Mike Vick officially retires from NFL after polarizing career

Mike Vick has officially announced his retirement from the NFL after a career that began as a top pick in the 2001 NFL Draft…

Mike Vick is one of the most polarizing players in recent NFL history, and he has officially announced his retirement from professional football:

BREAKING: Michael Vick has officially retired from the NFL pic.twitter.com/Z1GnvYO58e
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) February 3, 2017

I will never forget the legend of Vick as a kid. Even in South Dakota, every 11 and 12 year old was buying his jersey. He was the only athlete that I can remember growing up not named Michael Jordan that was so widely popular, no matter what team you cheered for.

On the playground, everyone wanted to ‘be’ Michael Vick. Everyone wanted his trading cards. Heck, we even made ourselves look like idiots trying to throw left-handed just to be a more accurate depiction.

Needless to say, it wasn’t.

At any rate, the legend of Vick continued to grow, especially in his first few seasons. It was tough as a kid watching Vick sit on the bench his first year in Atlanta, but in 2002, 2004, and 2005, Vick made the Pro Bowl and showed off his ridiculous skills as one of the best dual-threat quarterbacks the NFL has ever seen.

And it was truly unlike anything we’d ever really seen before. Vick was absolutely mesmerizing.

He reportedly ran a sub-4.3 second 40-yard dash at some point before the 2001 NFL Draft. At the Scouting Combine, he ran a 4.33. He could also throw the ball a mile.

This was a guy that seemingly had it all, and then lost everything when he was imprisoned for his involvement with dog fighting. He was not only suspended from the NFL, but Vick’s public image was tainted, to say the least. He’d done what Roger Gooddell called at the time, “not only illegal, but also cruel and reprehensible.”

The guy we’d come to love, the star athlete of our generation, was gone…

Vick had to pay nearly $20 million back to the Atlanta Falcons, and had seemingly hit rock bottom. And after he hit rock bottom, he drilled a hole and crawled inside. It was a deep darkness for a superstar that had everything, but Vick’s story was fortunately not done.

After he was suspended in 2007, Vick didn’t play another down in the NFL again until 2009 when he signed with the Philadelphia Eagles to be Donovan McNabb’s backup. He went more than three years between NFL touchdowns, but his initial snaps with the Eagles were merely a preview of what was yet to come.

More from NFL Mocks

The Eagles exercised an option on Vick in 2010 after trading Donovan McNabb to the Washington Redskins, and he ended up once again as the backup in Philadelphia to Kevin Kolb. Kolb suffered a concussion early in the 2010 season, and Vick excelled in replacing him. So much so, that Andy Reid decided to keep Vick as the starting quarterback.

Despite battling through some injuries of his own, Vick’s 2010 season was perhaps the most impressive all-around seasons for a quarterback that we have seen this decade. He was named the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year and earned his fourth career Pro Bowl recognition.

That season, Vick threw for 21 touchdowns and ran for another nine. He set a career mark, completing 62.6 percent of his passes, proving he could adapt his game to the way the NFL had evolved.

Vick went on to play with the Eagles for another couple of seasons before bouncing around the league a bit as a backup to finish his NFL career. He will certainly go down as one of the most polarizing players in NFL history, but undeniably one of the most exciting to watch.

Home/NFL News