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Fennelly column: Brooks Hopes Vick Is Able To Find His Way

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By MARTIN FENNELLY | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 15, 2007

Updated: 11/15/2007 12:13 am

TAMPA - It hit Derrick Brooks as he watched game film. It's Falcons week, the first of this Bucs season. Suddenly it occurred to Brooks, though he'd known all along.

"He's not there."

Michael Vick wasn't there.

We all know why, and most of us say good riddance.

This is when the Bucs defense would be thinking of ways to run down No. 7.

"Because he's such a face of the Falcons," Bucs cornerback Ronde Barber said. "It was stop Michael Vick, stop Michael Vick."

The Bucs usually did a good job.

Now Vick has stopped himself. He awaits prison. He's an outcast, and rightly so. It's not even his stage anymore. Thank goodness O.J. is back or what would be on TV?

"You don't hear about him," Barber said. "Michael Vick's not it right now."

Imagine The Possibilities

Derrick Brooks sat in One Buc Place after lifting weights. The challenge, as always, is finishing strong. Missing is the challenge of Vick, which Brooks had relished. Who can forget the hit Brooks laid on Vick to start a critical game late in the 2002 Super season?

"There's no need watching Atlanta film prior to 2007," Brooks said. "I used to watch Vick on film and wonder, 'How can I not get caught in that position? How can I not be that defender? How can I let that not happen to me?'"

Then he said this:

"I simply pray for him. To me, that's the most straightforward way for me to send a message to him or any other human being."

Forget praying - some of you want to stop reading.

Go ahead.

Or listen.

Derrick Brooks has been named NFL Man of the Year. He helped build a high school that has his name on it. Michael Vick built the kennel from hell.

"We're human beings," Brooks said. "I prefer to see hope."

Vick seems beyond hope. Do any of you think he can save himself? Derrick Brooks is on the road hardly traveled, reaching out. He is not trying to justify what Vick has done, or denying that Vick has only himself to blame. But Brooks has stepped around those 10-foot poles people won't touch Vick with to get a message to No. 7 through Falcons he knows, including running back Warrick Dunn.

"I pray, because nobody can touch him the way God can," Brooks said.

He hopes for a Vick comeback.

He's not talking about football.

"I hope he comes back - period. If God pulls him back, imagine who he can reach. I want him back for his testimony, for somebody who has fallen so low, and God has reached down and picked him up.

"Imagine the influence he can have, the message he can send."

Out Of The Fire

Derrick Brooks is on a university board of trustees.

Michael Vick is headed behind the walls.

"But if we never reached out to anyone," Brooks said, "we'd go through life with our arms crossed, and that's no way to go."

He added, "I think of how different Ray Lewis is after the Super Bowl incident. Have you seen him at another party, seen him out and about? You haven't. He's a totally different person. To me, Ray has a bigger influence now than before."

He thought of Vick.

"He's going through the fire. If he comes out the other side, imagine the lesson we can learn."

Vick has to learn the lesson first. It seems impossible.

"Imagine the testimony," Brooks said. "It would be bigger than anything this man has ever done on a football field."

Michael Vick is nowhere.

"I do know this," Brooks said. "Wherever he is, he's in God's hands."

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