Cowboys Vs. Titans

Nice article, Taylor. I have been hoping for some Titans commentary and this fits the bill.

I keep wondering where Vince could thrive, as I am certain that his future is not in a Titans uniform. Minnesota seems to make the most sense to me.

Enjoyed the read. Panama says Fisher is “straight-up bitch-ass punk racist”, but he says that about everyone. I heard him yelling it at a code enforcement officer one morning while writing him a ticket for parking his Jaguar on the lawn. I wouldn’t put much stock in it and this seems much more logical. I’ll ask him what he thinks about Fisher and the game, if I see him today. It should be interesting.

Interesting take. Haven’t heard that theory and it makes as much sense as anything else as to why Fisher hates winning football games. It is clear that the Fisher/Young duo is a mismatch.

Fisher wants to win 8-10 games by 3 points, maybe go to the playoffs and if he gets real lucky, win a playoff game. Young wants to win every game he plays, go 16-0 and win 5 straight super bowls.

Mack and Greg never won any hardware until they finally said screw it, let Young take over the team and just play. Fisher isn’t nearly as smart as Mack. It will never happen and I predict Fisher will go on to coach another ten years winning 55% of his games and Vince wins multiple Super Bowls with his next coach. At least, if there is a God, that is how it should play out.

Good stuff, Taylor. I’ve been to two Texans-Titans game in Reliant. The first was Vince’s rookie year with the amazing OT TD run. You bet your ass i stood up and cheered. The second was when both VY and Schaub got injured and Rob Bironas kicked 8 field goals. Waste of money not to see Vince.

The root cause of the problem was that Vince was not Fisher’s guy; it was a Bud Adams call, plain and simple. Reading the tea leaves, it sounded like Fisher would have preferred Jay Cutler. Ironic, since Cutler is about 3X more football illiterate than Vince.

Problem is, Fisher’s not leaving unless Vince completely sucks it up and the Titans post back to back 3-13 years. And Vince isn’t leaving because he’s not going 3-13 like Kerry Collins would. At this point, they’re mutually dependent, and it’s not meshing, so expect a lot of 8-8-type seasons. I couldn’t care less about Fisher’s legacy, but the is year 5 for Vince in the league. For someone whose value is tied up a lot in his athleticism, Vince is eventually going to start hearing his NFL clock ticking. Are we still going to be having this same conversation 3 years from now? God, I hope not.

uthookem, up until about 2 months ago I was with you on the Vikings. Now, I’m not so sure. Childress has a growing reputation for being offensively clueless. This could work one of two ways. Is he stubborn and clueless like current GD, or is he flexible and clueless like ‘04 GD? If it’s the latter then yeah, sure, Minnesota would be great. I think it’s a lot guys wishes to see VY and AD in the backfield together.

Could you imagine the Fathead coverage on Minnesotahorn’s wall space?

Oh, and Scipio said he hopes the aquisition of Randall Moss invigorates Favre to play 3 more years!!

Good post TTR.

I got into it with my Texans friends because I refuse to root for the Cowboys despite divisional implications. I hope VY gives the Cowboys a curb smiley*.

*term shamelessly stolen from Sydney Carton.

This is a really good review of the situation. However, there are a few points that need mentioning.
1. The suburban QB that needs to learn lockerroom lexicon does that. He is flexible. Why can’t Vince be flexible?
2. The Joe Montana analogy is flawed, terribly. Joe was a great athlete, true. The WCO has multiple read options, true. The reason Montana was successful, usually, was because he knew all the options and the correct one, all really fast. That comes with preparation.

Vince continues to rely his natural gifts to achieve his goals. Great, in college. Mediocre, in the pros. He seems unwilling to do the things that are asked of him to optimize his talents. Stoops was right. He would be a great TE.

If Stoops had known anything remotely true about VY, Vince would have been a sooner.

quigley, Montana didn’t prepare as much as you think he did. Go Back and read some articles in old archives about him before he became a Superbowl winner. There is a reason that an All-American, MNC-winning QB from F***ING NOTRE DAME (!) goes low in the 3rd round. It’s not because they didn’t scout him. It’s because they were unimpressed with his arm and his intelligence.

Listen, guys like Montana and Young don’t need to study all the things that might happen in a play, and what defenders’ tendencies are. They just need to know where their guys are going, and plays that give them a few choices. Montana was deadlier the longer a play lasted, because the defense just couldn’t clamp down on everybody forever. Somebody would get open, or he would find some space to run in. Young is similar, if his coach would only let him.

As for making a great TE- that’s just stupid. VY, if he chose to, could play about 10 of the positions on the field. He plays QB because that’s where he can have the greatest impact on the game. If he were coached by somebody like Kubiak (who made a pro-bowler out of Jake Plummer, for crying out loud), he would be a top 5 QB today.

The largest margin of victory for UT in the RRS was when that wannabe TE was playing QB for the Horns.

I would not have expected Vince to have another 1.5 yards per attempt. Collins is supposed to be more of a downfield guy.

I would also like to see a YPC for Chris Johnson with and without VY. Point being that VY presents a threat that opens up the running game.

Joe Montana is big-time ADD – before it became a cliche diagnosis.

Part of the reason he was low-rated coming out of ND was his goofiness and lack of organizational skills. But like most others with ADD when he found something that he really LOVED, he was like a laser beam. He could focus on the offensive system with a rainman-like quality, and he totally understood what Bill Walsh was trying to do.

Tom Rathman tells the story of the great comeback against Cincinnati in the 1989 Super Bowl. The 49ers trailed 16-13 with 3 minutes to go when they got the ball on their own 8-yard line. There is a TV timeout and Rathman says they are in huddle in dead silence when Montana says,

“Hey you guys see John Candy on the sidelines? Man, I love that guy,” And Rathman says Montana proceeds to rattle off everything Candy has been in, just laughing about it.

Rathman said everyone else looked at Montana like he was some kind of alien, but he then led them on a game winning drive hitting John Taylor with the winning score with seconds to go.

i love you for this article

Can we get a Panama and Clipper Cooper Podcast. Seriously.

srr50:

Dead on. I was 11 during that Super Bowl and remember it all vividly.You could not rattle Joe Montana.

On the other hand, Alex Smith is a cerebral guy, fwiw.

I second the Panama/Clipper Podcast. This would have to take place in a seedy strip club backroom as Clipper stops in to coke up.

Sam Bradford may have a QB rating of 85 his rookie year.

Michael Jordon was pretty talented coming into the Assoc but what made him transcendent was his ability to add to his skill set every year. Why doesn’t Young buckle down and learn what Fisher wants him too?

Passer rating, 85 TD/Int ratio 1.36. His career rating is 73 with a ratio under 1.
Are these his BEST 16 games? Come on, is this your God? Maybe in college, it was enough, and he was great. Not so much now.

can you imagine if the stars were in town? absolute mayhem.

quigley, you are arguing for the sake of argument alone. Those 16 games are his most recent 16 games. His passing is improving dramatically. He’s a winner, and you can’t criticize him for his passing skills anymore.

One of the worst mistakes a person can make in life is to make managerial decisions based on what people can’t do, while ignoring what they can do. Vince is very successful despite playing for a coach who doesn’t value his assets. It’s a shame, and a waste of talent. Texas fans saw what could happen when a coach met him halfway.

Magnus,

As opposed to a legitimate strip club? There is no doubt the club for the podcast must be in Houston. Every other city in Texas wishes it had our talent for rent establishments.

TTR-

I agree with the principle of focusing on strength in personnel decisions and practice it too.

However, you compared him to Manning and Montana, 1 fer shur HOF and another in the HOF, and asked “Can a QB like Vince win big in the NFL?”

Given his past and current performance, do you project that he can achieve what these guys have already?

Can he? Probably not, but if he even comes close, with his unique skillset, it will be one hell of a fun ride. Brother, let me tell you- following and rooting for Vince Young the last 8 years has been one of the most satisfying experiences in sports fandom.

Ya know, if Fisher screws this up and Romo again leads Dallas nowhere, I could see Jerry Jones making a blockbuster offer for VY.

The only thing that could make me a Cowgirls fan. Hell, it made me a Titans fan after hating that rat bastard Bud Adams for stealing away the Oilers. Still hope he burns in hell for not allowing Houston to keep the Oilers name, but I’ll cheer for TN as long as VY is there. And not a moment longer.

And possibly the Rangers/Rays at noon Sunday. Wow!

That was a fantastic read Taylor, I’m gonna hit that SI link now.

“If he were coached by somebody like Kubiak (who made a pro-bowler out of Jake Plummer, for crying out loud), he would be a top 5 QB today.”

TTR: Young’s problem is that, even if he were coached by Kubiak, he may not listen.

Young needs to bridle his talents to put them to full effect. Going back to the Jordan analogy, when Mike developed his jumper, it made his legendary dribble drive (walk) all the more devastating. If Young can fit into an offense, it will make his improvisation more special.

“Why doesn’t Young buckle down and learn what Fisher wants him too?”

He has. All too well, unfortunately.

Enjoyed the read, but your main thesis is Fisher dislikes Vince because he’s too reactionary, too unconventional, not analytical enough, to foreign for Fisher? You do realize that he coached, loved, and had his greatest success with Steve McNair? Another unconventional, non-analytical QB that relied on instincts and moxie.

McNair was raised without a father in literally a shack in Mississippi with a 4 siblings fighting for food and struggling in school. While his upbringing may not have been a carbon copy of Vince’s. I assure you his upbringing and personality were just as alien to Fisher as VY’s is. I don’t think Fisher cares much about how or why Vince operates the way he does. He simply wants a QB that can control the huddle, lead the team, minimize mistakes, and execute a gameplan. He let McNair improvise a lot of his career, I doubt he decided after McNair moved on that he didn’t like improvisers from Houston. Damn that VY and his assault on the English language.

jc25 nailed it. He never wanted Vince. Fisher felt he had proved enough to his owner that he should have more control over personnel decisions. The struggle b/w Cutler/Leinart/VY was an internal and political coup for power. When Bud came in and made a decision about what he wanted, Fisher resented the decision and Vince has been his scapecoat, his Bud Adam’s punching doll every since. Whatever goodwill Vince built with Fisher in his first 2 seasons went out the window when Vince committed football cardinal sin #1: He quit on his team. At least in Fisher’s eyes. Then he goes off half cocked and has a probable meltdown. In those 24-48 hours he re-enforced Fisher’s beliefs. That Vince didn’t have the emotional maturity nor toughness to be his QB.

Fisher’s an arrogant ass and a mediocre football coach who’s own insecurities and shortcomings have soured a relationship with his QB and ultimately doomed his team’s chances for ever being a SB threat. It’s like Highlander, in the end there can only be one…….Fisher or VY would be standing by the end of next year in Tennessee and Bud will have to make the call…..The ironic part is VY has saved the arrogant asses’ hide twice now from getting fired….I wish Vince the best, he deserves a coach and staff that can appreciate and take advantage of his great skills rather than an idiot trying to prove a point in a power struggle….

Still enjoyed the read…..Can’t wait for the game…

Davey,

“….seedy strip club.” That would be a butt naked. Not one of those in which the under carriage is covered. Clipper might go with clients to a “legitimate” strip club, but for coking up and podcast purposes he goes to the seedy ones.

PB,

Fisher is fucking this VY thing up, but to say he’s a mediocre coach is inaccurate. He did some amazing coaching jobs in those McNair years you referenced. He got the most out of those teams and got the most of players like Wychek, Mason, and Thigpen. Hell, I don’t even consider Eddie George that good, but he rode him to success. He’s typically built a good defense around one ‘name’ player and then a bunch of Cortland Finnegan’s. Good coach who needs a change of scenery. How ‘bout Dallas? He’s used to working for a cocksucker.

Raise your Claw! These Rangers have it going! Elvis Andrus looked really good in that last game! For all you hardcore Texas Rangers fans join us with your Claws up on FacebookFacebook ht tp://www. facebook. com/clawandantlers

Rather effectively written.

Can’t believe I missed this the first time. Exceptionally well done and prescient.