Things didn’t end so pretty for Vince Young with the Tennessee Titans, and it’s safe to say he may not have enjoyed having an NFL career much at all.
At least, not in comparison to his younger days of playing ball.
“The NFL, it’s not fun in the same way that playing with your boys in high school is fun,” Young wrote in an essay published by The Players’ Tribune. “It’s not fun the same way college is fun. It’s not the playground anymore. Maybe it’s not supposed to be. Fact is, I had a hard time finding the same joy in the game when I got to the NFL.”
Young lost his father back in 2009, football just wasn’t the same for him.
“Fact is, I had a hard time finding the same joy in the game when I got to the NFL,” he wrote. “And just as a human being, I never really saw the game the same way after Pops died in 2009. What people don’t understand is that I didn’t just lose a mentor or a friend. I lost a father.”
The 36-year-old had some turbulent times after being drafted third overall by the Titans back in 2005, and believes there was wrongdoing on both sides.
“Sometimes it seems like that life was a million years ago, when I was still an NFL quarterback. It really does. Like, “Was that really me? Did that happen in this lifetime?,” he wrote. “Jeff Fisher. Bud Adams. The mistakes I made. The mistakes they made. We could talk about it all day, and I don’t think I’d convince anybody to think any differently than they do now.”