When smartphone footage surfaced last year of Eagles WR Riley Cooper racially abusing a security guard at a Kenny Chesney stadium show, rushing to Cooper’s defense was not a fashionable thing to do (least of all because Kenny Chesney totally sucks). Cooper’s cred in the Philly locker room took an temporary hit, but former Eagles QB Michael Vick — no stranger to being judged (for murdering dozens of innocent dogs) — tells ESPN.com’s Ian O’Connor that he singlehandedly saved a guy the journalist calls, “a marginal white player whose production (an average of 15.3 receptions and 226.3 yards per year over his first three seasons suggested he wasn’t worth the trouble.”
“I stood in front of the team,” Vick said. “I stood in front of the cameras and defused that whole situation.”
Vick knew there would be a price to pay for assuming the role of Cooper’s human shield.
“Guys were mad at me for a while,” he said of fellow Eagles. “They were upset with me for a day or two, like six or seven guys who were just like, ‘Really, how could you do that?’ And then I’m getting phone calls from people everywhere, and my Twitter page is kind of in an uproar. But I took that stand for him, man, and I just hope at the end of the day that he appreciates that.
“I just hope he’s [appreciative] of my boldness to step out in front of the world and say what I said, and he appreciates what I did and understands the magnitude of it, because nobody else was going to step up and say anything. I could’ve said the same thing that 25 of my teammates were saying, and there was built-up anger.”
“A couple of things transpired since [the incident] that I dislike, and I’ll be honest with you,” Vick said. “After he signed his contract, I sent him a text and I never got a text back, and that made me feel a certain type of way. But I’m not the type of guy who holds grudges.”
“They might not have forgotten about it, but they forgave him,” Vick said. “We had guys talking about knocking him out, taking his head off, doing X, Y and Z to him on the field, and none of that happened, out of respect for myself, I think.”
Vick neglects to mention, sadly, that one of the persons talking about knocking Cooper out, taking his head off, doing X, Y and Z to him on the field was his younger brother.