Michael Vick sustained a concussion at the end of the third quarter of Sunday night's game against the Falcons. He will now go through the NFL's mandated concussion protocol this week as he races to be healthy for this weekend's home opener against the New York Giants. Eagles head athletic trainer Rick Burkholder met the media yesterday to update Michael Vick's condition and to detail the process they'll go through with him this week.
"He'll go through our protocol of the rehab process that I've outlined for you before,: Burkholder said, "he'll see an independent neurologist, have impact testing, he'll have an MRI as part of our protocol, and we'll go from there. Right now, no he hasn't had impact testing, no he hasn't had an MRI, no we haven't checked his baseline again because I haven't seen him, I have him resting right now. As the days go on we'll see, but last night he was pretty good. He told coach he was fine, he told his teammates he was fine, he told me he was fine, and he was very far along last night."
Burkholder said that Vick was very close to the baseline range that says it's not a concussion.
"He was pretty close. He was pretty close. I'm not going to give you numbers, but he was pretty close. We had to make a medical decision with him. We made the right medical decision and we went with that. He was close."
Also, as we've heard, Vick did feel like he could get back into the game and wanted to be out there.
"Listen, as much as we all think it's an exact science, and easy and everything, every one of these guys wants to play. We had a bunch of guys nicked up last night, every guy on that roster wanted to play last night including Michael Vick. That's when Dr. Dorshimer and I had to make a decision to figure out what was really going on and it's the way it was. Even after the game, coach can tell you, he felt like he could have finished the game, and pulled it out and all the stuff that Mike is as a competitor, that's what makes it very tough to handle these situations. That's the way it is. We don't have a guy on the roster that doesn't want to play."
So the tone seems to have some optimism there. The initial concussion did not appear to be severe, but of course that doesn't mean he'll necessarily be ready to go by the weekend. It's not really about how bad your concussion is, the standard is whether you have one or not. Just because it's mild doesn't necessarily mean the effects will go away quickly. As we've learned, this is a very inexact science. Sometimes you recover very quickly, other times the effect linger for months (see Sidney Crosby).