Vick is up in the air

Those who haven’t taken the Michael Vick Experience for a whirl recently might be in for a head-spinning surprise. The ride has been modified to include an exhilarating new twist, one sure to leave even hardened critics wobbly at the knees.

It’s called throwing the football.

Long derided as a run-first, answer-questions-about-not-passing-later renegade, Vick has emerged in recent weeks as something approximating an NFL quarterback.

The Atlanta Falcon threw for 226 yards and four touchdowns against Pittsburgh on Oct. 22 and followed up last week with a season-high 291 yards passing and three touchdowns against Cincinnati.

Perhaps even more startling, the often-erratic Vick completed 38 of 58 passes -- 65.5% -- with no interceptions while guiding the Falcons to comeback victories over the defending Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers and defending AFC North champion Cincinnati Bengals.

What would be mundane numbers for Peyton Manning are fairly striking for someone who hadn’t reached the 200-yard mark in the first five games and had never thrown for more than two touchdowns in a game in his pro career.

The combination of passing production and accuracy from a Falcons quarterback seemed as bizarre as a Georgian topping his peaches with ketchup; Atlanta had not had consecutive games with at least three touchdown passes since November 1995.

Vick could make it a trifecta today when the Falcons (5-2) play the Detroit Lions (1-6) and the league’s 29th-ranked pass defense at Detroit’s Ford Field.

“He always feels like he’s been capable of doing this, it was just a matter of when it was going to be there for us to do,” said Falcons tight end Alge Crumpler, the primary beneficiary of Vick’s passing party the last two weeks with 10 catches for 189 yards and four touchdowns.

Crumpler said Vick’s sudden reliance on the pass was a result of game situations -- the Falcons trailed the Steelers, 17-7, and Bengals, 14-6 -- and playing teams that think Vick “just runs around.... But until you line up and play against him, he shows pretty much everything he’s capable of and that’s running and creating the pass and making the throws downfield.”

Like his Falcons teammates, who collectively lead the NFL in rushing for a third consecutive season, Vick has mostly thrived as a scrambling, elusive sprinter. He said he never asked offensive coordinator Greg Knapp to throw the ball more, realizing that running is, and will continue to be, the team’s strength.

“Hopefully, we can continue to put the ball in the air more, but at the same time we understand that games are won and lost in the running game,” Vick told reporters in Atlanta last week during his weekly media conference. “You have to be efficient in running the football because everything else is predicated off the running game.”

Atlanta leads the NFL with 210.9 yards rushing a game and a 5.7-yards-per-rush average. With 1,476 yards rushing in seven games, the Falcons are on pace to gain 3,374 yards on the ground, which would break the league record of 3,165 set by the 1978 New England Patriots.

The Falcons are the only team in the league with two players in the top 20 in rushing, running back Warrick Dunn (637 yards) and Vick (496). Vick leads the NFL with 24 rushes of 10 yards or more and his average of 8.3 yards a carry is the best in the league.

“The guys that we have are run-oriented guys,” Crumpler said. “We have a smallish, run-blocking, very aggressive type of line, two very good running backs, a young fullback that’s very creative in opening run lanes for Warrick Dunn and tall receivers that block well on the edges. That’s our makeup.”

Interestingly, the Falcons are 16-4 in Vick’s career when he passes for at least two touchdowns, so there is a case to be made for throwing as well. And against Cincinnati last week, Atlanta had nearly twice as many yards passing (277) as yards rushing (143).

“We have smart coaches, and they see what is working,” Vick said. “I think they understood we needed to make some changes and put the ball in the air a little more.”

A sixth-year pro, Vick is already sixth on the all-time rushing list for quarterbacks with 3,316 yards, and his 7.1-yards-per-rush average leads the top 10 rushing quarterbacks. Vick needs only 92 yards rushing to surpass John Elway for fifth place on the all-time list.

And yet critics still abound. Vick’s style of play was lampooned on the website sportsgoons.com, which mocked the Nike commercials touting the Michael Vick Experience with a similarly imaginary Disneyland ride in which participants could “wow fans with highlight-reel three-yard runs and underutilize your strong arm by dumping the ball off to fullbacks coming out of the backfield.”

Count Atlanta General Manager Rich McKay among Vick’s supporters.

“He’s been labeled as different,” McKay said. “I think he should be labeled as Michael Vick, because that’s the way he’s played the game. As he has more success throwing the ball, he’ll get out of that typecast as a running quarterback.”

ben.bolch@latimes.com