogs on his Virginia property remain unclear, here are the facts of his life as a professional quarterback:

He is Drew Brees, Jake Plummer, Kordell Stewart, Mark Brunell, Vinny Testaverde, Daunte Culpepper, Shaun King, and Randall Cunningham — all quarterbacks who like Vick have taken teams to a conference championship game and no further — all within the past nine seasons.

Brees, of course, is the most interesting and flattering comparison. In 2001, the San Diego Chargers traded the rights to draft Vick No. 1 to Atlanta and took running back LaDainian Tomlinson in the first round and Brees in the second. Last year, Brees moved into Vick’s NFC South division, beat Vick twice, led the NFC in passing, and took the New Orleans Saints to their first-ever conference final.

Quarterbacks are first and foremost judged on their ability to help their teams win games. By that criteria, Vick is no better at the moment than any of the above, and Brees is the only one who still has a starting job at the moment, unless King’s Arena League employment counts.

Vick proved one thing last season. He is better than Bobby Douglass, the Chicago Bears’ quarterback of the late 1960s and early 70s who held the season rushing record for a quarterback. Like Vick, Douglass was left-handed. Like Vick, Douglass was an exceptional athlete who often looked like he should be playing another position.

Here’s another fact about Michael Vick: He’s not as good as Rex Grossman, Matt Hasselbeck, McNabb, Jake Delhomme, Rich Gannon, Kerry Collins, Steve McNair, Drew Bledsoe, Neil O’Donnell or his predecessor in Atlanta, Chris Chandler — all quarterbacks who have taken teams to Super Bowls within the last 12 years.

Petrino says he intends to make Vick a 65 percent passer. That would hike his completion percentage 11 points. Last season, Vick completed 52.6 percent of his passes, which put him ahead of Tennessee rookie Vince Young and nobody else. In Vick’s last three seasons, his completion percentage has slid from 56.4 to 55.3 to 52.6, hardly a sign of progress.

As for passer efficiency rating, Vick’s 75.7 last season ranked 20th. It was a tick below his career mark of 75.8, which puts him below average for his career.

As for leading the Falcons to victory, Vick’s record as a starter is 38-28-1. That squeezes him into the upper third of veteran quarterbacks, not bad. But the past three seasons, the Falcons have gone from 11-5 to 8-8 to 7-9.

Vick is a below-average quarterback capable of occasionally outrunning his mistakes or team shortcomings. The only rational basis for his $130 million contract is his ability to sell tickets to fans who like to oooh and aaah. The Georgia Dome looks like a giant circus tent, and Vick is the main attraction.

The difference between the circus thrill show and the NFL is they keep score in only one of them. Petrino and the Falcons can only hope Vick might start to notice the scoreboard as well as the video highlight screen as he starts his seventh season. So far, he’s way behind in a lot of areas including expectations.

If Vick intends to clean up his image by accompanying schoolchildren to petting zoos, he will only be turning his dilemma into a dog and pony show. Instead, he needs to spend the dog days of summer working like a horse. If only he would start putting more time into his quarterbacking, he wouldn’t need to spend his leisure time explaining why he has so much of it he doesn’t know what to do with it.