40 Acres Sports

Nice to see him making the most of his bye week.

Lost two college games and lost his first two NFL games.

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.

I wouldn’t mind seeing Vince play against the Cowboys.

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

Sentencing for the former Texas RB will be in November.

Former Texas quarterback Chris Simms had an emergency splenectomy today after the Tampa Bay Bucs lost to the Carolina Panthers. At some point during the game Simms ruptured his spleen but Simms played through the injury and led the Bucs to a go ahead field goal that did not hold up.

It was originally reported that Simms was in critical condition but that information was inaccurate. Simms had the surgery to remove his spleen, received blood transfusions, and will be Tampa’s St. Joseph’s Hospital for several days. He should make a full recovery but will probably miss several months and possibly the rest of the season. He’ll eventually be able to return to action and play without a spleen at no increased risk of injury.

This is very serious news for Chris and his family and our thoughts are with them as they get through this.

Article on Chris’ basketball travels now that he’s in Berlin.

Rice has actually played pretty decent this year. All because of Major?