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Was Vince Young Holding Titans Back?

Posted Sep 28, 2008 10:04PM By JJ Cooper (RSS feed)

Filed Under: Titans, AFC South

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As Merrill Hoge learned last week, it's hard to say anything critical about a football player who may be suffering from depression: it's way too easy to appear as if you're piling on someone who's sick. But after watching Kerry Collins play a key role in all four wins of the Titans' 4-0 start, here it goes anyway.

Has the Titans decision to turn to Vince Young during his rookie season actually held this team back from reaching its full potential? Is the team now on its way to success because Young is sitting on the bench?

It seems crazy to say that, as Young's big plays during his rookie season helped carry a team that was 4-12 in 2005 to an 8-8 record. And the Titans made the playoffs last year in Young's second year.

But Tennessee made the playoffs last year in spite of Young, thanks in large part to an outstanding defense. The cliche about Vince Young was that his stats might not be that impressive, but he was the kind of gamer who always found a way to win.

But how true is that when the team wins more when he's glued to the bench? Since joining the Titans, Kerry Collins is 4-3 as a starter. He lost his three starts at the beginning of the 2006 season (when he had just joined the team), but over the past two years the Titans are 4-0 when he starts, and 10-7 when Young starts. So they've been winners no matter who is behind center, but they've been more successful with Collins.

But that's only half the story. In his four starts over the past two years, the Titans have averaged 30.75 points per game. When Vince Young has been under center, the Titans have averaged 16.8 ppg. The Titans have scored 30 or more points four times in the past two seasons--three of those have come in games that Collins started.

When Young plays, the Titans try to grind out a win. The defense is good enough to often do that, as it showed with wins by scores of 13-10, 13-9 and 10-6 last year. Heck the Titans won a game where Young threw for 42 yards and only rushed for 11. But with Collins at quarterback, the passing game gets opened up which leads to more points and a whole lot more margin of error. And while Young would sometimes carry the team to a win with big plays, he also cost the team some wins with awful play--Collins has less upside, but he's a lot more steady.

As a 35-year-old, Collins is definitely not the Titans quarterback of the future, but if he keeps this up, it's fair to ask if it's possible that he'll not only remain the team's QB for the rest of 2008, but could he possibly be the team's starter in 2009 as well?

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