Well, it’s finally come to what we all having been excepting for quite some time now: While official retirement papers have yet to be filed, former Tennessee Titan Vince Young has told the world that he considers himself retired from the NFL.
“It’s definitely official I think in my book,” Young told KXAN.com earlier this past weekend. “Unless we get a great opportunity, something guaranteed…other than that I’ve started moving forward in some things.”
Young’s demise can be argued as one of the saddest, if not the most intriguing, in recent memory. Young came out of Texas as the hot new kid on the block after throwing for 26 touchdowns and rushing for 12 more while eclipsing just over 1,000 yards on the ground as well his junior season, notes statistics provided by ESPN.com.
The Titans proved this notion by drafting him 3rd overall in the 2006 NFL Draft. But after a solid rookie season of 12 touchdowns, 13 interceptions, and a 51.5 percent completion percentage (all numbers that are passable as far as rookie quarterbacks go), he floundered his second year in the league, throwing nearly twice as many interceptions as touchdowns, and his rushing output suffered as well, as he fell more than 150 yards short of his rookie production in that area.
Young’s struggles continued in 2008, and this time they took the shape in the form of off-the-field incidents as well. That season he made headlines for disappearing the day after a particularly rough game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, an incident that resulted in Titans head coach Jeff Fischer calling the police in an attempt to find Young, according to reports made by USAToday.com at the time. and filed for bankruptcy in January of this year. Things finally stared to look up for young the next few years in Tennessee, as he posted 20 touchdowns and 10 interceptions the next two years. But Young’s longstanding feud with Fischer finally came to a head, and he was ostracized from the team in 2010. After a forgettable year with the Philadelphia Eagles the following year, Young has bounced around as a back-up until now. His financial troubles are also well documented, and he filed for bankruptcy in January of this year.
While there are many lessons that one can glean from Young’s cautionary tale, one of the most important, it can be argued, is that not everyone has what it takes, physically and mentally, to make it in this league. Vince Young is a prime example of that.