Football Mythbusters: What's Wrong with Vince Young?

MYTH: Vince Young went off the deep end, plain and simple.

FACT: Nobody knows what went on and a lot of speculation has been quoted as "fact."

What we really know from WKRN-TV, who ESPN credits as having first broken the story, is this much:

1. Vince Young left his house without a cell phone.

2. He had an unloaded gun in his car, which is legal in Tennessee.

3. Someone close to him was "concerned" about him, yet to this day nobody's elaborated on why they were concerned.

4. His family notified the Titans, who notified police.

5. The police had negotiators on standby, which is common practice according to Nashville Metro Police spokesman Don Aaron.

6. The police eventually found him at a friend's house.

7. He then met with Titans officials and went home in his own vehicle.

Here is the article: http://www.wkrn.com/Global/story.asp?s=8976169

Quite honestly, out of those seven facts, No. 2 worries me the most about his mental state.  After what happened to Sean Taylor last year, that thing should've been loaded!  If I were a high-profile celebrity with a lot of money traveling alone, I'd have a loaded gun with me.

Even if a would-be robber didn't recognize Young, I'd be willing to bet Young has a really expensive car, which would draw attention.  It's only common sense that you should protect yourself.  Despite all this, the media acts like it's a bad thing when someone famous has a gun.

Given these facts, one can conclude that this was overblown.  Later on that week, things really got crazy when ESPN published that Young's therapist said he, "mentioned suicide several times." 

My comment on this was, "If Justin McCareins was my No. 1 receiver, I'd want to jump out of a window too."  Then I realized that therapists have to take every mention of suicide seriously, even ones like the comment I had just made.  It's not that difficult to imagine someone saying, "I played terribly yesterday, I need to hop in front of a moving train," and not really meaning it. 

Unfortunately, due to these incidents many formerly reasonable "journalists" hopped on the anti-Vince Young bandwagon.  The most shameful of these was Adam Schefter, who out of the blue declared on NFL Network’s NFL GameDay Morning that Vince Young asked to be taken out of the playoff game against the Chargers. 

At halftime of that game, the Titans were winning by six points.  They weren't losing at that point, so it's not like he felt bummed by being down.  But they also weren't winning by enough points that you could pull your starting quarterback. 

Merril Hoge came up with some crazy stuff too, but I can respect him at least because he's been against Young since before Young was drafted.  Schefter either needs to come up with some real sources backing him up, or just admit he was wrong and apologize to Young.

All in all, this should serve as a reminder to all of us that we should think before we judge someone based on hearsay.

EDIT: By the way, here's the police report. http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_documents/young_report.pdf

The only thing in the report that I didn't mention above was that Vince was speeding at 90 m/h. If I had a Mercedes, I'd drive that fast too :)

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