Unwanted: Vince Young

Vince Young is not the best quarterback in the NFL, nor will he ever be. But he is good enough to be employed by a NFL team. He is a poor man's Michael Vick, Robert Griffin III, or Cam Newton. He would make the perfect backup to any of those three guys. He could also serve as the role of Tim Tebow and be the backup and wildcat quarterback. He would probably do better than Tebow at this role because he is a much better passer. Instead he remains on the outside looking in, and I, for one, don't understand why.

There are plenty of teams that would upgrade by signing Vince Young. The three obvious teams would be the Eagles, Redskins, and Panthers. Losing Vick, Griffin, or Newton would be a disaster for these three teams because their backups are simply not as dynamic as the starters, and so the offense would have to be changed completely. The Redskins have Rex Grossman and rookie Kirk Cousins to backup RGIII. Grossman has never scrambled more than 24 times in a season and Cousins never more than 40 times in his college career. Nick Foles is the backup in Philly while Derek Anderson backs up Cam in Charlotte. Foles is a rookie whose career high in rushing attempts was 43 at Arizona and Anderson tops out at 32 for his NFL career. These four backups would severely damage their teams offenses that are built around mobile quarterbacks. Young has proven throughout his career than he can thrown and run, rushing 83 and 98 times in his first two NFL seasons. Other teams with mobile quarterbacks but not mobile backups include the Tennessee Titans (Locker-Hasselbeck) and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Freeman-Orlovsky).

There are also a few teams that could start Vince Young over their current starting quarterback and be much better. The Arizona Cardinals starting quarterback is John Skelton, now Kevin Kolb after Skelton's injury. While Skelton performed admirably towards the end of last season, I don't think he is the solution in Arizona.  Kevin Kolb has proved to be a bust after performing well in spot starts in Philly behind Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick. Vince Young has a big arm and would probably be a quarterback for star receiver Larry Fitzgerald than Skelton or Kolb. Another team that could start Young would be the Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins clearly did not want to start Ryan Tannehill in his first season. The job was going to go to David Garrard and Tannehill was going to sit back and learn. Instead Garrard got injured and Tannehill played better than Matt Moore and was rewarded the starting job. I feel that once Garrard went down they should have signed Young to see what he could do. There aren't many good targets in Miami, and so having a scrambling quarterback might have helped them out.

Vince Young showed in 2010, his last year with the Titans, that he could be a good starting quarterback. He started nine games, completed nearly 60%, threw for over 1,200 yards, and had a touchdown to pick rate of 10-3. He also cut down on his scrambling to only when it was necessary. He scrambled 25 times for 125 yards that season, but he also fumbled it three times. Fumbling will always be higher with scrambling QBs though, just look at Vick. But then a lack of maturity got him kicked off the team after he threw his shoulder pads into the stands and had a spat with head coach Jeff Fisher. I believe he has matured since then though and that he is still worth a shot. At the very least he would be a good backup as he has more talent than most of the current backups in the NFL. For those who want to point out last year stats with the Eagles, I think that wasn't the real Vince Young. He was trying to hard to take the place of Vick instead of being Vince Young.

Young as a starter probably won't happen though as he is now 29 years old. There are some cases in which older players become starters, like Ryan Fitzpatrick and Fred Jackson in Buffalo, but I think Young's immaturity problems of the past will always haunt him. Still he should be employed by someone just based off what he can bring to the table. Nobody seems to want to take a flier on him though, and so Vince Young remains unwanted with no indications of ever being wanted again.

References

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/8403851/vince-young-cites-betrayal-financial-woes
http://espn.go.com/nfl/player/stats/_/id/9589/vince-young
http://espn.go.com/nfl/player/stats/_/id/4480/rex-grossman
http://espn.go.com/nfl/player/stats/_/id/14880/type/college/kirk-cousins
http://espn.go.com/nfl/player/stats/_/id/14877/type/college/nick-foles
http://espn.go.com/nfl/player/stats/_/id/8627/derek-anderson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vince_Young#2010_season