In the Tennessee Titans 38-13 pasting of Oakland Raiders on Sunday, Vince Young completed 76.4 percent of his passes, threw for two touchdowns and finished with a passer rating of 142.8.
The Hot Read: Vince Young Has Won, But Is He Finally Ready To Lead?
Each week, Michael Tunison will take a closer look at a dinner NFL storyline in The Hot Read. Today, he targets Vince Young, who appears ready to become a top tier QB after years of on and off the field struggles.
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It was a stellar performance by any standard and good enough to be the top rated among all quarterbacks for NFL's opening weekend. Yet if Young was mentioned at all by the national media this week, it was regarding the question of whether he would want the 2005 Heisman Trophy relinquished by Reggie Bush.
If it seems like a slight to a quarterback at last coming into his own on the pro level, it can still for the time being be excused by the fact that Young hasn’t been a starter for a full season since 2007. An, of course, there are the numerous disconcerting off-the-field incidents. While Vince Young can boast an impressive career record of 27-13 as a starter, it’s only within the last season that he has demonstrated the skills necessary to prove he can be a franchise quarterback.
On Sunday, the Titans host the Pittsburgh Steelers. Last year, the Titans entered Pittsburgh for the showcase season opening Thursday night game. Kerry Collins was the incumbent starting quarterback coming off a 13-3 regular season finish in 2008 in which the Titans earned the no. 1 seed in the AFC playoffs. The Titans dropped that opening game 13-10. They'd lose the next five as well, punctuated by a 59-0 throttling at the hands of the Patriots in a snow-covered Gillette Stadium.
If you're looking for people to have in your corner as an NFL player, your team's owner isn't the worst person in the world to be there. It was Bud Adams who prevailed upon Titans head coach Jeff Fisher to select VY third overall in the 2006 Draft. It's been reported that Fisher and other Titans officials had wanted to take Matt Leinart instead. After the disaster in Foxborough, there was Adams again, telling Fisher that, hey, maybe it's time to give Young another look.
At the time, people scoffed that Adams was only making that request because he was shelling out the kind of money you give to a quarterback selected third in the draft. And maybe that’s true. Moreover, people had a right to scoff. Despite a winning record as a starter, based on his composure and judgment as a quarter, you’d be hard-pressed to pin Young as anything more than a bust with the benefit of a strong supporting cast.
But then Vince Young went right back to winning. He went 8-2 as a starter the rest of the way last season with better play than he had ever shown at any point in his professional career. He threw for nearly 400 yards and led an outstanding last minute drive to defeat the Cardinals, beating Leinart once again in doing so. Take away a dud VY laid he laid against the Chargers in Week 16 where he was 8-for-21 with two interceptions and you can't say he really played a bad game in 2009.
The success was starting to come around, but the off-the-field maturity was more spotty. In June, Young got into a violent altercation at a Dallas strip club. Video caught Young punching a manager at the club who was taunting him about his college affiliation. He was issued a Class C citation by police and fortunate not to be suspended by commissioner Roger Goodell for the outburst.This, of course, was the same player who went missing from the team early in the 2008, prompting Fisher to call police because Young had mentioned several times to a therapist that he had considered suicide.
At least on the field, Young has learned to overcome his problems. At the same time, Matt Leinart, the player Jeff Fisher wanted to take in the '06 Draft, washed out in the last of his many chances to establish himself as a possible starter with the Arizona Cardinals. One wonders if Leinart could have developed into a viable starter if he had an owner in his corner the way Young did.
Most likely Leinart will never get that shot again. But Young has made the most of his second chance, proving not only that he belongs as a starting quarterback, but that he has the potential to be considered among the top 10 or 15 signal callers in the league. Armed as he is with the one of the league’s best running backs and a defense that looks like it’s returned to its punishing form of 2008, the prospect of seeing Vince Young advance deep into the postseason is far from the ridiculous notion it would have been a year ago today.
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