Well, he’s plead out. But I still think Easterbrook was right. It was frightening how quickly and nastily people turned on Michael Vick. Steve Hummer writes a great epitaph here.

I’m reading through Pro Football Prospectus right now and one of the things they’ve found is that QBs who come out early are more likely to flop. Actually, they don’t say it quite that way. They say that the two indicators of how well a QB will do in the professional ranks are how many games he started in college and his completion percentages. These measure, respectively, experience and intelligence.

Guys like Mike Vick and Ryan Leaf tend to come out of college early after having a magical season. They’ve never faced adversity or dealt with fame or learned how to be a real quarterback. They’ve been athletically gifted their entire lives, had instant success in college and gone straight into fame and fortune. The only difference was that Vick’s athletic prowress eclipsed that of Leaf — so it took a little longer for him to implode.