Commentary: Take a chance on Vick? No thanks

Michael Vick is currently searching for a team willing to take a chance on his immense physical gifts.

Any team must decide whether or not the underlying risk is worth the reward.

I’m not really prepared to discuss whether or not Vick should be playing. That was for the National Football League to decide, and they’ve made the decision recently, declaring that Vick has been conditionally reinstated to play in the NFL after serving a five-week suspension.

Let’s put aside the discussion of whether or not that, along with his 23-month prison sentence, was just. Arguing about that is pointless, considering he’s likely to get a chance from someone.

But should that someone be the Bears?

There’s no question that Vick will probably be capable of helping some team in some capacity. At 29, Vick is far from past his athletic prime and given the right fit, he could be an excellent additional weapon to some team’s offensive arsenal.

Vick’s unique gifts, however, also require an offense that is willing to adapt and shift to suit the sorts of things in which he excels. A standard pro-set offense would be a disaster if engineered by Vick, whose 53.8 completion percentage and 75.7 career quarterback rating are well below league averages in both categories.

And don’t think that the nearly three years removed from competition won’t have a staggering effect on his production. Even with his former team, the Atlanta Falcons, Vick was very much a work in progress as a quarterback, often using his skills as a scrambler to avert problems standard quarterbacks wouldn’t be able to wiggle out of.

Those intuitive abilities were exactly what made Vick frightening to both opposing defenses and people on his own team. Both sides had difficulty predicting exactly what might happen next.

That sort of instability is exactly what the Bears don’t need. Would Vick provide someone with ample experience to serve in a backup role? Most definitely. Would that be worth the circus coming to town if Bears signed him? Absolutely not.

If you would have asked me a year ago what I would have thought about Vick coming to the Bears, I probably would have advocated it, knowing deep down that it would probably end in disaster anyway. But the trade for the established Jay Cutler virtually nullified the Bears’ need to take a colossal gamble on Vick.

The Bears don’t have a long history of using athletic quarterbacks with great success, either. The most recent attempt at using a more athletic player in the pocket was Kordell Stewart, but the team didn’t do a great job of utilizing Stewart’s tools. It seemed like the team was trying to put a square peg into a round hole. It just didn’t fit.

Don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t mind seeing what Vick could do in a trick backfield alignment with Devin Hester and Matt Forte. I think it would be fun. But just like the Wildcat offense the Bears have tinkered with in each of the last three practices, I don’t really believe the team will utilize the offense much or at all once the season starts. It’s not really their style.

Even if the Bears had an interest in Vick — and from all public indications, they do not — it probably wouldn’t be in his best interest to come here. Vick needs somewhere that has a great need at the quarterback position and a willingness to revamp and reconfigure their offense to make him an actual threat.

The Bears don’t fill the bill on either of those counts.

Hopefully, the Minnesota Vikings don’t figure out that they do.

Steve Soucie can be reached by e-mail at ssoucie@daily-journal.com or by phone at 815-937-3392.