So, Vince Young came out and spoke publicly for the first time since the whole disappearance episode Monday night. And, he’d like to let you know he’s doing just fine.

“I was never depressed,” Young said.

“Football, this is my life. This is my dream. All I did all these years growing up to get to this point and never had an injury like this before in my life,” he said.

“It’s a hard time because I’m a competitor, and I definitely want to be out on the football field with my teammates.”

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“Let the cloud go away for a minute, and that’s what I did. I left. My mom seen me; she thought I wasn’t in my right mind. At the same time, I was watching the game, watching Aaron Rodgers do his things … eating some hot wings,” Young said.

At this point, without a note from the doctor or Vince being 100 percent truthful, I guess we’ll never quite know his mental state. And maybe it’s not for us to really know, anyways. Hopefully he’s curbed the demons somewhat and can get back to focusing on recovering from his injury and being a football player. Surely, a media circus around this thing has not helped him much.

For the defintive take on this whole situation, I’d like to refer you to Dave Warner’s most excellent post. Go read it; you’ll be a better person for it.

One thing we know about the current Vince Young situation: no matter whether he just happened to forget his cell phone or not Monday night went he went “missing,” family member were concerned for his emotional well-being. His mother confirmed as much today.

“What would you think, if you were tired of being ridiculed and persecuted and talked about and not being treated very well, what would you do? What kind of decision would you make?” Felicia Young said. “He may not want to deal with it [all], but you have to get to that point before you make that decision first.

“But we’re not talking about football right now. We’re talking about what would make him happy, and that is the most important thing.”

So yes: the dude is hurting. It appears the weight of the media, and the fans, and everything that comes along with being in perhaps the most high-profile position of all of American sports has rattled the man. (Though, he is in Tennessee of all places. Good thing he’s not in New York, eh?) But it was only a year ago that Young uttered these words:

Another of the five other African-American starting quarterbacks in the NFL has chimed in on Donovan McNabb’s recent comments regarding the differences in criticism of white quarterbacks and black ones. And, whether Titans quarterback Vince Young intended it or not, we get the feeling that he’s telling McNabb to quit whining. “I really feel like myself, black or white quarterbacks, we all go through something because that is the life of a quarterback,” Young said Wednesday, according to the Nashville Tennessean. “You have to be able to handle all the pressure and you have to be able to handle the losses and you have to be able to handle the media saying this about you. “If you can’t handle it, then you have to get off that position and go play something else.”

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