My home league has been a source of agony for the last couple of seasons. In 2009, I lost to my little brother twice – his only two wins of the season – and made the playoffs as a six-seed instead of getting a bye as the second. Predictably, my team was awful in the first round of the playoffs (where the bye would have saved me without those two brutal defeats) and my season ended despite a team that would have defeated any in the league during Week 15 and at least had a chance at bringing home the title in Week 16.
Last season, I ended up with too many second-tier players and not enough elite talent – it's an auction format with just 10 teams, so waiver-wire replacements are of unusually high quality. Anyway, enough bellyaching. Our end of season party is always a good time as it's the one day per year that most of our league actually has an opportunity to get together. This year's version opened up a debate between a few owners about the value of Michael Vick for the 2011 season. At least three of our 10 owners were adamant about spending whatever it would take of our $260 budget to acquire Vick's services, essentially saying that if we were going to have a standard snake draft, he would be their first overall selection.
Our league doesn't reward quarterback play in a unique way – it's four points for a passing TD and six for a rushing one and a point for every 20 passing yards – but there might be a case for pulling the trigger on this move. In that format, Vick averaged 30.2 fantasy points per game last season and the next closest player was Tom Brady at 24.8.
For someone who went undrafted in plenty of shallow leagues last season when Kevin Kolb entered the season as the Eagles' starting quarterback, plenty of owners seem more comfortable with the idea of Vick being an elite player now than they were during his time in Atlanta – and perhaps for good reason.
Earlier in his career, Vick didn't have the same level of talent surrounding him or the schematic prowess of a good offensive-minded coach (or coordinator) the way he does in Philadelphia. DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin are one of the top-five receiver duos in the league, plus the Eagles have a good pass-catching running back in LeSean McCoy and an above-average tight end in Brent Celek. With the Falcons, Vick's options in the passing game included then-inexperienced Roddy White, consistently mediocre Michael Jenkins and tight end Alge Crumpler. You can make arguments that Warrick Dunn was as good – if not a little better than McCoy – during some of those years, but ultimately, the drop-off in talent and coaching is a significant one.
Most owners opposed to the idea of paying the premium for Vick will take the position that his style of play makes him more vulnerable to injury, particularly because of his unwillingness to slide and avoid hits. Is it possible that his risk of suffering an injury is only marginally greater than any other player at his position? Quarterbacks who aren't known for mobility can suffer devastating injuries in and out of the pocket and last season was no exception. In fact, Vick's opportunity to get off the bench and contribute was the byproduct of Kolb getting knocked out of the season opener by Clay Matthews after leaving the pocket.
If we reason that devastating injuries are equally likely for all players – or only slightly more likely to happen to mobile quarterbacks than their less mobile counterparts – we're left with a scenario that suggests the following. For the 21 quarterbacks who averaged fewer than 3.0 rushing attempts per game and were consistently the starter for their team last season (essentially, we're just throwing out the ugly situations such as Arizona, Carolina and Cleveland) 1.71 games were lost on average due to injury. However, that number includes Matthew Stafford's 13-game absence as well as Tony Romo's 10 games lost to injury. Since those injuries could have just as reasonably happened to one of the six mobile quarterbacks who met the same starting criteria, we should probably remove them. Without Stafford and Romo in the equation, the average number of games lost for this group becomes just 0.7.
For the six starting quarterbacks who averaged 3.0-plus rushing attempts per game last season, 1.58 games were lost due to injury with the following distribution: Vick (4), David Garrard (2), Aaron Rodgers (1.5), Josh Freeman (0), Jay Cutler (1), Ryan Fitzpatrick (1).
Even if you want to look exclusively at Vick's career, beginning in 2002 during his first full season as a starter (and throwing out 2009 when he was a spare part in Philadelphia), Vick played 15 or more games in four of his first five full seasons as a starter with his five-game season in 2003 being the result of a broken left leg.
The durability concerns are at least mildly exaggerated in this case, while Vick's ADP to this point checks in at seventh overall. Grabbing Vick first overall – or anywhere in the top five – would leave owners in a 10-12 team league with options such as Matt Forte (20.54), Ahmad Bradshaw (24.67), Steven Jackson (26.92), Ryan Mathews (29.33), Knowshon Moreno (32.42) or Jonathan Stewart (33.42) as an RB1, and with Reggie Wayne (23.50), Miles Austin (25.67), Dwayne Bowe (27.54), Larry Fitzgerald (30.17) or Mike Williams (31.38) as a WR1.
If your aim is to build a team capable of running away with your league title (of course, toting the possibility of complete disaster as the other extreme), a foundation of Vick-Stewart-Fitzgerald could easily prove to be as strong as any other QB-RB-WR trio available in the first three rounds this summer.