Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
It’s been 12 years since Michael Vick last threw a pass at Lincoln Financial Field, but the former Eagles quarterback will walk out of the tunnel at the same stadium Thursday night wearing a different shade of green and with a new title: head coach. The 45-year-old Vick was hired in December as head coach at Norfolk State, a historically Black college located near his hometown of Newport News, Va., that competes in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). » READ MORE: Michael Vick bringing Norfolk State to Philly is special in more ways than one: ‘Like a second home for me’ On Thursday, Vick will man the sidelines as his Spartans (1-7) play Delaware State (5-3), coached by his former Birds teammate and close friend DeSean Jackson, at the Linc (7 p.m., ESPNU). The game represents a full-circle moment for Vick as he embarks on his new career challenge. Vick’s former quarterbacks coach with the Atlanta Falcons, Michael Johnson, witnessed the four-time Pro Bowler’s development both on and off the field up close, and believes Vick has what it takes to make a successful transition to coaching. “[Mike] had to grow as a quarterback [early on], but he was always a person that understood football,” Johnson, now the co-offensive coordinator at Syracuse, told The Inquirer this week. “He understands how to compete, and that’s kind of what you do as a coach.” Johnson, 56, was present for a significant portion of Vick’s early development in the NFL. The Los Angeles native was the San Diego Chargers’ quarterbacks coach in 2001, a year that the organization had the No. 1 overall pick. Johnson was responsible for conducting pre-draft workouts for the quarterback prospects, including Vick, whom the coach was already impressed by. “He was super, super athletic. Mike Vick had probably one of the best college tapes you ever want to see,” said Johnson of Vick’s time at Virginia Tech. “Unless something else came up, we were gonna take him. He was, you know, this consensus number one pick; everybody was gonna take Michael Vick if he was available.” But something did come up. “We got a call at 11:30 in the morning [the day before the draft]; it said all coaches come to the draft room, and they told us that we had just traded the number one overall pick to Atlanta,” Johnson said. » READ MORE: ‘Big Dom’, Eagles family rooting for unlikely college coaches Michael Vick and DeSean Jackson. Me too. Just one year later, however, Johnson followed Vick to Atlanta after being hired as the team’s wide receivers coach. Johnson was then promoted to quarterback coach the following offseason, in 2003. But his tenure with Vick started with a major setback. In a preseason game against the Baltimore Ravens, Vick broke his leg and subsequently missed the first 11 games of the season. But being on the shelf presented Vick the opportunity to improve the mental side of his game, one he took full advantage of. “He just started studying a little bit more, doing different things to prepare himself,” said Johnson. “And, you know, after his second year is really when he made the jump to really preparing as a quarterback.” Johnson believes that Vick’s stronger preparation habits resulted in significantly improved performance. He recalls that before the quarterback’s injury, former Falcons head coach Dan Reeves consistently stressed to position coaches that “we didn’t want to make Mike think.” Reeves was fired during the 2003 season, and a new head coach in Jim Mora Jr. and Vick’s improvement as a passer led to a change in this mindset. “In ‘05 and ‘06, he really did make a jump … from a quarterback standpoint,” Johnson said. “He made the jump there from just a raw runner to really throwing the ball better.” But Johnson believes that Vick’s development finally culminated at the place he’ll return to coach tonight. “When he finally left Atlanta and he went to Philadelphia and he started playing there, I think that’s when you really saw the jump in maturity when it came to handling all that a quarterback has to handle at the professional level,” Johnson said. “He’s one of those types of people that when you go to the game and you’ve got 65,000 people in the stands, he believes that all 65,000 came to see him … and you know, he’s probably right.” Vick made the Pro Bowl in his first season as a starter with the Eagles, and despite missing almost five games, he threw for a career-high 21 touchdowns and ranked seventh in total touchdowns with 30. In all, Vick threw for just under 10,000 yards and accounted for 72 total touchdowns across five seasons with the Eagles. Vick retired from the NFL in 2015, two years after leaving Philadelphia. Following Vick’s playing career, he has worked as an NFL analyst on Fox. He has also dabbled in a variety of coaching-adjacent roles. Vick has run various QB camps over the years, and in 2017 served as an intern during Kansas City Chiefs training camp under his former Eagles head coach, Andy Reid. He also briefly served as an adviser for the Atlanta Legends of the defunct Alliance of American Football. » READ MORE: Eddie George blazed a trail for Michael Vick and DeSean Jackson: ‘If you can make it through an HBCU, you can make it anywhere.’ But becoming the head coach of a Division 1 football team was certainly a big leap for Vick, who had not previously held any college coaching position. And while the Spartans have started the season 1-7, Johnson is confident that Vick has what it takes to turn it around. “When you have that competitive spirit, you still want to be around competitive people and competitive sports,” said Johnson. “[Mike’s] a guy that if he can infuse his personality into some of these players and help them grow as young men, I think he can be a great coach.”
