Nashville hasn’t been buzzing the way it is now since 2006, when the Tennessee Titans selected Vince Young, quarterback, from the University of Texas.
Hot off the heels of one of the greatest college football games in history, the 2006 Rose Bowl, Young was the dynamo drafted to lead the Titans to the Promised Land.
That enthusiasm wasn’t unwarranted. Young was a great physical talent and the exact specimen you’d expect out of a dual-threat quarterback. In his three years as a Longhorn, Young threw for 6,040 yards and 44 touchdowns. More impressive, he ran for 3,127 yards and 37 touchdowns.
All stats and measurable qualities aside, Young also developed a propensity to take over a game the way you see NBA superstars and MLB pitchers do.
In 2006, Young had his Titans fighting for a wild card berth after taking over starting quarterback duties. He was voted the Offensive Rookie of the Year for his efforts, and ended up playing in the Pro Bowl when Philip Rivers backed out due to injury.
Young’s sophomore season yielded a postseason appearance for the Titans. Though he injured his quadriceps early in the season, the team still posted a record of 10-6 before losing to San Diego in the first round of the playoffs.
He was clutch, exciting, and appeared poised for a promising career. When the 2008 season started, Young injured his knee, and sat on the bench for the duration of the season (thanks to Jeff Fisher’s known commitment to Kerry Collins). He found himself in a “quarterback controversy” with the veteran Collins.
Young would not get the starting job back until October of 2009, when Bud Adams pushed Fisher into starting him. Starts the likes of 0-6 can force these sorts of changes sometimes, but Fisher would never publicly state that he preferred Young to Collins.
Despite Fisher’s fondness of Collins, Young won eight of his 10 starts. Thanks again to injuries, Young took the field in the Pro Bowl.
In 2010, the bottom fell out. The Titans were bad. Fisher’s tenure in Tennessee was starting to look as though it was ending. Change seemed imminent.
Young injured his hand in a loss to the Washington Redskins – a game that concluded with him throwing his shoulder pads into the crowd, starting an altercation with Fisher, and exiting the facilities.
In January of 2011, Adams announced that Young would no longer be a Titan.
After a one-year stint with the Philadelphia Eagles, Young bounced around to Buffalo, Green Bay and Cleveland. He never could find a roster to stick to, and eventually found himself out of football altogether.
Over the course of his career, Young allegedly contemplated retirement, went missing for four hours before his family called Nashville police, and made the infamous “Dream Team” comments about the 2010 Eagles.
Despite bouncing around from team to team without finding a starting job, Young once claimed he was “still winning a Super Bowl, and still going to the Hall of Fame.”
In 2012, a report emerged claiming that Young had spent the majority of the money he had made in the NFL. Once an emerging star in American sports, he was broke due to a lavish lifestyle and putting his trust in the wrong financial advisers.
He could never quite shake these maturity issues, and couldn’t skate by on physical talent alone the way he did in college.
Referring to Young as a bust, though, is unfair. For a couple of seasons, he was unstoppable. Any man that wins Rookie of the Year and takes his team back to the playoffs can’t be called a bust, no matter how short-lived his success was.
(Originally published on Pro Football Spot)
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Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD and #BeBetter. “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Alabama Crimson Tide football, the WWE, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley
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