Vince Young: Closer To Out Of The NFL Than Elite QB
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Vince Young is as delusional as they come. (Creative Commons)
The odds of making it to the NFL are a bit better than winning the lottery, but are still against the average man. Every player you see on the field on Sundays fought long odds to make it and must feel like he is the best thing since sliced bread -- if for no other reason than to merely survive out there on the field.
That said, one has to worry when he hears the nonsense coming out of Vince Young’s mouth.
In a sit-down interview with ESPN’s Marcellus Wiley earlier this week, Young’s delusional beliefs were on full display.
Asked what kind of relationship he thought he and Tennessee head coach Jeff Fisher have, Young said, “I really feel like we have a great relationship.” And by great, he must mean no relationship at all.
Young was a bit more honest on Jan. 5, when he said Fisher never really trusted him. That is the definition of a “not great” relationship.
The real comment that caught every NFL fan's attention was Young’s assertion that he is an “elite” quarterback.
Regardless of how lax his definition of elite is, even if his definition of elite is merely good enough to be a starting quarterback, this simply is not true.
Vince Young has been a massive disappointment in the NFL. The Titans’ best year in the Vince Young era was 2008, the year he got hurt and barely played.
Following the best statistical year of his pro career, 2008 was supposed to be Young and the Titans’ breakout year. Young had his number 10 retired by the University of Texas on Aug. 30 and was riding high. But reality trumped perception once again.
The reality was that Young was the main reason Tennessee was bounced from the 2007 playoffs. He passed for 138 yards and one interception and rushed for an embarrassing 12 yards in a heartbreaking 17-6 loss to the San Diego Chargers. Tennessee took a 6-0 lead into halftime, but Young was unable to get the offense into the end zone all day and the Titans were blown off the field in the second half.
That brutal playoff loss, was arguably the game that marked Fisher’s loss of confidence in Young.
When Young went down in the first game of the 2008 season, Fisher must’ve looked at it as a bolt from beyond. He was free to start Kerry Collins and run the ball 300 times with his new “elite” player, rookie running back Chris Johnson. The Titans had their best season ever, sans Young, going 13-3 with Johnson as the focal point of the offense.
Young’s status as a quality starting quarterback has never recovered.
The truth about Young is that his bread and butter play is the busted play. When a pass play goes awry, and the defense is busy chasing receivers downfield, that's when he is at his best.
Sadly, Young wasn’t even very good on busted plays in 2010. He rushed for a pathetic 125 yards and zero touchdowns in nine games to go with an anemic 1,255 yards passing. That is truly terrible. No quarterback should expect to be a starter in the NFL after a season with those numbers.
Defined as a scrambling quarterback, the most startling fact about Young is that, looking over his stats, he’s never been much of an impact rusher outside of his rookie year.
In his first year in the league, he averaged 6.7 yards per carry. Since then, his best average was 5.1 yards per carry in 2009. Compare that to Michael Vick’s worst (full) season average of 5.9 yards per carry in 2005 and the picture becomes crystal clear.
Vince Young is not an elite quarterback.
In fact, he isn’t that good at all.
Click here to email staff writer Ryan Nunez.
Comments
The many myths of Vince Young.
1. His record is a product of playing on a good team. Titans W/ VY= 30-17. Titans w/o VY during this time= 14-16.
2. He can't throw. QB Rating at age 27: Manning 99, Aikman 99, VY 99, Brees 96, Favre 96, Montana 95, Brady 93, Elway 83. All HOFers. TD/Int at age 27: VY 3+/1, Favre 3/1, everyone else on above list- much worse.
3. He can't handle adversity. Ask USC ("4th and 5, the National Championship on the Line), most of the Big XII, the Houston Texans (OT rookie year, or any other game), the NY Giants (24 point 4th quarter comeback), the Arizona Cardinals (99 yard drive) or Jeff Fisher (2006 and 2009 turned around by the addition of VY).
4. His record isn't as good against teams with winning records. Outside of Brady and Manning, most good NFL QBs beat up on bad teams and are at best .500 against winning teams. VY is just about .500 against winning teams.
5. He's no good for my fantasy team. This might be true and may be the source of the VY can't throw myth.
6. He's inaccurate. VY has a higher career completion percentage than John Elway. Who's the NFL's all time leader in career completion %? Chad Pennington. Some metric for an elite QB.
7. He doesn't work. VY's QB rating by season (with significant playing time): 2006 66.7, 2007 71.1, 2009 82.8, 2010 98.6. Imagine how good he'd be if he actually worked.
8. He isn't a leader. Ask Mack Brown, the 2009 Titans, or Kenny Britt's towel.
No QB, no coach = no man's land. I stick by the comment. Any of the other nine guys would've led to a better place than where they are now! D'brickashaw, aj hawk, Vernon Davis, Michael huff, donte whitner, Ernie sims, Matt leinart, jay cutler, haloti ngata. Every guy would've been a better choice and led to a better place in four years than VY
Oh, dear Lord, I just saw this little gem on page 2 of the comments from you, Ryan:
"I guarantee you if the Titans could go back to the 2006 draft, they'd take any of the 9 guys who went after Young, including Matt Leinart. Cheers..."
Matt Leinart? How many wins does that guy have in the NFL? How many times has he personally been embarrassed by Vince Young? Vince's NFL highlight reel is filled with Titans vs. Cardinals footage. Give me a break. This must be a joke.
Except for one thing, the Titans were a winning club when Vince Young was at QB. Other than one freak season by Collins, they were losers without Young. You can say all you want about how "it was all the defense" or "it was all Chris Johnson." The fact of the matter is that those same guys were still on the field losing games when Vince Young wasn't at the helm. The fact of the matter is that Jeff Fisher is a lousy coach who after 17 years with a club has an embarrassing number of playoff wins and zero titles.
I think the author of this article is still extremely mad about Vince Young slapping USC's dream team of 2005 down to reality. You've probably waited 5 long years to write this article. Too bad Vince will end up somewhere else and your dream will have to wait a little bit longer.
Hey, you leave Vince alone!
Is this a joke?
VY come back to Austin Im sure Mack will hire your for 150k a year starting out. You can be a special assistant like his step son!
Ryan Nunez, Ha ha ha. You are letting the bitter VY-hate eat up your brains. You have worms in the noggin.
Good luck with that. Your credibility just took a nose-dive. You'll see why within 6 months.
And yeah there best year was w/o Young yet you fail to mention they got bounced in their first game in the playoffs. Went 8-3 with Young after staring off 0-5 in 2006. Then after starting off 0-6(after being 13-3 the fluke year before with same team) went 8-2 with Young.
Maybe you need to read the comment posted by tony villagomez on this article http://bleacherreport.com/articles/580778-minnesota-vikings-quarterback-... You forget to mention Young put on THE greatest individual performance in the history of college football. For you too simply disrespect and talk crap about him lets see you play football. You don't call somebody crap if your not any better. I guess he wasn't any good despite his 30-17 starting record, 98.6 quarterback rating last year, and his unbelievable 4th quarter comeback against Arizona when he threw for 387 yards. He isn't any good but won NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year and went to 2 Pro Bowls. Michael Vick was an every down scrambler. They DESIGNED plays for him to run. Built the offense around him. Fisher has never built an offense around Young. To say hes no good despite having a lot of success shows how dumb you truly are.