Vince Young is Restless

For a few days now, I've been thinking about this story about Vince Young and his thoughts about retirement after his rookie year. I could not decide what to make of it - overly honest? overly dramatic? not a big deal? a huge deal?

Then I read this story about over-the-hill baseball players who cannot come to terms with retirement and still hope to find a team this season (the article leaves out a few names - Barry Bonds and Trot Nixon being glaring omissions).

(An aside - am I the only person who finds the "announced his retirement" headlines about guys like Bret Boone and Julio Franco to be ridiculous? Did they really retire or could they no longer find a job? Isn't that different?)

Back to my original point, the baseball articles convinced me that Vince Young's retirement confession is, in fact, a big deal for the Tennessee Titans. If he seriously thought about walking away from the game after one season, what does it say about his love of the game? What does it say about his desire to succeed?

If Vince Young was Tony Soprano and I was Dr. Melfi, here is what I would say about my patient: Vince is a charismatic guy who loves the spotlight that being a football quarterback provides, but does not actually care much about football itself.

Deep, huh?

We found out from Vince's Texas days and his Wunderlic test scores that he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Some have speculated that being an NFL quarterback is just too mentally tough for him. I don't buy that. Playing football is not rocket science - Vince is given a play that is practiced over and over again throughout the week. He makes a few reads and then either runs it, throws it or hands it off. Peyton Manning makes the position look like a professorship, but dumb guys can play quarterback in the NFL.

I think it has less to do with his intellect and more to do with his passion. Rather than loving football, Vince loves attention. He loves the admiration. He had it at Madison High School where he was highly recruited and easily BMOC. He had it at UT after a rocky start where he was a highly touted and BMOC. In the NFL, he is a run-of-the-mill quarterback on a run-of-the-mill team. The spotlight is on guys like Brady, Manning (take your pick) and Favre.

So Vince realized that his athleticism, size and skill sets were not enough to make him BMOC in the NFL; he was going to have to work hard to achieve it. His first instinct was to quit. I wonder if that feeling will return again. What happens if the Titans struggle to a 5-11 season this year with Young getting the brunt of the blame? Will his instinct be to improve or pack it in and hang with his boys?

Baseball has a starting line-up of guys who are dying to get back on the field, but Vince Young pondered quitting after one year. The question for the Titans is: Can they can win with a quarterback who does not really like football?

If that question was on the Wunderlic test, even Vince would get it right.