I Refuse to Die

This might seem like beating a dead horse to death, but I'm going with it anyway. Emboldened by yesterday's definitive FreeDarko manifesto, I'm going to take one more shot at salvaging my Vince Young views. Actually, I'm letting someone else do the work. Here's part of an email I got from one of the proprieters of Just Sayin':

I don't have a lot to back this up, but watching the Indy game last week, I think Vince Young's real innovation is that he's the first qb that has a one-man-team swagger in the history of football. He's the football extension of a generation of self-starting rappers (especially in Houston) whose repeated declarations that they are the truth and a movement become self-fulfilling prophecies.

I'm not quite sure how I got through seven paragraphs without saying it directly, but there it is. I don't mean to be insistent or more condescending than usual; it just become utterly apparent to me that, without those sentences, the whole point was lost at sea. That's fine if you still want to call bullshit on the whole thing, or invoke Steve Young, Favre, and Cunninghman. I hope, though, that you'll reconsider my argument, seeing now exactly why I compared VY to Iverson, why Vick was the failure of this, and just why I overreacted the way I did.

Vince Young isn't just a black quarterback, or a running quarterback, or a ballsy one who doesn't seem to rely too much on systems and others' skills. He's what happens when the old-timey general goes beyond charging with his troops, or even leading the way. Vince Young rides ahead with his sword drawn and expects nothing more than some sympathetic back-up. And somehow, that's a viable strategy for taking down opposing armies.

The internet brings out the worst in people but also sometimes the best. The more time I spend here, the harder it is for me to separate the two.