Nearly three weeks into the season, the most compelling NFL story is not the New England Patriots, who will still find a way to win without quarterback Tom Brady because Bill Belichick is the smartest head coach in league history.
The most fascinating story is not quarterback Brett Favre, who will wish he had stayed retired after getting knocked around for a few months with the mediocre New York Jets.
The most gripping development is the rapid fall of Superman.
When quarterback Vince Young was dazzling the Big 12 Conference as a Texas Longhorn, he was so fluid as a runner and so charismatic as a leader, he made you assume he would iron out his shortcomings as a passer. When he single-handedly neutralized a stacked USC team to lead Texas to victory in the BCS title game in 2006, he reminded me of a guy named Jordan with his absolute sense of command in the clutch.
When Tennessee made him the third overall pick in the 2006 draft, I thought the Titans had selected the most promising franchise player since Peyton Manning was picked first overall by the Colts in 1998.
And suddenly, after struggling with his accuracy and his inability to read NFL defenses for two seasons, during which he still went 18-11 as a starter and got a rebuilding Tennessee squad to the playoffs last year, Young’s star may have burned out before completing its rise.
Since suffering a sprained knee during Tennessee’s season-opening win over Jacksonville, Young has come under national scrutiny for his erratic behavior on and off the field.
The most stunning images of that game took place on the Titans’ sideline, after Young had been booed lustily by the home crowd following another interception. There was Young, sitting on the bench with a towel over his head to muffle the noise directed at him, defying head coach Jeff Fisher by refusing to re-enter the game.
It’s been sad and a bit creepy listening to the voices of talk radio slamming Young over his soft shell ego and his inability to handle failure, and making fun of him after his mother granted an interview to The Tennessean and essentially said, “Leave my baby alone.”
The snide sound bites tapered off pretty quickly. Rumors surfaced Young had gone missing, had been contemplating suicide and had thought more than once about walking away from football.
Denigrating Young by calling him a coddled “mama’s boy” unable to face criticism struck me early on as the easy, insensitive way to analyze behavior that seemed bizarre from the beginning.
I’m no psychologist, but my take on Young is he is clinically unable to perform the job he seemed born to master.
I don’t know if he is the victim of a bipolar disorder or depression, is dogged by an irrational fear of failure or if he has spent a guarded life without generating any disapproval from others. I’m not trained to know, and wouldn’t know where to begin if Young plopped on a couch in my office.
What I strongly sense is this: The Titans are in a tight spot, having invested so much in Young as their quarterback of the future. They might be hiding Young and his injured knee out of necessity, while they have no choice but to turn the offense over to veteran Kerry Collins, who has triumphed over some of his own demons.
A sad conclusion appears inevitable for Young. One can assume every teammate of his wants him to take care of his problems. But I’m betting no one in the Tennessee locker room wants Young behind center again — not after seeing him cave as the rest of the nation did.
When that confidence and trust go south, they rarely come north again.
Hopefully, Young will get well inside, and let that talent grow some more. But the unfortunate reality is it likely never will happen in Tennessee, or anywhere else.
Incredibly, Vince Young could be finished as an NFL quarterback.
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