Exciting to watch? Yes, loved his SportsCenter highlights. Great player? No. The novelty of Vick running around like Flash really did help them win games the first couple years. The last couple, teams realized how to gameplan against him, he became an average qb at best and his team's record reflected that, 15-16 as a starter the last two seasons he played.
His running hurt the Falcons as often as it helped them. Yeah, he racked up a lot of rushing yards but he was among the most sacked quarterbacks in the league also. Many of those sacks were because he simply broke the pocket too soon and juked his way right into some defender's arms.
His failure to read a defense should be embarrassing to him. Too many times, if his primary receiver wasn't immediately open he just took off. Plays never developed. And out of ten times he would do this, he'd get sacked a 2 or 3 times, gain 5 yards or less a couple more times and heave an incompletion or two but one would turn into a long completion and one would be a 50 yard run and everyone would jizz in their pants over his athletic ability.
Even worse, he never learned how to put any touch on the passes he did throw. Full disclosure, Vick has a cannon for an arm & throws the prettiest looking ball I've ever seen but every pass was 100 mph. It was never any mystery to me why all those #1 receivers didn't pan out with him under center. He never seemed to realize that you can't always go with the heater. Oh, combine that with the fact that since he was on the run most of the time, he was just winging it and hence accuracy never became his strong suit.
No, every qb doesn't need to be a pocket passer. But every qb should know when to run and should definitely learn how to scramble, that is using that speed to buy time behind the LOS for his receivers to get open. He could become a far more dangerous qb if he did. Often at the qb position, the threat of being able to run is often more effective than actually running. As soon as Vick gets out of jail, if he wants to play qb then he should find as much footage of Steve Young as possible and watch it and watch it and watch it again until his eyes bleed.[/rant]