FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- Michael Vick was talking about his greatest achievement as an NFL quarterback, and it had nothing to do with the time he beat Brett Favre in a playoff game at Lambeau Field. This was about saving a rookie coach's team and a wide receiver's career in the early hours of training camp, and it was all right there in black and white.

Vick was sitting on a bench inside the New York Jets' practice facility two days before his return to Philadelphia for Thursday night's cameo preseason start, and he was recalling the moment he first heard last summer that something was up. He was walking from a meeting back to the Eagles' locker room when a teammate asked if he had seen the video that was starting to go viral on the Web, the sights and sounds of a man fueled by anger and alcohol, Riley Cooper saying what he said about that African-American security guard at that Kenny Chesney concert.

"And when I'd seen it I didn't believe it," Vick told ESPNNewYork.com. "I couldn't even see him fixing his face to say that because I'd known him for three years."

"When I'd seen it I didn't believe it. I couldn't even see him fixing his face to say that because I'd known him for three years." Michael Vick

But it was true, all true. Despite the fact that the vast majority of his colleagues are black, Cooper used the N-word to describe the guard and other African-Americans at the concert he was threatening to fight, dropping an ungodly mess in the lap of the team leader who would handle it with the same dignity and grace that the head coach of the Los Angeles Clippers, Doc Rivers, showed in managing the Donald Sterling crisis the following spring.

Only Rivers was a 52-year-old authority figure with a long history of right-minded leadership. Vick? He was a 33-year-old quarterback coming off a 3-7 season as a starter and, of course, he wasn't that far removed from serving 19 months in federal prison for his involvement in a dogfighting ring.

"I just felt like I was the most capable guy on that team of taking a stand for Riley, and being a voice for him at that time," Vick said. Without taking that stand and being that voice, Vick maintained, the video of Cooper's racial slur "was going to derail our team. Unfortunately, it was going to derail Riley's career. It would have ended his career."

And so an established black star did a remarkable thing for a marginal white player whose production (an average of 15.3 receptions and 226.3 yards per year over his first three seasons) suggested he wasn't worth the trouble. Vick said he needed about an hour after learning of Cooper's slur to decide how to respond, and what he would say to younger black teammates who grew up idolizing him as the face of the Atlanta Falcons and the force behind dynamic change at the quarterback position in the NFL.

Vick, who stood up for Cooper during the wideout's most difficult moment as a pro, plans on greeting his former teammate warmly before Thursday's preseason game. AP Photo/Matt Rourke

After Cooper apologized to teammates who weren't in the mood to hear it, rookie coach Chip Kelly addressed his players about a problem he couldn't attack with X's and O's. Kelly asked the Eagles if any of them wanted to speak; Cooper wasn't in the room.

"Nobody had anything to say," Vick recalled. "Everybody had kind of a dumbfounded look on their faces. ... I just felt like something needed to be said at that point, and Chip kind of gave me a look like, 'Mike, come on. Give me something.'"

So Mike gave him something even though Vick's brother, Marcus, had tweeted the offer of $1,000 for the first safety who flattened Cooper (Marcus would delete the tweet), and even though LeSean McCoy would say he'd lost respect for the receiver. The quarterback who once asked millions of fans for forgiveness over his crime of cruelty was asking dozens of players to forgive Cooper for his show of ignorance and hate.

As for the Eagles who couldn't find room in their hearts for forgiveness, Vick was asking them to respect the needs of a football team that couldn't survive a compound fracture along racial lines.

"I stood in front of the team," Vick said. "I stood in front of the cameras and defused that whole situation."

Vick knew there would be a price to pay for assuming the role of Cooper's human shield.

"Guys were mad at me for a while," he said of fellow Eagles. "They were upset with me for a day or two, like six or seven guys who were just like, 'Really, how could you do that?' And then I'm getting phone calls from people everywhere, and my Twitter page is kind of in an uproar. But 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."

Cooper did immediately text Vick a message of thanks for his support in the meeting room and in the news media. But after he told reporters "it was easy to forgive" Cooper, Vick wondered if something changed.

The receiver ended up having a breakthrough season, finishing with 47 receptions for 835 yards and 8 touchdowns and landing a five-year, $25 million deal. In fact, Cooper actually outperformed Vick, who lost his starting job to injury and then watched Nick Foles go on a tear and lead Philadelphia to the playoffs.