Michael Vick was an icon in the city of Atlanta for 6-years, until he was convicted for an illegal dog-fighting ring in 2007. Vick is back, NOT in the game, but he can’t forget the worst “GUT PUNCHING” low point of his life!!!

Flip and see what Michael Vick has to say about his low life moment kissing his career as the most exciting player in the game goodbye…

The former QB, Michael Vick, 36, is weighing in on that moment when the Falcons drafted Matt Ryan, replacing him.

These days, Michael Vick recalls the worst point in his life in an open letter with The Players’ Tribune. In the open letter Vick asks himself, “Who was I?”

He recalls:

“I was those five words. – Mike Vick, quarterback, Atlanta Falcons.”

Then, came the gut punching news that ate at Michael Vick after learning about being replaced news by a inmate. It was official “Mick Vick, quarterback, Atlanta Falcons” was over, but he stayed in disbelieve!

“I know sometimes people will say it’s like they’ve been “punched in the stomach” when something bad happens … but I’d never really understood the expression, until that moment. Matt Ryan. I just kept repeating his name, in my head, again and again. Every time I thought about what it meant, it took the air right out of me — but I couldn’t help it.”

He couldn’t grasp his situation, still hanging on to the dream he was still those 5 words, “Mike Vick, quarterback, Atlanta Falcons.”

“I think people would hear that I had hung on to the hope of returning to Atlanta as their quarterback … and then maybe assume that I was in denial about my entire situation. That I still wasn’t able to accept the full severity of what I had done.”

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Then, reality started setting in:

But to be honest, that really wasn’t the case at all. In those first few months of my sentence, I really did come to understand how far I had fallen. I came to understand how much hurt I had caused, and how much work it was going to take to earn back just a portion of the respect that I had lost — both people’s respect for me, and my respect for myself. I came to accept the consequences.

But there was one thing that I just had a permanent blind spot for: being the starting quarterback of the Falcons. It was something that I had taken so much pride in … something that I had come to identify myself with so strongly.”

Asking himself once again:

“Who was I? I was Mike Vick, quarterback, Atlanta Falcons. I was those five words. They were a part of me. They were … who I was. And so I think I just sort of developed this one blind spot, purely out of necessity, to keep my emotions in check. I was sorry — sorrier than I could ever express — for what I had done. I was prepared to serve my sentence, and to do so with dignity. I knew the millions of dollars that I had lost, and the value to my reputation that I had lost, and every day was a reminder of the freedom that I had lost. I knew all of that.

But in my mind, even from a prison cell, there was at least one thing I hadn’t lost: I was still the Atlanta Falcons quarterback.”

These days, Vick admits he has no ill will towards Ryan. He wrote that the two have a great relationship and they grab dinner with Roddy White when both of them work at the former Falcons receiver’s football camp.

The open letter explains a lot, and what is great is that fans and naysayers of Michael Vick can feel his pain and emotional breakthrough.

Today, Vick cheers for the Falcons today and has tried to make right for his crimes. Read more here…

Photos: Instagram