[smurfalicious]

As Falcons quarterback Mike Vick prepares to formally enter a guilty plea on Monday morning,{snip} some league insiders are wondering if/when team owner Arthur Blank will turn his eye toward the folks who were in a position to know (or, at a minimum, to find out) whether Vick was a disaster waiting to happen.

{snip}

In October 2004, Vick was involved in a strange incident at an airport, where two guys who were traveling with him (including Quanis Phillips) allegedly lifted a watch belonging to a luggage-screening employee. Two months later, the Falcons gave Vick a contract extension containing $37 million in bonuses.

So did anyone bother to ask whether Vick and his association with guys like Quanis Phillips was cause for concern before printing out the check for the initial $7.5 million installment? Should the team have looked more carefully at Vick's overall lifestyle before paying him that much money?

The easy answer is "hell yes."

But the bigger issue is whether someone should have raised these questions in advance, and whether anyone actually did. Rich McKay, the Falcons G.M., wasn't on the job when the team drafted Vick, and Blank wasn't the owner. So shouldn't someone have suggested a full background check on the guy before giving him that much money?

Maybe they did, and maybe the security staff couldn't find anything. Or maybe they did, and maybe there were red flags that McKay and/or Blank ignored.

Even if the ultimate reason for not taking a serious look-see into off-field habits of Vick, or for not paying attention to any warning signs that were found, is that Blank was sufficiently smitten with Vick to ignore the problems, someone should have told the emperor that he was butt-naked. In our view, that responsibility ultimately fell to McKay. But McKay might have been reluctant to make ways, or might have been distracted by his desire at the time to politick for the Commissioner's job.

Though we doubt that the Falcons will be flapping their dirty laundry to the press regarding one of the most embarrassing episodes in league history, we think it makes a lot of sense to keep a close eye on the front office over the next few months, because we're convinced that someone is gonna get fired over this.

It might just be McKay.