Titans' Vanden Bosch eyes NFL sack title

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A few months ago, Kyle Vanden Bosch simply wanted a job playing football. Now the Tennessee defensive end has much higher goals, like leading the NFL in sacks.
If not for penalties that wiped out two rare sacks of Peyton Manning last week, the five-year veteran would already top the NFL with 12 1/2 sacks. Still, his 10 1/2 sacks are tied for second in the AFC, a half sack behind Oakland's Derrick Burgess and Osi Umenyiora of the New York Giants.

"It is a big deal," Vanden Bosch said Thursday in a national conference call.
"I'm a team player, and I want to win games. That's the most important thing to me. But I didn't think I'd have this kind of season, and ... it's great. It's been a great ride for me this year despite our record. It's fun to be among the top sack guys every week, and it's fun to get that kind of respect."

Few people even heard of Vanden Bosch before he put his name on the sack list this season because his first four years in the NFL were nearly erased by knee injuries.
Originally the 34th overall pick in the 2001 draft by Arizona, the 6-foot-4, 278-pound Vanden Bosch came into the league with 13 sacks at Nebraska.
Then the injuries started.

He tore his right ACL and MCL after his third game in his rookie season and had both surgically repaired. He played every game in 2002 with a career-high four sacks, then tore his left ACL after the third preseason game of 2003.

In 2004 with new coach Dennis Green, Vanden Bosch played in 16 games and found himself a free agent with only three or four teams interested in talking with him. He targeted the Titans because they had a youthful defensive line, but he worried his career might be over.

"After being in the league for a few years, you see guys you think can still play or can still help a team out just kind of get phased out and don't get another shot," Vanden Bosch said.

The Titans finally signed Vanden Bosch in April to a one-year deal for the veteran's minimum of $455,000. He came to Nashville determined to work just as hard as he did when he was a boy helping his father's construction company on Saturdays and during the summer.

The tendinitis that bothered him last season healed and he found himself in training camp finally feeling as healthy as he's been since college. No longer did he unconsciously back away from piles on the field, worried that someone might roll up on his legs.

"After a couple preseason games, I had three sacks in the preseason and I thought, 'Whoa.' After sacks were so few and far between my first four years, it was like 'I can really do this,'" Vanden Bosch said.

Vanden Bosch started with a career-high three sacks against Baltimore on Sept. 18 and grabbed two more the next week against St. Louis. The man who never stops running, not even in practice, is second on the team with 81 tackles and has three forced fumbles.

Numbers like that are attracting Pro Bowl attention, with Vanden Bosch second in fan voting at his position behind Dwight Freeney of Indianapolis as of Monday. Fan voting ends Tuesday, and players and coaches vote on Dec. 19-20 with the team announced on Dec. 21.
He calls such attention a tremendous honor.

"It's a credit to our fans here, just NFL fans in general, because I thought maybe I'd get some recognition from players and coaches around the league because they see the tape. We don't have any prime-time games," he said.

Titans coach Jeff Fisher doesn't expect Tennessee's 3-9 record to affect Vanden Bosch's status when players and coaches vote.

"Typically, when they vote, they're going to go across the board and take guys that have sacks, so I'd say he has a chance," Fisher said.
And that's all Vanden Bosch has ever wanted.