Pro Player Insiders was on hand for the opening of the 2012 Buffalo Bills Rookie Mini-Camp. Although the camp focused on the rookie players experiencing their first National Football League practice, there was somewhat of a distraction at One Bills Drive. Just before camp, the Bills announced they signed veteran NFL quarterback Vince Young to a one-year contract worth nearly two million dollars. This big news for the Bills had much of the media at the rookie camp more interested in asking Buddy Nix and Chan Gailey about Vince Young, than the rookies and free agents.
Everyone who knows football is aware Vince Young is an amazing athlete and can be a star when he has the ball in his hands. Young was first drafted as the third overall pick by the Tennessee Titans in the 2006 NFL draft. Mario Williams, another significant addition to the Buffalo Bills this offseason, was also selected in the 2006 draft as the first pick overall. This just proves the Bills are making moves in the right direction to become a winning team.
Young started off having a great career and in his first season as a Titan he received the Rookie of the Year award from the NFL and earned a trip to the Pro Bowl. He led the Titans to the playoffs in both the 2006 and 2007 seasons and his talent was mesmerizing. Football fans everywhere were convinced Vince Young was going to be the next great NFL quarterback. Football analysts were predicting Young’s career was going to explode and his name was going to go down in history after just two seasons in the NFL.
That was until the 2008 season, when things seemingly started to go downhill for Young. He was featured on the Madden cover and ended up getting hurt in the first game of the season. As a result of the injury, Young lost his job to the Titans back-up quarterback, Kerry Collins, for the remainder of the season. In the Titan’s 2009 season, things seemed to be back on track for Vince Young. He won eight of the ten games he started in and also was selected for the Pro Bowl. However, in 2010, the relationship between Vince Young and the Tennessee Titans diminished significantly after Young participated in unsportsmanlike behavior.
After the Titans suffered a disappointing loss to the Washington Redskins in the 2010 season, Young ripped off his shoulder pads and tossed them into the crowd in anger. He let out his frustration because of the loss in an inappropriate manner and this led him to be benched for the remainder of the Titans season and then he was released. Vince Young signed with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2011 and is the player pinned with calling the Eagles the “Dream Team,” which they did not turn out to be. Young has gone from being seen as a future NFL Hall of Fame quarterback to a controversial and sometimes unsportsmanlike player in a matter of a few seasons.
The issues surrounding Vince Young were brought up by the various media representatives at the Buffalo Bills Rookie Mini-Camp on Friday and Buddy Nix, as well as Chan Gailey, addressed them. Head coach Chan Gailey was asked about Young being a distraction and he made a bold statement, “If anyone, not just him, if anybody doesn’t want to get in to the system and work like our guys work and pay attention like our guys pay attention, if you’re a distraction, you’re a distraction all the time. You can’t play. It doesn’t matter who you are. If you’re a distraction, you can’t play.”
We all hope Young will do good things for Buffalo and turn his career around and alter the way people perceive him. Gailey is obviously ready to handle any situations which may come up throughout the season. Although Young can say or do inappropriate things at times, we can’t deny he has a great amount of talent and neither could Buddy Nix. When asked about why they decided to sign Vince Young he responded with, “We’re always looking to improve our team, to get deeper and to get more competition. That’s what this is. It’s a competition for the backup quarterback job. Not the starter. Obviously I’ve said that 100 times. He knows it. That’s the way it is. It’s just to try to get us better.”
Buffalo’s bold moves this offseason in signing big name players as well as keeping some of their own great playmakers around proves they are trying to come back as a strong team this season. Vince Young is just another way to make them stronger. Vince Young is 31-19 as a starter in the NFL, which is definitely an impressive statistic. In his NFL career so far, he has a 57.9% completion rate, a 74.4 passer rating, 46 touchdowns including 12 rushing touchdowns, and has passed for 1,459 yards. Hopefully Vince Young will come into Buffalo with the drive to compete for the number two quarterback spot for the Bills. The Bills have made it clear Ryan Fitzpatrick is their number one guy, but who knows what will happen when the season begins. There are a lot of questions surrounding the quarterback situation in Buffalo and hopefully this addition works out to be a positive one.
