40 Acres Sports

Home team will choose which side it’s fans sit on.

Colt may not be Vince, but early on he’s a more efficient passer.

Just randomly naming names not based on first-hand knowledge.

The Tennessee Titans announced today that former Longhorn quarterback Vince Young would make his first career NFL start on Sunday against his homestate Dallas Cowboys. The Titans picked up Kerry Collins right before the regular season started but he was awful in their first three games. Six interceptions and three losses from a quarterback who won’t be your future starter is kind of pointless.

Young has seen limited playing time through the first three games, playing in a couple of series in each of the first two games. He hasn’t been lights out but he hasn’t been any worse than Collins either. Vince is their future and they’re going to lose anyways there’s no reason not to start the VY Era now. The only concern is whether he’s prepared to go out there and not suffer any setbacks. Young has never known failure and he’s probably going to have to deal with a lot of it both individually and as a team this season.

One of Young’s strengths are the intangibles he brings to the huddle, and it sounds like the Titans’ coaching staff believes he’s ready for the big time:

Titans offensive coordinator Norm Chow said Young has made great strides, “mainly because he’s very determined to be a great football player. He studies, he works, and he’s disciplined. He has great leadership skills. If you’re willing to work at it like he is, you continue to get better.”

One of the more interesting tidbits from this story is that Young had been taking first-team snaps all week long and the media kept their mouths shut about it:

But it became clear during practices that the Titans planned to go with Young, who worked with the starters and handled the majority of the reps each day. Collins, meanwhile, worked primarily with the scout team.

Practices are open to the media, but Fisher threatened to close them if any outlet reported the division of practice-field work between Young and Collins before Saturday.

I don’t know how I’d feel about that information if I was a Titans fan. Is the media in Nashville reporting only what they’re given permission to report on? What’s the point of having open practices if you can’t report anything you learn by watching them? Interesting side story there.

The Dallas defense is a pretty stiff one, but the fact that Young makes his first career start against them is good news for Longhorn fans. No Titans games have been on TV here in Texas this season and they probably won’t show too many more, but Sunday’s game should be on throughout the state.

See the game on your local Fox affilliate at noon.

In case you’re too cheap/poor to get the game on pay-per-view.

Status updates on Young and Robison.

Horns are in top 3 nationally in sacks.

Last week everyone was a winner. Thanks to the complete lack of any interesting matchups we both finished 12 – 0 for the week’s picks. The games this week (other than Texas vs. SHSU) should be a little tougher to pick. Biggest game of the week is easily #1 Ohio State at #13 Iowa in a Big 10 conference game. The Buckeyes will have to perform better than they did last week if they want to win on the road. In the Big 12, the most interesting game pits Texas Tech on the road against Texas A&M. The Red Raiders have owned the Aggies lately but neither team has looked impressive early in the season.

Here’s this week’s winners:

Related Links

• Last week’s winners
• SI.com Top 25 Scoreboard
• SI.com Big 12 Scoreboard

Chicago media ignores Cedric celebrating on national TV and writes whatever they want.

No drastic changes, just a half dozen more times per game.