It wasn’t McNair’s death, Vince Young maturing, or any of that nonsense. It was:

A) Getting rid of incompetent unqualified Norm Chow. The guy is the offensive coordinator at UCLA now. Their offenses are horrible. Do people still think that Chow was this great NFL coordinator that Young was holding back? Remember: Merrill Hoge claimed Young got Chow fired, and would get any offensive coordinator or head coach fired. After Chow got fired, he’s been badmouthing Vince Young ever since to save his own reputation. Funny how nobody is talking about that now.

B) Getting actual NFL wide receivers in Kenny Britt and Nate Washington. Meaning guys good enough to play for other NFL teams. Do any of you think that Roydell Williams, Brandon Jones, Eric Moulds, or the other guys Fisher surrounded Young with his first two years could have made ANY of the critical plays that Britt and Washington have made this year? And remember: Fisher only went out and got Britt, Washington, and Cook because he thought Collins would be the QB. Back when Young was the QB, he kept avoiding WRs like the plague, knowing that everyone would put the blame on the QB that everyone had prejudged and stereotyped to fail to begin with. I still remember Paul Kuharsky’s infamous claim “the Titans’ WRs are good enough if Vince Young can get them the ball” and Merrill Hoge’s stating that Jay Cutler’s superior statistics had NOTHING to do with the fact that he was playing with 3 Pro Bowl caliber WRs with Mike Shanahan and Mark Heimerdinger running the offense.

C) Jay Cutler’s playing horribly. Funny how everyone who insisted that Young’s problems shouldn’t be blamed on the WRs, or that if Cutler were in Nashville with his great accuracy and leadership and high Wonderlic score and dropback passer ways, he would transform Roydell Williams and Brandon Jones and Bo Scaife into all pros. Well, the people who were booing and trashing Young EVEN WHEN HE WON because he wasn’t Jay Cutler are now silent, and that has reduced the pressure on the guy.

More than anything else, young QBs need confidence to succeed. Vince Young had an incompetent offensive coordinator, wide receivers who couldn’t get separation/ran the wrong routes/dropped passes, a head coach and offensive coordinator who was trying to undermine him, a fan base that didn’t want him, and a local media that was rooting for him to fail. (Only now that it is obvious that Young is the QB for the long haul is this Wyatt character admitting that Young has a history of leading comeback victories. This is the same guy who spent over a year claiming that the Titans should have drafted Cutler, and as recently as 8 weeks ago was claiming that Young was outplayed by Pat Ramsey and could be released at any time). And when his hamstrings (and if I am correct, also his knee) got hurt, that was really a blow, because take away a young running QB’s legs and that is really a blow to the confidence. (The next member of the Nashville media who acknowledges that Young’s legs were injured most of 2007 and in 2008, and that he was trying to tell Fisher that his legs were bothering him in that Jacksonville game but Fisher sent him back in anyway, only to have Young do further damage to his leg will be the first. Now it could be that Fisher never believed that Young was hurt and was making excuses, as Kuharsky acknowledged recently on ESPN that Fisher was trying to get Young to scramble more in 2007 and got angry when Young refused, but what does that tell you about Fisher? But I still remember Chris Johnson last year defending VY, saying that Young’s only problem was that he was hurt.)

Well, now the guy is healthy, has a capable coordinator, guys who can play around him like Johnson, Washington and Britt instead of White, Roydell Williams, Eric Moulds and Ben Troupe, and his main nemesis, Fisher, is now severely diminished because he A) threw away a likely Super Bowl run last year by refusing to put VY back in the game when he was healthy, B) went out and got talent to surround Kerry Collins with when he didn’t do so for VY, C) gave Kerry Collins a $15 million contract and promised Collins that he wouldn’t have to compete with VY (because he knew that Collins couldn’t beat out VY in a fair competition, and Collins knew too!), and D) he stuck with Collins throughout the 0–6, blamed Collins failures on the entire team causing the team to quit on him, and puts VY in who leads the team to 5 straight wins.

Oh yeah, and F) the local media, whom Fisher, Chow and his intermediaries spent YEARS leaking “off the record” NONSENSE to has been exposed also. These were the same guys who kept insisting that Young would be cut, Young would be beaten out by journeymans like Simms and Ramsey, Young was so horrible in practice, the guys in the locker room did not trust Young and were fully behind Collins, Young was throwing all these INTs in practice, COLLINS GIVES THIS TEAM THE BEST CHANCE TO WIN, etc. Now NO ONE is going to believe ANYTHING that these guys say.

So, er, yeah, Young’s confidence is SKY HIGH right now. And you know the only guy who backed Young through all this? HEIMERDINGER. When Heimerdinger first came to Nashville, Kuharsky and Wyatt were all giddy about how Heimerdinger was going to run Young out of the NFL. (The truth is that Adams forced Fisher to fire Norm Chow and brought Heimerdinger in to do the same with Young as he did with McNair, took another QB that Fisher was ruining and turned him into an NFL MVP.) Instead, Heimerdinger and Young are very close, and Young knows that Fisher is the guy who nearly destroyed his career. So, who is the most influential guy on the Titans right now? That’s right, Heimerdinger. Who is going to have a lot more clout on draft day, in game planning, and the direction of the team? Heimerdinger. Who is going to take over when Adams finally gets tired of Fisher’s nonsense? Heimerdinger.

If this keeps up, Fisher is going to have to answer questions like why didn’t he draft Dwayne Bowe and or Steve Smith in 2007, instead taking Michael Griffin and CHRIS HENRY. He is going to have to answer why he didn’t go back to Young in 2008, even as a role player, and why he threw away the 2009 season. He will have to answer why Fisher didn’t believe VY in that Jacksonville game when VY was trying to tell him that his legs were really bothering him. And so on. Hopefully, Wyatt, Biddle, Climer, Kuharsky, McCormick (from the City Paper) and the other guys will ask all these questions just like they spent the last 4 years recycling Merrill Hoge quotes. Then again, I won’t hold my breath …