Vince Young is Fun to Watch and a Class Act

ESPN.com columnist Michael Smith has penned a very well-written column about Tennessee Titans rookie QB Vince Young. Titans' radio announcer Mike Keith has further thoughts about how Young is handling his success as a young quarterback...with class and like someone who has been there before.

My thoughts on the subject: I feared when we drafted Vince Young the Titans would have a repeat of Steve McNair. VY did come from a bigger school (Texas) with better supporting talent, and he had won a national title. Realistically though, I thought that despite his talent, Young was a player who also had a very limited ceiling and would make too many negative plays, big and small, to get to or go very far in the NFL playoffs (i.e. McNair short-hopping receivers who were wide open on a 5 yard out pattern or sailing deep balls into the stands or into the arms of a defender).

At this point, those concerns have been eased quite a bit. He's still a rookie who is growing as a player, and he will still make some terrible plays characteristic of all young signal callers. That said, he is an absolutely an electric playmaker, as well as an every-down home run threat with both his legs and his arm (unlike Falcons' QB Michael Vick, who is one of the fastest NFL players alive but a mediocre to sorry NFL QB because no one respects his passing skills). More than that though, he just has "it", that same intangible but very real thing Michael Jordan and Larry Bird had...the ability to focus and raise both their play and the play of their teammates at crunch time. If he matches their work ethic, he has the chance to become a truly special player. Perhaps most importantly though, bottom line, he just wins football games.