For the second time in a week, Titans quarterback Vince Young is in full-blown damage control mode.

On May 22, Young apologized (sort of) for the images of his shirtless, all-male tequila party that recently hit the Internet.

The next day, word surfaced that Young told NFL.com that he considered “retiring” from the NFL after 2006, his rookie season. 

As Jim Rome pointed out on Tuesday during his weekday ESPN show, “retiring” after one season isn’t called “retiring.”  It’s called “quitting.”

Apparently stung by the intense criticism of his ill-advised monologue, Young now says that he didn’t mean what he said.  “I was never going to quit football,” Young said on Thursday.  “Football, that is my pride and joy, it is my dream.  I am playing my dream.  And I don’t plan on giving that up any time soon.

“I ain’t never said I was going to quit football,” Young added.  “There was a lot of stuff going on in my life, but football is not hard to me.  Football is easy.  All you have to do is be coachable and use your God-given talent.  If it was a thought at all it was just a passing thought for a second.”

Passing thought?  Vince “ain’t never said” that to NFL.com.

“I really thought long and hard about it,” Young told Thomas George of NFL.com.  “There was so much going on with my family.  It was crazy being an NFL quarterback.  It wasn’t fun anymore.  All of the fun was out of it.  All of the excitement was gone.  All I was doing was worrying about things.”

The lesson that Vince needs to learn from all of this is that he needs to keep most if not all of his thoughts, both “passing” and “long and hard,” to himself.  The media cares more than ever about the things that NFL starting quarterbacks say and do.  And so if one of them begins to muse about anything that might limit his football career, it’s going to be a big deal.