Posts tagged RonMexico at FanHouse

The Falcons unofficially began their descent into awfulness when they fired Jim Mora Jr. following the 2006 season. At the time, it seemed like a perfectly rational move -- Mora had underachieved for two years after making it to the NFC Championship game in 2004 -- but in retrospect, it was the first crack in the proverbial dike.

Puppy murder and Bobby Petrino would follow, and next thing you know the Falcons are 4-12 and have the third-overall pick in the '08 draft. Atlanta would use the pick on Boston College's Matt Ryan, and most of us just assumed he would sit and learn for a year before the new coaching staff threw him to the wolves.

Most us would assume wrong, apparently.

Rookie Matt Ryan will open the regular season as the Falcons' starting quarterback. The decision was made over the weekend and will be announced by coach Mike Smith after today's practice. ...

Clarity arrived after three preseason games in which Ryan, who took the majority of snaps, completed 32-of-52 passes for 277 yards, two touchdowns and an interception. He made his first start Friday against Tennessee and completed 15-of-21 passes for 102 yards and a touchdown.

Ryan has been praised by teammates for his leadership, diligence and huddle presence as well as his ability to make plays.

Getting busted for DUI by a cop on a bicycle sounds like the perfect end to a perfect evening. As MDS noted yesterday, New Mexico was arrested and charged with driving drunk after leaving a club with his girlfriend/model Delicia Cordon. The Daily Press has the moving pictures to prove it.

Perhaps the most amazing thing in all this is that when Mr. Investigative Reporter went to Marcus Vick's house the day after the arrest (shockingly, Vick didn't answer), we learn that he lives in a mansion (roughly 2:00 into the video).

I remember hearing rumors that Ron Mexico gave his younger brother $1 million as a birthday gift a few years ago, but I figured it was just the internets run amok. Maybe not. Unless, of course, guys recently out of college with no job prospects can afford such luxurious living as a former NFL practice-squad player.


Whatever, the Palm Beach Post's Tim Graham has a detailed takedown of Vick's ladyfriend.

The video report includes a look at the wannabe beauty queen (but heretofore half-clothed eye candy) Vick was with. She claims to be an actress, but that would be like Vick claiming he's a football player.

Delicia Cordon is a deadbeat, according to court records KTKA says have been filed in Virginia and Florida.

But she reportedly has six racy MySpace pages in her name, and this arrest might actually turn out to be good for Cordon's career as a celebutant, what with all the page views she must be getting.

Glad to see somebody still has an outside shot at a celebrity career.

I've been pretty critical of DeAngelo Hall but I'm not going to begrudge the guy for wanting to get paid. Even if, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jeff Schultz points out, Hall said last season that he didn't "want to be the highest-paid cornerback in the league and losing every game. Money only gets you so much happiness."

Like somebody really smart said one time: don't blame the guy cashing the checks, blame the guy writing them. Anyway, Schultz writes that logic suggests that losing Hall should make the Falcons worse (is that possible?), but new head coach Mike Smith makes an interesting observation.

"What people might not know about our defense in Jacksonville is we didn't have a lot of guys who got much publicity throughout the league," Smith said. "We had a solid group of physically tough guys who enjoyed playing together. Even in Baltimore, we only had a couple of bell cows. We had a lot of guys who understood about the team concept. That's what we're trying to establish here."

Smith made no mention of Hall, but I take his point: you don't need superstars to have a great team. Of course, part of the reason the Jags' fielded a no-name defense might be because nobody in Jacksonville cares about professional football*, but whatever, the Falcons haven't had a lot of luck recently with marquee players. One is in the can and the other has just been traded to the Raiders.

And although Atlanta loses a starter, they now have four of the first 48 picks in the NFL draft. It's a start.

* gross exaggeration

The Falcons have a new head coach and general manager, and it looks like they'll have a bunch of new players by the time training camp opens in six months. Former head coach Bobby Petrino quit 13 games into his rookie season, and former general manager Rich McKay was "reassigned" earlier this off-season. Now Mike Smith and Thomas Dimitroff are tasked with rebuilding a franchise that made it to the NFC Championship game just three years ago.

First up, revamping the roster, and apparently no position is safe. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, veterans Lawyer Milloy, Wayne Gandy, Joe Horn, Brian Finneran, Warrick Dunn, Joey Harrison, Byron Leftwich and Keith Brooking could all be looking for work in the next few weeks.

"[The front office will] have to figure out how big this is going to be because they still have to line up and play 16 games next season," the NFL official told the AJC about the upcoming roster overhaul.

Which makes it seem unlikely that every player listed might not be back in 2008. The AJC's Steve Wyche writes that salary-cap constraints, age, injury history and scheme would all be reasons for making drastic changes. Winning four games probably had something to do with it too.

On the upside, even if the Falcons field a team full of no-names in 2008, at least they'll have plenty of cap room in 2009. One of the unintended benefits of having extremely low expectations is that if the Falcons win eight games next season it'll be like winning the Super Bowl (without the fear of Eugene Robinson trolling the streets looking for a good time the night before the big game).

It truly is the holiday season. Ron Mexico, serving 23 months for murdering puppies, will have some visitors. Falcons cornerback DeAngelo Hall said he and his teammates would drop in on Michael Vick in the clink. God bless us, every one.

"Probably in the next week or so," Hall said. "I think a couple guys are going to go up there to Virginia, get a chance to go see him. We all talked about [doing it] when the season was over. The season is over. We'll try to formulate a plan to get up there to see him."

Hall, Alge Crumpler, Joe Horn, Chris Houston and Roddy White were fined earlier this month for "violating the uniform policy" (read: sporting homemade "Free Vick" shirts, posters, knick knacks, et cetera). Also around that time, Crumpler told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that Mr. Mexico isn't a bad person ... unless you're a no-fight-winning canine.

In one sense, it's good that Vick's family and friends aren't abandoning him after his fall from grace, but I'm guessing most people aren't losing any sleep over his incarceration. Fair enough. Whatever, Hall thinks it'll be tough for Vick to see his teammates while wearing an orange jumpsuit:

"Probably harder for him to see us," he said. "It's probably going to be real tough for him. I know when I spoke to him before training camp started, being told he wasn't going to be able to come to training camp crushed him. He loved this team more than anything."

Well, almost anything, anyway.
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For U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson, actions speak louder than words, I guess. Prior to his sentencing on Monday, Michael Vick, from the inside of a jail cell, wrote the judge a five-page letter asking for leniency:

"Your Honor, I am not the bad person or the beast I've been made out to be. I have been talked about and ridiculed on a day to day basis by people who really don't know Michael Vick the human being," Vick wrote.

"This has been painful because my son watches the news and can understand what's going on with his father," he wrote, adding that his daughter asked him on a regular basis when he would be home to play games with her, "but I have no answer."

Ron Mexico sure sounds contrite when you read his words, but given Hudson's history of not cutting soon-to-be inmates any slack on their sentences, this can't come as a surprise. In addition to Vick's plea, Hudson also received letters from Hank Aaron and George Foreman (no word on if the letter came attached to the new S525). Hey, maybe all the last-second support persuaded Hudson to only make it a 23-month sentence.

Vick also wrote that he takes "full responsibility" for his actions, and is "ashamed" that his "actions hurt animals and allowed animals to be hurt and killed." Well, in taking full responsibility, Mr. Mexico will have to spend nearly two years in the can. It's awful to think that he'll be away from his three kids for that long, but nobody forced him to kill those puppies.

It was certainly a coincidence that Michael Vick would be sentenced on the same day his former team appeared in a nationally televised game. For both parties, it couldn't have gone much worse. Vick got 23 months and the Atlanta Falcons were throttled 34-14 by the Saints on Monday Night Football.

In terms of Xs and Os, there wasn't much to look at for Falcons fans (save the masochists and Chris Redman's family members). In terms of remembering Ron Mexico, though, there was plenty to keep fans busy. During player introductions, Vick's former Virginia Tech teammate, DeAngelo Hall, busted out a Michael Vick poster, signed by the puppy murderer himself.

And wide receiver Roddy White pulled up his jersey to reveal a "Free Mike Vick" t-shirt after scoring a touchdown.

"That was homemade. I did that myself," White said. "It ain't too much to say, you know. The team misses him and we really need him this season. There ain't too much more to say about it."

Hall told the Associated Press that "We did that for the simple fact we wanted to let him know we're still thinking about him ... That was my personal thing for doing it."

The Falcons organization has gone through a lot since the off-season, and most of it is Vick's doing. Hall said he wanted to send "a tribute to Mike", almost sounding resigned to the fact that he'll likely never play with the former quarterback again. Mr. Mexico won't be out of the joint until 2009, and not only is it doubtful he'll return to the Falcons, his NFL career is probably over. All because the guy loved to fight dogs. What a waste.
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Every week, NFL FanHouse hits the lowlights from Sunday's action, looking at those players who did the most to move their head coaches that much closer to returning to the Bed and Breakfast business.

A.J. Feeley, Eagles
Well, so much for a quarterback controversy in Philadelphia. After one of the most impressive performances of the season last Sunday night, Eagles backup A.J. Feeley followed that up with what we've come to expect from A.J. Feeley: noodle-armed underthrows, poor decision making, and a bunch of passes to the other team. Check, check ... and check.

For the second straight week, Feeley threw a pick on the Eagles' first possession, but luckily, Seahawks linebacker Lofa Tatupu didn't return it for six. That would be the highlight of Feeley's day.

The first interception set up a Shaun Alexander touchdown, which, these days, happens about as often as a Lions Super Bowl run. Pick No. 2 led to another Seattle touchdown. No. 3 killed an Eagles drive late in the third quarter with Philly trailing 28-24, and the final interception came with 23 seconds to go, Eagles still down by four.

Yeah, I think you could say this one's on Feeley.
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Michael Vick's in a tough spot. Now that he's an admitted puppy-murderer sitting in a jail cell awaiting his December 10 sentencing (one that doesn't look to be lenient, by the way), there's not much he can do to change his public image. He's been contrite, asked to get a head start on his sentence, and is trying to do all the right things.

Of course, we wouldn't even be talking about this if Mr. Mexico didn't have a dog-fighting fetish. The public is usually pretty good about forgiving and forgetting, but the gruesome images of bloody animals is a little harder to overlook than, say, giving the hometown team the finger. While Vick awaits his fate, his former teammate, Alge Crumpler, wants you to know that Vick is a good guy.

"Mike is not a bad person. I know his heart. I know how much he cares for his family and how much he cares for this game of football," Crumpler said. "He's in a situation now where he's accepted responsibility for his actions. He probably is going to get hit harder than pretty much anybody in the world who's gone through the same situation."

As for his conversation with Vick, Crumpler said, "We spoke at length and a lot of it was positive. I got on him a little bit about some things. It was us being real with each other more than anything.

"Mike's a guy who uplifted whole communities in Atlanta and in Virginia. He took a bad step, and obviously, he's going to pay for it."

Uh-oh if you're Michael Vick. The dog breeder/dog fighter/part-time NFL quarterback is currently in the clink, presumably to get a head start on his sentence. He'll still get time served, but if the recent prison terms handed down to his co-defendants is any indication, Mr. Mexico won't be getting out eary:

In sentencing two of Michael Vick's co-defendants yesterday to longer prison terms than the government had recommended, United States District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson demonstrated an independence that could hurt Vick's chance of gaining a reduced sentence, legal experts said.

The government suggested 18 to 24 months for Phillips, and 12-18 for Peace. It recommended 12 to 18 for Vick as well.

"It is relatively rare that a judge doesn't take the government's recommendation," Douglas A. Berman, a professor at the Ohio State University Law School, said ... "This gives us a sense of Hudson's instincts and suggests he will put his own stamp on this case."

Not so good news for Vick, who, with a reduced sentence, could've had designs on returning for the 2008 season.

Assuming Hudson hands Vick something in the 18-month range, the earliest we would see him would be 2009. Two years is a long layoff for a player who relies on his athleticism to make plays. And if you thought he was inaccurate as a passer before, well, imagine what he'll look like after a 24-month break. Yikes.