Michael Vick

Because of Vick's potentially amazing fit in new coach Chip Kelly's offense, the quarterback has an incredibly high ceiling this year. He could easily rush the ball more than 100 times, and given his career-average of 7.0 YPC, Vick wouldn't need more than 3,000 passing yards to be a major factor. That said, Vick will be 33 when the season starts, and his history of missing games due to injuries is extensive. Nonetheless, you have to think Kelly will want to roll with a guy who allows him to run an offense similar to what he ran at Oregon – an offense predicated on the quarterback being mobile enough to pull the ball down and take off at times.

There wasn’t a fantasy quarterback more disappointing than Vick in 2011. Although injuries were the primary culprit, Vick scored just one rushing touchdown in 13 games after scoring nine in 12 games in 2011, and he threw nearly as many interceptions (14) as touchdowns (18) after finishing 2010 with a 21:6 touchdown-to-interception ratio. But perhaps that was in large part because at various points in the year Vick dealt with broken ribs, a deep bruise on his throwing hand and concussion symptoms. That said, DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin are back, the Eagles are still one of the more pass-heavy teams in the league, and Vick still owns the skills he displayed in 2010. If he slips, his upside makes him worth a gamble in the middle rounds.

If we could guarantee Vick would play 16 games in 2011, he'd be our No. 1 quarterback, hands down. In the games Vick started and finished (including against Green Bay in the playoffs), he averaged the following numbers: 254 yards, 1.9 touchdowns and .72 interceptions as a passer and 53 yards and .91 touchdowns as a runner. Those numbers would translate to roughly 4,064 yards, 30 touchdowns and 12 interceptions through the air with 848 yards and 15 touchdowns on the ground. But Vick’s wild runs leave him much more vulnerable to injury than other quarterbacks. He had nearly four games wiped out last year due to a rib injury he suffered against the Redskins in Week 4, and he’s only played 16 games once in his career. That includes two 12-game seasons in Philadelphia. So while Vick’s potential is entirely unmatched, also realize you’re likely to need a decent backup if you take him. But as long as he is on the field, he figures to be one of the top fantasy players at any position. The Eagles throw the ball often, and DeSean Jackson and Jeremy Maclin might be the league’s most talented wideout duo.

Assuming there are no consequences from Vick's birthday party, which resulted in a shooting, he'll enter 2010 as the Eagles' No. 2 quarterback. Vick will also be used situationally, both out of the Wildcat and also inside the red zone. He supposedly looked much quicker during minicamp with regained explosiveness. Still, he's a longshot to have much fantasy value.

He's only legally Atlanta property, as he has zero chance of ever suiting up for the Falcons again. What are his chances of having an impact elsewhere? The "right vs. privilege" debate regarding whether a team should acquire Vick completely misses the mark. Playing in the NFL is neither a right nor a privilege. Your value to a team is your value on the field plus or minus your value off the field, which is usually de minimus. But in Vick's case, it's a very large negative given the public's outrage over the felonious dog fighting in his past. So a team must believe that Vick will return at least very good on-field value to overcome all this off-field baggage. But that's a bad bet. Vick is 28 now and hasn't played since 2006. His athletic skills are about to decline if they haven't already. Even with his great running ability, Vick was an ordinary QB. For every big running play he made, he left two big passing plays on the field by refusing to use his legs to extend plays long enough to find receivers uncovered by defenders peeling off to stop his runs. We doubt he changed his approach to the position while sitting in a jail cell. When teams shut down his running, as most do, there's not much left. His accuracy is terrible. He has poor pocket awareness and zero patience for letting passing plays develop. He's a gimmick player in search of a gimmick offense like the Wildcat, though the shelf life on all of these gadgety offenses historically is very short and almost always divisible by the number of teams employing them.

The threat of suspension hangs in air at press time due to some animal cruelty charges stemming from training dogs to fight one another at a house he owned. Even if he evades being disciplined for this, he’ll definitely be on a, ahem, short leash with the league office. Vick was almost an average passer last year, and that’s the low bar he needs to clear to be very useful in every format. The 1,000-plus rushing yards could repeat if he can stay healthy for 16 games. But the former always works against the latter with Vick. Vick also lacks a nose for the end zone and must get his rushing TDs the hard way – from greater distance. All those rushing yards resulted in half as many as Peyton Manning generated. This wasn’t so big a fluke, as Vick also had just three rushing TDs in 15 games in 2004. And though Vick managed 20 TD passes last year, there’s not a solid foundation for that performance. So a regression is at least as likely as further improvement in that category. Vick completed just 52.6 percent of his passes. His YPA was bad as a result, just 6.4 per attempt -- again near the bottom of the league rankings. His 18 percent poor throws is below average, but actually better than most years. Although known for his arm strength, Vick is poor in our functional arm strength rankings, with a sub-70 QB rating on 11-to-20 yard passes, completing only 43 percent of his 93 passes from this distance (about 24 percent of his total attempts). Vick was sacked about once every eight attempts (a terrible rate), and his lack of a pocket awareness severely limits his upside and further exposes him to injury. Vick plays in a frenzied state and seems ambivalent about what he’s going to do when he drops back. Maybe the new staff will finally get him to settle down and master the subtleties of running as a last resort. But he’s probably past the point of his career where he’s likely to experience this type of sudden growth.

Yes, the upside is here. But you have to play him every week to reap those rewards, and he’ll kill you other weeks. Worse, there’s no way to intelligently mix and match starters when one of your QBs is a runner. Vick is liable to go off against anyone (well, except maybe Tampa Bay, who always vexes him with its athleticism and Cover 2 scheme). If you’re taking Vick for the running upside, remember you can only expect about 40 yards per game. That’s nice but not season altering. And the TDs are anyone’s guess, too. Last year he had twice as many rushing TDs as in ’04 despite just gaining just two-thirds of the rushing yards. All this running buys you such significant injury risk that you must roster another QB even higher in these rankings; then, why even bother playing Vick? Alternatively, you can grab Vick’s backup, Matt Schaub, who everyone loves and who the Falcons refuse to trade for less than a first-round pick. They say it’s because of Vick’s injury risk. But it could be because they know deep down that Schaub is better. Schaub just won’t sell as many jerseys.

Vick managed to stay fairly healthy last season, despite his electrifying and also risky style of play. While he racked up impressive rushing totals (902 yards, 7.5 yards per carry, 3 TDs), he struggled in his first season in Atlanta’s new West Coast Offense, passing for just 2,313 yards and 14 touchdowns against 12 interceptions. In his defense, the Falcons won 11 games, and his low yardage numbers were largely due to his low number of attempts. In fact, Vick’s 7.2 YPA would have been respectable in any other season. But in 2004, it was only good for 16th among qualifying passers. And when you combine that with an interception percentage of 3.74 (only eight players with 200 or more passing attempts were worse), 16 fumbles, seven lost, (both tops in the league among quarterbacks) and 46 sacks taken (tied for second), you can see that the bad often outweighed the good when Vick went back to pass last season. While Vick managed to hold up well last year (he missed just one game due to a sore shoulder, and that was after the Falcons had the NFC’s No. 2 seed wrapped up), it’s going to be hard for him to do it again. In addition to the 46 sacks, he ran the ball 120 times. That’s 166 hits minus a few harmless quarterback slides. Compare that to Peyton Manning, one of the league’s most durable quarterbacks, who took just 13 sacks and had 25 runs, most of which probably ended in slides. Moreover, Vick is a slight, by NFL standards, 6-0, 215, and not built with the thickness of most of the league’s running backs to absorb so much regular pounding. And he plays on turf. When you add it up, there’s a lot of injury risk.

Can Vick avoid the injury bug in 2004? Don't bet on it. Remember, Vick was often injured even in college. His running skills, which are unparalleled at the position, are actually his curse. It's too tempting for him to take off at the drop of a hat. But consider the pounding he’d be exposed to during the course of full season. Vick has started 21 games in three years and been sacked 65 times, more than three per game. That's about 50 for a full season. Vick's also going to be hit as he throws more than most QBs because he's not a timing, rhythm passer. That's easily another 100-150 times getting nailed upon release. Add in the 100 or so carries his owners want to project for a full season, and you can see that's simply too much pounding for a QB to endure. Remember, Vick might run like a RB, but he's not in any way conditioned to take that level of physical pounding. Owners also want Vick to run because about 18 percent of his throws have been off target during his career (which makes Vick a poor fit for the Falcons' new west coast offense). The bottom line on Vick is that he will win games for you in the weeks he's healthy. But you can't expect more than 10 or 12 starts from him unless he dramatically changes his running ways. And if he does that, who wants him?

What makes Vick a true fantasy stud is his legs – he ran for 776 yards and eight touchdowns last year – and his ability to produce a scoring play from anywhere on the field. Twelve of his 24 touchdowns came outside the red zone, including scoring runs of 28, 32, 44 and 46 yards. If you play in a league where long scoring is worth a major bonus, Vick almost has to be the top quarterback on your board. The Falcons ran the ball more often than any other team in the red zone last year, but as Vick matures as a passer, that ratio will start to balance out.