Jeff Fisher tells hilarious Bud Adams story in Netflix’s Vince Young documentary

If you’re old enough to remember the 2006 NFL draft, then you remember what the conversation was like around Houston at a time when the Texans had the No. 1 overall pick with Madison High School and University of Texas star Vince Young available fresh off leading the Longhorns to a national championship.

Sports radio hosts barely had to show up for months, because all they had to do was turn on the phone lines and it was time for Vince Young-to-the-Texans talk.

In the latest in Netflix’s Untold series “The Testimony of Vince Young,” which was released Tuesday, former Houston Oilers and Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher tells a story — perhaps embellished — about one of those phone calls that inspired Bud Adams, the man who took the Oilers out of Houston and moved them to Tennessee.

Before the Oilers left town, Adams frequently clashed with Houston mayor Bob Lanier as he pushed the city to help him build a new stadium that would keep the Oilers in town just years after he threatened to move if the Astrodome didn’t remove its iconic exploding scoreboard to put in more seats in the upper deck.

In 2006, the Texans had the first pick in the draft followed by the Saints and Titans. Adams, who still owned a home in Houston, wanted Young to be his quarterback, so he was relieved when the Texans used the first pick on defensive end Mario Williams and the Saints took USC running back Reggie Bush, sending Young into Adams’ waiting embrace.

In Nashville, however, there was conflict about who the Titans should take. In the Netflix documentary, Fisher says his offensive coordinator Norm Chow, who he had just hired from USC, wanted Matt Leinart, who ended up going 10th to the Cardinals, while Fisher wanted Vanderbilt’s Jay Cutler, who went 11th to the Broncos. But, Adams was the owner and he wanted Young.

“Bud Adams was obsessed and consumed with drafting Vince,” Fisher said. “That all stemmed from an adversarial relationship that he had with the mayor of Houston that dated back decades. In that draft, I was told the ex-mayor’s wife came on a radio station and they were talking to her about who she thought the Houston Texans should draft with the first pick in this year’s draft, and she went on and on about Vince and she says, ‘As a matter of fact …,’ — tongue in cheek, I would assume — ‘as a matter of fact, if they don’t draft Vince Young, I’m going to go jump off the 16th Street Bridge.’ And Bud said, ‘We’re drafting Vince ’cause I want to see the b— jump.’”

Now, it’s up for debate if Elyse Lanier actually ever discussed the NFL draft on Houston radio or if Adams made up the entire story or maybe Fisher embellished it, but Adams did have serious beef with Bob Lanier.

In 2000, three years after Adams and the Oilers had left town and just months after Houston had been awarded an expansion franchise that would become the Texans, Adams was on TV showing off his Titans’ AFC championship ring on one hand while wearing an Oilers AFL championship ring on the other. A reporter asked Adams where he would put a possible Super Bowl ring.

He held up his right hand, extended the middle finger and said, “I’m going to put it right on this finger and say to the mayor of Houston, ‘There it is, mayor, take a look at it.’”

The day after Adams drafted Young, which broke the heart of a lot of Houston football fans, he rubbed it in their noses by getting his private jet to pick up Young and fly him back home where Adams and Young held a press conference at Sugar Land Regional Airport where the jet landed.

“Not only is Vince a one-of-a-kind prospect who’s so good we couldn’t pass him up, but he’s a heck of a kid, too,” Adams told reporters that day.

As for that draft, Williams played six seasons in Houston, making an All-Pro team and two Pro Bowls. Bush played five seasons with the Saints and didn’t make any Pro Bowls but he did help bring New Orleans its first Super Bowl title. Young got off to a hot start in Nashville, winning offensive rookie of the year and went on to make two Pro Bowls, but as the Netflix documentary delves into in great detail, he often butted heads with Fisher, including over his draft preference.

“Damn, you didn’t even want me, coach?” Young recalls thinking in the documentary.