Mike Celizic

The NFL can’t suspend Michael Vick right now, not based on an indictment that is a long way from coming to trial. But the Atlanta Falcons don’t have to keep him around, and they shouldn’t.

You can justify this one on football grounds alone and leave the rest to the legal system. For all his speed and individual brilliance, Michael Vick simply hasn’t been a good NFL quarterback.

He’s as famous as Peyton Manning or Tom Brady, and he can run circles around them or anyone else. He’s got a terrific arm and is as exciting any player in the league. The 10-year, $130-million contract with a $37-million signing bonus he agreed to before the 2005 season is the richest in NFL history.

But he’s a mediocre passer at best, a $130-million player with a sub-75 career quarterback rating, a player who has once advanced to the NFC Championship game, where he was annihilated by the Philadelphia Eagles, a great runner who also gets sacked more than 40 times a year.

He’s been living more on potential than performance. But he’s been so darned popular and the potential is so darned enormous, neither the Falcons nor anyone else was willing to give up on him.

Even before the reports first surfaced that a house owned by Vick was being used for dogfights, the quarterback was on thin ice with the organization and their owner, Arthur Blank. There wasn’t anything all that awful — a lawsuit by a woman who claimed he gave her a sexually transmitted disease, flipping off the fans, a flap with airport security over a water bottle with a hidden compartment.

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There has been a perception that Vick had been hanging with a bad crowd and surrounding himself with people whose only talent is telling him what a great guy he is. Among the things they tell him is that he’s so rich and important, he can do anything he wants.

Blank has talked to him about the need to clean up his act, and he’s talked about how he took that advice to heart. But actions speak louder than words, more in football than in most pursuits.

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And now he’s been indicted for dogfighting, a heinous activity that is disgusting to the great bulk of the team’s paying customers. Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the case, the team is looking at a training camp and season that will be played under a cloud as long as Vick is around. How much time he’ll have to devote to hearings and his defense is unknown, but the case is going to dog him like the pit bulls he breeds and the ones the indictment says he likes to fight.

This isn’t the Duke lacrosse team, so don’t talk about a rush to judgment.

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