New Football League Aims to Ink Vick

Patriots top Bills, Saints crush Panthers, 49ers thump Rams

(NEWSER) - The New England Patriots overcame a 21-point deficit today with 49 unanswered points to rock the Buffalo Bills 49-21, the AP reports. The win earned the Pats home-field advantage and the AFC's top seed. Tom Brady threw for 338 yards and finished with the second-most passing yards in NFL history, 5,235—behind only Drew Brees, who threw for 5,486 this year with the New Orleans Saints. More»

Record-setting win leaves everyone gushing

(NEWSER) - Michael Vick eviscerated the Washington Redskins last night, throwing for 333 yards and four touchdowns, and running for another 80 yards and two more touchdowns, an unprecedented, record-breaking accomplishment. “He’s got my MVP vote,” Washington linebacker London Fletcher told the Washington Post after the game. Is the ex-con really that good? Here’s what people are saying:

• “It was one of the best single performances in league history,” gushes Matt Mosley of ESPN . “When Vick is on his game, I’m not sure there’s a team in the NFC capable of beating the Eagles.”

We despise one and love the other. But willful injury is inherent to both

(NEWSER) - Malcolm Gladwell is serious when he asks the question, in the New Yorker, whether football is really any different from dog fighting. He doesn't just mean that both inflict grievous injury to combatants—though the brain damage sustained by football linemen takes considerably longer to kill them—but that there are troubling similarities between the "gameness" the dogs are prized for, "the desire to please an owner at any expense to themselves," and the gameness that sends players back onto the field despite concussions and other injuries. More»

To raise awareness of pit bull plight, group will match tackles with food

(NEWSER) - A Pennsylvania animal shelter has put a price on Michael Vick’s head—sort of. Main Line Animal Rescue ran an ad in the Washington Post promising to donate five bags of dog food to local shelters every time a Redskin sacks Vick during their Oct. 26 game. “We just need to raise public awareness and this is a good way to do that,” the group’s founder tells the Philadelphia Inquirer. More»

(NEWSER) - Michael Vick, who last played in the NFL in 2006, will be eligible to suit up for the Eagles on Sept. 27, the Philadelphia Daily News reports. "Hopefully we can have a success story here that will be good for society in general and good for the NFL," commissioner Roger Goodell said today after meeting with the suspended quarterback and coach Andy Reid. "He is very genuine in his remorse." More»