Vick has matured beyond expectations

'WITH AGE," Michael Vick was saying yesterday, "comes the maturation process. And everything happens in time."

He was talking about the job here, not the odyssey that took him from Atlanta icon to national lightning rod. He was talking about reading blitzes and choosing chances more judiciously, and well, about energy drinks.

"I tell you what, I won't take any more of those before the game," he said.

Made him jittery early in last week's game. Made it harder to focus, made him braver than he needed to be. Made him too much like the guy who quarterbacked the Falcons from 2001 to 2006, a guy who could win and lose a game with his rashness and unpredictability, a guy so jittery he made everyone around him jittery, too.

Michael Vick has already returned to Atlanta as part of the Eagles, back in 2009, running for one touchdown, passing for another as the "Wildcat" complement to starting quarterback Donovan McNabb. Back then, no one knew what the next 2 years would bring, whether he would stay out of trouble, whether his contrition was sincere, whether he was capable of being anything more than an NFL gimmick after spending two football seasons in federal prison.

Few if any were optimistic enough to predict the product that enters his latest Atlanta homecoming this Sunday. A smarter man for sure, arguably a smarter quarterback, too. A more dangerous version of his old self? Well, that's the grade that has yet to be posted, an "incomplete" for now.

Vick completed 14 of 32 passes in last week's 31-13 victory over the Rams and was sacked three times, all of them scary.

"Got to keep your eyes up," he said yesterday. "That was solely my responsibility. Sometimes I just think big picture too much. I can make the game easy for myself . . . Shooting for the big one all the time can get you hurt. I can't continue to do that and I won't."

He's said that before of course, most notably after that throw, that dooming, last-minute pick against the Packers last January.

Like McNabb before him, Vick's career thus far has been defined by spectacular plays and mind-numbing mistakes. By walking three-fourths of the way across the Red Sea and then inexplicably turning left.

Unlike McNabb, though, each mistake is followed quickly by accountability and resolve. Resolve to do better, to anticipate the blitz coming, to understand not just his job but those of others.

As last season wound down, and in the early months of this one, television cameras have repeatedly found Vick in discussions with his offensive teammates, sometimes collegially, sometimes seemingly more didactic.

This didn't happen in Atlanta. It didn't happen much in the early part of his quarterbacking here. Vick can talk all he wants about taking full advantage of his second chance, but the most striking evidence that he is not just parroting words are these sideline vignettes.

"He's always done it," wide receiver Jason Avant said. "But he knows the offense more now. And when you're more secure about knowing defenses, knowing situations, knowing techniques, leverages for the line - I believe he's able to assess when a guy's doing a good job or not."

"I think it's just communicating better," Brent Celek was saying yesterday. "Going over what he saw based on what we saw. You know sometimes when you're out there in the heat of battle you feel like you're seeing things and it's something you're not really seeing. So you've got to communicate. And Mike does really communicate with us."

Said Avant, "He'll come over and say, 'You did a good job on this one.' Or, 'I saw you open but there was a man behind you. I need you to speed up the tempo on that route.'

"And we're able to make adjustments during the game."

That's what it looks like. It's what it's starting to sound like, too. The best quarterbacks of this league have a certain honesty about themselves, are able to criticize and break down their own errors before their coaches can. Peyton Manning does it. Tom Brady, too. Honestly, it's a facet McNabb had a hard time with, offering universal team answers when the questions were specific to his performance.

At 31, Michael Vick seems to get this. Which is why, come Sunday, Atlanta fans are likely to recognize the player only after he takes his helmet off.