"I think everything that I've been through just made me a stronger individual," Vick said.
The real question, however, as Vick's rebirth comes full circle, is whether the things he endured also made him a better football player. Did the changes he had to go through as a person make him better suited to play quarterback in the NFL under a demanding coach like Andy Reid?
Because Vick is wrong about one thing: Some of his problems were on the field.
When Vick finished the 2006 season, he was 26 years old and had just gone through another scatter-shot year with the Atlanta Falcons.
His completion percentage was low compared with the good quarterbacks in the league and his passer rating of 75.7 ranked him 20th in the league. He had run for more than 1,000 yards, which was exciting, but the Falcons were 7-9 in the regular season and, to be blunt, Vick wasn't really considered a winner. He was thrilling, he was talented, but the finer points of the game - like working from the pocket or limiting interceptions - did not appear to interest him.
Despite having signed a 10-year, $130 million contract with Atlanta at the end of the 2005 season, Vick still had a reputation for coming to work at the last possible moment and for leaving at the earliest. He wasn't in the film room very much and wasn't considered an ardent student of the game. On Sundays, he didn't play quarterback so much as he played Michael Vick.
And that is the quarterback who walked into Leavenworth prison, but not the one, apparently, who signed with the Eagles in August 2009, and certainly not the one who played last weekend against the Detroit Lions. Something has changed, and you wonder if it is Vick or the situation around him.
