Steelers who marched us to madness: Michael Vick

by Joe Kuzma (joe_kuzma) on March 25, 2017

March Madness is everywhere you look, so we here at Steel City Underground felt like getting in on the craze with a Steelers-inspired tournament all our own: Steelers Who Marched Us to Madness.

The concept is simple. Over a period of the last five seasons, there have been a number of additions the Steelers have made who came in with high expectations. Several of those additions ended as subtractions for one reason or another, leaving Pittsburgh after a disappointing run with the franchise.

We have compiled eight of those names into a March Madness-style tournament, with you, the fans, voting on who was the most disappointing acquisition who “marched us to madness”.

Steelers who marched us to madness round one

Note: realizing this could be a bit insensitive to the actual player discussed, we would like to remind everyone that the tournament only involves past players and you should only consider their time with the Steelers when voting or leaving comments. This is merely an entertainment exercise to gauge fan expectation versus how a player’s tenure in Pittsburgh turned out, which may have disappointed for any variety of reasons.

A new player profile will be released each day of the tournament. Let’s look at today’s participant.

Michael Vick

The Michael Vick era was ushered in with enthusiasm and loathing by Steelers fans, depending on how you felt about Michael Vick “the player” versus Michael Vick “the person”.

Regardless, Vick’s time with the Steelers was a bumpy ride in which most fans would’ve preferred to not take. He was initially signed due to an injury to then backup Bruce Gradkowski. Rather than roll with third-stringer Landry Jones, Coach Tomlin and company opted to bring in the veteran QB to have experience behind Ben Roethlisberger, should they need it.

Unfortunately, they did… and the result wasn’t pretty.

Vick struggled in the Steelers offense, in part to not having a full training camp to learn Todd Haley’s complicated playbook. Vick looked every bit of the same lackluster passer he had been with various teams in the past. His accuracy was off, but his arm was still strong enough to zing the ball downfield. As a lefty, the rest of the Steelers offense also struggled to build rapport with the QB.

Antonio Brown, especially, suffered the consequences of having Vick under center. The latter wasn’t asked to throw many passes because quite honestly, there weren’t many plays he knew, and fewer he could execute.

Vick’s final stats as a Steeler don’t indicate how depressing the offense looked with him as the quarterback. He completed a little over 60% of his passes, but only attempted 66 of them in five games (a little over 13 attempts per game). He had only two touchdown passes, and got away with only one official interception (despite several opposing defensive backs dropping balls thrown right at them).

Vick would tweak his hamstring in his final game in black and gold, making way for that poor-looking third-stringer Jones, who turned out to know more of the playbook and effectively run the offense much better than the veteran.

Still, Vick will be known for struggling to convert fourth downs in an overtime thriller against the Baltimore Ravens, completing a sick long bomb in a last-second road victory against the Chargers, and bowing out of Pittsburgh without being any distraction to the team.