Michael Vick and This Year's 5 Biggest QB Busts

Only one face can fit on the front of the local newspaper.

In football, when a team fails to fulfill expectations, a quarterback takes the blame the vast majority of the time.  Occasionally, it’s the defense’s fault, or a wide receiver, or running back that coughed up the football, but in the NFL, the QB is the face of the franchise and is expected to lead the team to victory week in and week out.  If he fails to do so, he’s a failure.

Here are five quarterbacks that have been failures so far this season:

5. Donovan McNabb

The Minnesota Vikings traded for Donovan McNabb this offseason to bridge the gap between the Brett Favre and Christian Ponder eras.  Well, he better be at least mentoring Ponder because he sure isn’t winning football games.  The Vikings finally won their first game of the season in Week 5 against the Arizona Cardinals, and it took an extraordinary effort from Adrian Peterson to get the job done.

McNabb’s stats don’t look pitiful on paper. He had an 80.9 passer rating through the first four weeks of the season, but he just hasn’t gotten the job done in crunch time.  Each of Minnesota’s losses were one-score games.  They blew a 20-0 halftime lead against the Detroit Lions.

No. 5 just doesn’t have it anymore.

4. Matt Cassel

After winning the AFC West in 2010, the Kansas City Chiefs are off to a 2-3 start in which their only two wins were against winless teams.  Besides injuries to Eric Berry and Jamaal Charles, one of the biggest reasons for such a huge step back for the Chiefs this season is Matt Cassel.  He has been solid the past three weeks—again—with two games played against the cellar dwellers of the league, but his abysmal play is what put Kansas City in a hole to begin with.

He threw four interceptions and just one touchdown the first two weeks of the year.  Cassel left the contests with passer ratings of 64.5 and 44.5.  Poor Chiefs, it’s really too bad they put themselves out of the Suck-for-Luck race with back-to-back wins.

3. Mark Sanchez

Mark Sanchez finished his 2010 campaign on fire. 

He boasted a 95.5 passer rating in the postseason, leading the New York Jets to the AFC Championship game.  Sanchez was also solid in games against the Pittsburgh Steelers and Chicago Bears to end the regular season.  He was expected to carry that momentum over to this year, but he’s done anything but.

The former USC Trojan is back to his mediocre ways.  Going into Week 5, he had recorded a 75.9 passer rating.  Worst of all, though, New York, a team with Super Bowl expectations, is now 2-3 with Sanchez under center. As of right now, he is arguably the team’s weak link.

2. Tony Romo

Tony Romo’s numbers aren’t bad: 92.9 passer rating, 1,273 yards through the air in the first four games.  His two choke jobs this season, though, have been the joke of the NFL.  The Dallas Cowboys should be 4-0, but because of Romo’s inability in crunch time, they’re just 2-2.

In Week 1, a fumble inside the Jets' own 5-yard line gave New York new life, and a late interception to Darrelle Revis gave Rex Ryan and company the comeback victory.  Last week against the Detroit Lions, Dallas had a 24-point lead before three Romo interceptions, including two of which were returned for touchdowns, ignited the Lions' miraculous victory.  Romo played through a broken rib and punctured lung, but his fourth-quarter failures overshadow his heroics.

1. Michael Vick

A quarterback of a football team that has Super-Bowl-or-bust expectations will end up as the hero or the scapegoat at the end of the season—nothing in between.  With the Philadelphia Eagles “Dream Team” off to a nightmare 1-4 start, Michael Vick has plenty of fingers pointing his way.  Vick has been able to move the ball up and down the field for Philly, throwing for 1,336 yards and adding 318 on the ground, but turnovers have plagued the 2010 MVP candidate.

His 8-to-7 touchdown-to-interception ratio is bad enough, but throw in his three lost fumbles and his carelessness with the football deserves to be under the spotlight.  Sure, Vick has been forced to play through multiple injuries and his offensive line isn’t giving him much protection, but it’s not like quarterbacks like Ben Roethlisberger and Tony Romo are getting cut any slack for their play under the same circumstances; Roethlisberger actually played well against the Tennessee Titans with an injured foot.

Philadelphia is a talented football team and can still make the playoffs, but the only way they’ll pull off a streak of wins is if Vick turns on Superman-mode because their defense is hopeless.

David Daniels is a Featured Columnist at Bleacher Report and a Syndicated Writer.  Follow him on Twitter.