It’s Vick’s League Now

Eight decades of professional football flashed before our eyes Sunday as Michael Vick took the final snap of the Atlanta-Minnesota game and didn’t stop running until he stepped inside the winning locker room.

Viking defenders gave chase, briefly. Seven of them got within autograph-asking range. Two of them got their hands on the runaway blur, but not much more.

For 46 mesmerizing yards, Vick darted and danced and bobbed and weaved, leaving 11 hapless purple pylons in his wake as he sprinted to the end zone to end overtime and craft a wintry scene certain to haunt the frozen-in-their-tracks Vikings deep into the holidays.

The Falcon and the Snowmen.

You can call Vick’s 46-yard dash the play that gave the Falcons their 30-24 overtime victory over the Vikings. You can also call Vick a second-year NFL quarterback.

In either case, this is not the time, and certainly not the player, for just the facts.

Vick was carrying a lot of extra weight as he tore up the Metrodome carpet.

With that touchdown, Vick kept the Falcons unbeaten in their last eight games -- the NFL’s longest undefeated streak this year and the most inexplicable in many.

With those yards, Vick broke the NFL record for most rushing yards by a quarterback in a game while establishing the new standard for “balanced offense” -- 173 rushing yards and 173 passing yards.

With that run, Vick supplanted Steve Young’s famous 49-yard ramble in 1988 -- also coming against the Vikings, who really know how to choreograph these things -- as the greatest piece of quarterbacking legwork to find its way onto an NFL Films highlight reel.

The other Falcons eventually were able to catch up to Vick once he stopped running, having already streaked through the end zone and up the stadium tunnel into the dressing room.

The rest of the NFL is another story.

Was it coincidence or symbolism that on the same day Vick was sprinting the NFL into the 21st century, St. Louis’ Kurt Warner was looking like a drop-back dinosaur in Philadelphia, failing to produce a touchdown in a 10-3 loss to the Eagles that all but knocked the Rams out of playoff contention?

Fade-back-and-fling-it was a quarterback style that served the NFL well for 80-plus years. But with every step Vick takes, with the rest of a notorious copycat league following his every move, the old in-the-pocket routine looks more and more like the real gunslingers of another era, headed nowhere except the musty pages of history.

Vick is 22. Had he decided to use all his college eligibility, he’d be wrapping up his senior season at Virginia Tech right now. He’s rough around the edges and probably operating at only a fraction of his capacity, once he figures out what he’s doing out there.

But until that happens, let him be what he is. Which is the most exciting player in pro football, except he’s more important than that.

In a league overrun by the fair and the middling, Michael Vick is a one-man antidote to parity. He probably hasn’t taken the time to notice, but Vick now belongs to an NFL mired in middle-age bloat -- fat around the middle -- with nearly half the league within one game of .500.

Cleveland, a so-called playoff contender, committed five turnovers against 4-8 Carolina on Sunday and lost at home, 13-6, to fall to 6-6.

The New York Giants, in a game they had to win, blew a 12-point fourth-quarter lead to Tennessee and lost at home, in overtime, 32-29, to fall to ... 6-6.

Because the Buffalo Bills ended a three-game losing streak to end the Miami Dolphins’ two-game winning streak, 38-21, the Dolphins share the AFC East lead with New England at 7-5 -- with last-place Buffalo a game back at 6-6. If the New York Jets defeat Oakland tonight, they will join the Dolphins and Patriots as AFC East tri-leaders -- all for 7-5 and 7-5 for all.

Atlanta would be right there at .500, if not worse, had the Falcons not gambled 20 months ago and traded up to use the top pick of the 2000 draft on Vick. Before he became their starting quarterback in September, the Falcons had gone 16-32 in their previous three seasons. This season they are 8-3-1 -- 7-0-1 in their last eight games.

Before Vick bailed them out, the Falcons came very close to losing to a Viking team that long ago gave up on this season. Atlanta netted 379 yards on offense. Vick accounted for 346 of them.

He is still a work in progress, especially in the subtle art of passing. Against the Vikings, Vick completed only 11 of 28 passes, with an interception. For the season, he has thrown for 1,994 yards and 10 touchdowns -- modest numbers during a season in which Oakland’s Rich Gannon in on pace to break Dan Marino’s single-season record of 5,084 passing yards.

But Vick has run for 648 yards and eight touchdowns and generally drives defensive coordinators mad every time he rolls out. Sunday, he broke the rushing record for a quarterback by 23 yards. Green Bay’s Tobin Rote held the old record for more than half a century, having scrambled for 150 yards against Chicago in 1951.

With 173 yards in 10 carries, Vick broke the record for most rushing yards per carry. That one was also set a half-century ago -- Cleveland’s Marion Motley averaged 17.09 yards a carry by netting 188 yards in 11 attempts against Pittsburgh in 1950.

Already, Vick is forcing other teams to think differently. The Vikings, recognizing that Daunte Culpepper-to-Randy Moss isn’t getting it done anymore, decided to reverse the Randy Ratio against the Falcons -- snapping the ball to an in-motion Moss and having him throw cross-field to Culpepper.

It appeared to work, too, for a potential game-winning touchdown. But officials wiped out the score, flagging the Vikings for an illegal formation. For Minnesota, now 3-9, it has been that kind of season.

Likewise, Tennessee pulled the unusual to pull out a crucial victory over the Giants. Needing a two-point conversion to force overtime, Steve McNair got it on his own -- flim-flamming the Giants with a quarterback draw to even the score in the final seconds, putting the Titans in position to win the game in overtime.

Even Drew Bledsoe, as dyed-in-the-wool stay-in-the-pocket as they come, ran for a touchdown in Buffalo’s must-have victory against the Dolphins.

Welcome to life in Michael Vick’s NFL, where the options suddenly have become quite clear: Either adapt, quickly, or be left behind in his vapor trail.

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Bests of the Day

*--* PASSING Att Cmp Yds TD MATT HASSELBECK, Seahawks 55 30 427 3 STEVE McNAIR, Titans 43 30 334 3 JON KITNA, Bengals 46 30 308 2 DREW BLEDSOE, Bills 27 15 306 3 STEVE BEUERLEIN, Broncos 39 22 288 1 KERRY COLLINS, Giants 36 22 283 2 BRAD JOHNSON, Buccaneers 44 28 276 2

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*--* RUSHING Att Yards Avg TD RICKY WILLIAMS, Dolphins 27 228 8.4 2 LaDAINIAN TOMLINSON, Chargers 37 220 5.9 3 MICHAEL VICK, Falcons 10 173 17.3 2 CLINTON PORTIS, Broncos 29 159 5.5 2 TRAVIS HENRY, Bills 35 151 4.3 1 GARRISON HEARST, 49ers 31 124 4.0 2 DEE BROWN, Panthers 27 122 4.5 0 JAMAL LEWIS, Ravens 22 121 5.5 0

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*--* RECEIVING No Yards Avg TD RANDY MOSS, Vikings 9 134 14.9 0 ERIC MOULDS, Bills 5 130 26.0 1 ED McCAFFREY, Broncos 7 126 18.0 0 DERRICK MASON, Titans 12 116 9.7 1 DARRELL JACKSON, Seahawks 7 114 16.3 2

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*--* DEFENSE Breakdown N.D. KALU, Eagles 4 of 8 sacks of Kurt Warner LONDON FLETCHER, Bills 11 unassisted tackles

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On the Run

Top single-game rushing performances by NFL quarterbacks:

*--* Yards PLAYER, Team Year, Opponent 173 MICHAEL VICK, Atlanta 2002, vs. Minnesota 150 TOBIN ROTE, Green Bay 1951, vs. Chicago 131 BILLY KILMER, San Francisco 1961, vs. Los Angeles 131 TOBIN ROTE, Green Bay 1951, vs. Detroit 129 JACK CONCANNON, Philadelphia 1966, vs. Pittsburgh 127 BOBBY DOUGLASS, Chicago 1972, vs. Oakland

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