NFL

Vick: Saved Riley Cooper’s career after slur, then he didn’t text back

Michael Vick helped Riley Cooper when the Eagles receiver needed it most, speaking on behalf of his then-teammate after Cooper was videotaped using racial slurs last year, leaving him alone to eat meals and without a friend in the locker room.

“I stood in front of the team,” Vick told ESPN. “I stood in front of the cameras and defused that whole situation.”

“We had guys talking about knocking him out, taking his head off, doing X, Y and Z to him on the field, and none of that happened, out of respect for myself, I think.”

Cooper would end up having a career year, earning a five-year, $25 million deal with Philadelphia in the offseason, while Vick ended up as the Jets’ backup quarterback. Vick, who will see Cooper on Thursday night when the Jets and Eagles meet in their final preseason game, described his actions last season as the proudest moment of his career, but he still isn’t sure if his efforts were ever truly appreciated.

Vick said he reached out to the receiver in the offseason to tell Cooper he was proud of him and never heard back. A perplexed Vick said that if the situation were reversed, he’d have Cooper on “speed dial.”

“A couple of things transpired since [the incident] that I dislike, and I’ll be honest with you,” Vick said. “After he signed his contract, I sent him a text and I never got a text back, and that made me feel a certain type of way. But I’m not the type of guy who holds grudges.

“I took that stand for him, man, and I just hope at the end of the day that he appreciates that. I just hope he’s [appreciative] of my boldness to step out in front of the world and say what I said, and he appreciates what I did and understands the magnitude of it, because nobody else was going to step up and say anything. I could’ve said the same thing that 25 of my teammates were saying, and there was built-up anger.”

Though Vick and Cooper reportedly spoke on Wednesday, in what a spokesperson said was a “productive” call, Vick believes if he hadn’t backed his teammate at the time, Cooper’s tenure in the league may have ended.

“[He] was going to derail our team,” Vick said. “Unfortunately, it was going to derail Riley’s career. It would have ended his career.”