Vince Young Declares For NFL Draft

Listen, I don’t have anything against Vince Young. Nearly everyone I know – young and old, men and women, college football nuts and random observers – watched the Rose Bowl, the highest rated college football game in nearly twenty years, and now holds the Longhorn in the highest regard. Vince seems like a good guy. He’s a great leader who stepped up when he thought he got slighted in the Heisman. He was hit by a car on his way to visit one of his leaders – when he was seven. For all intents and purposes, he’s the freakin’ man, and any crush on his is certainly legitimate.

But all this talk of him as some kind of un-defendable, revolutionary NFL quarterback….can we slow it down? Can we just sit back, enjoy his college career and realize he throws sidearm. If you watched any of the playoff action so far this weekend, you saw how many passes were batted on quarterbacks that throw, I don’t know, overhand, or “correctly”. I remember the draftniks flipping out because David Carr had a ¾-release, but it looks like he’s overhand volleying compared to Young’s style of throw.


A demonstration of Young’s throwing style, and early plans for disrupting offenses ran by him.

Sheer athleticism will not make you a good NFL quarterback. Michael Vick has a stronger arm than Young and is faster than the Texas product, and while he apparently lacks Young’s natural leadership abilities, he learned pretty quickly that there’s always somebody as fast as you are in the NFL, where the individual and team speed is so much higher than college. Despite Young’s transcendent performance against USC, you have to remember that the Trojans were an average college defense all season, and Young didn’t have to throw a pass more than twenty or thirty yards downfield. Give an NFL defense that short of a field to defend, and it’s over.

I like Vince Young. I think he’ll eventually find a role in the NFL and be extremely successful, and if they can change his delivery, he might even find that role as a quarterback. But as for now, let’s just remember:

He throws side-arm.