The Michael Vick case presents an interesting object lesson for managers everywhere, and it’s this: You always need to have a viable fallback position that can save you, no matter what unexpected disaster befalls you. You’ve got to have a Plan B.

Vick, the Atlanta Falcons’ star quarterback, is expected to plead guilty to federal dogfighting charges next week. No one knows what will happen next, but most analysts think Vick will get anywhere from 12 to 36 months in prison. And he could possibly be banned for life by the National Football League.

But as bad as things are for Vick, they aren’t much better for the pro football franchise he’s leaving behind. The Falcons are owned by Arthur Blank, one of the founders of Home Depot and a pretty successful businessman. Blank obviously has a lot of business savvy, but the Vick situation has caught him and his team management flat-footed.

Blank and his managers built the Atlanta Falcons around Vick, signing him to a 10-year, $130 million contract extension in 2004. Yes, Vick has been the face of the franchise, but he’s had some injury problems here and there, plus a series of minor but troubling incidents that in hindsight seem to have foreshadowed the larger legal troubles he now faces.

The Falcons’ team management believed so much in Vick that they traded away his backup, a young and talented quarterback named Matt Schaub, to Houston during the off-season. Schaub has played when Vick was injured the last couple of years, and he always seemed to perform extremely well when thrown into the breach.

Now the Falcons are in a fix. As a story in the Los Angeles Times put it, “The team’s string of 51 consecutive sellouts is as good as dead.” The paper also quotes a local radio executive who says, “There is absolutely no buzz with this team now.” Schaub, discarded by the Falcons, might have been someone the team could get people to rally around. Instead, fans get a journeyman in Joey Harrington, a nice guy, but one who was involuntarily terminated from his last two NFL quarterback gigs, in Detroit and Miami.

The lesson here is simple: Managers should always be thinking “What if … ?” no matter how smoothly things seem to be running. You need to develop contingency plan that will keep things going when the much-feared worst-case scenario really does come to pass.

Arthur Blank and his managers should have seen this one coming. They had a good Plan B, but decided to discard it and put all their faith in Michael Vick. That’s a gutsy vote of confidence in a player, but a seriously dumb business decision.