King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Michael Vick's 23-month sentence: NFL teams will be waiting to give him a shot.

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Dec. 11, 2007 | Michael Vick's football career is over. That seems to be something of an early consensus among the commentariat after the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback was sentenced to 23 months in prison Monday on dog-fighting charges.

I wouldn't be so quick about that.

The best-case scenario has Vick released in the summer of 2009 and coming back to play that season at the age of 29, having missed two years. But nothing particularly surprising has to happen to keep him from even trying to make an NFL team for a year or two beyond that.

He could fail to get up to 15 percent of his time off for good behavior, which would stretch his sentence well into the 2009 season, probably too far in for him to hook on with a team. This is a guy who smoked marijuana while awaiting sentencing, knowing he'd be drug-tested. He's not a great bet to stay on good behavior for the next 22 months.

State charges in Virginia could result in an additional sentence that doesn't run concurrently with his federal time, which would mean he'd be incarcerated beyond the 2009 season. And Vick remains under an indefinite suspension by the NFL that might or might not be lifted once he finishes his prison time.

My bet would be that commissioner Roger Goodell extends that suspension for eight games, half a season, beyond Vick's release from prison. It's very likely, one way or another, that Vick won't even get a crack at coming back until 2010, when he's 30 and he has missed three seasons, and possible he won't get a chance till later than that.

But he'll get that chance. Oh, yes he will. Teams are that desperate to find players who can help them. Always.

A lot of experts filled a lot of TV and radio time Monday talking about how teams wouldn't want to bother with the public relations nightmare of signing Vick, how his skills will deteriorate in prison, how he never developed into a good quarterback anyway and the NFL is becoming more and more of a passer's league, one where Vick's skills would have been valued less and less even if he weren't going to spend his prime athletic years in the hoosegow.

But let's not listen to the people filling time on TV and radio. I've filled time on TV and radio and I'm an idiot. Let's listen to a couple of guys who hire and fire players for NFL teams.

Next page: Levy: "I never like to close the book on somebody"