Netflix’s popular sports-documentary series Untold resumes with the story of an infamous football flameout, Untold: The Testimony of Vince Young. Of course, “flameout” is a reductionist term, and if Untold does anything, it takes a more nuanced view of stories like Young’s, which charts a quarterback’s journey from college boom to professional bust. As the title implies, Young sits down to share his story from his perspective — as does the villain of the story, his former coach, Jeff Fisher. Yeah, it’s a bit juicy.

The Gist: Vince Young was once labeled “the Michael Jordan of college football.” As quarterback for the Texas Longhorns, he famously put the team on his back to orchestrate a come-from-behind last-minute drive in the 2006 Rose Bowl, winning the National Championship and creating a highlight reel among highlight reels. Soon after, he was drafted no. 3 overall by the Tennessee Titans, putting tens of millions in his bank account and setting him up to be the next NFL superstar. A few years later, he was broke and out of the game. Anyone who follows football knows his story from the headlines: He played pretty well for a couple of seasons, helping turn around the moribund Titans. But he butted heads with head coach Jeff Fisher, partied a little too hard off the field and, after a rough game in 2008, took a gun and disappeared for several hours, eventually agreeing to meet with Fisher, who arrived with police in support. A couple years later, he infamously threw a fit after a game, argued with Fisher, and quit the team, pretty much ending his pro career.

Fifteen years later, any question as to whether Young feels like the difficulties of his past are resolved is answered early in Untold. “Hell no, I’m not at peace. Shit,” he says. Young, two of his sisters, his mother Felicia Young, Texas coach Mack Brown, Fisher, rival University of Southern California quarterback Matt Leinart, and others work their way through the many ups and downs of his life: His Houston upbringing, with a father who was frequently absent or in jail. How his high school games were so electric they were moved to the Astrodome to accommodate a growing legion of fans. His relationship with mentor Steve McNair, star quarterback for the Titans. How Fisher wanted to draft Leinart but the Titans’ ownership wanted Young, and the subsequent fallout. The intense scrutiny Young faced as a high-profile NFL wunderkind. Some hindsight, distance from troublesome events and maturity sheds some light on Young’s travails, how he failed and how others failed him. We see Young in the present day being welcomed at the UT campus like a hero. It might be a happier story of personal redemption if it weren’t for Fisher — who comes off as the clear villain in Young’s saga.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Comparisons between Untold and ESPN’s excellent 30 for 30 doc series continue to be spot-on – and The Testimony of Vince Young thematically brushes up against Broke, the standout 30 for 30 about pro athletes who earned and lost millions. So cross that doc with Untold: Johnny Football, about another famous NFL flameout, Johnny Manziel.

Performance Worth Watching: Contrast the supportive words of Mack Brown (as a talking head in the doc and via the uplifting speeches, seen in archival footage, he delivered to his team) with the tough-guy macho nonsense of Fisher, and you might see how the tone and demeanor of a coach might influence a young athlete.

Our Take: If The Testimony of Vince Young focused precisely on the relationship between Young and Fisher, you could change the title of the film to Unwanted. The ex-Titans coach comes off as the villain of this story, and he speaks as if he’s learned very little in the years since this turmoil. He criticizes Young as having shown “weakness,” and after Young sent him a letter of apology years after their highly publicized fallout, Fisher never bothered to reply. And when asked why, Fisher dribbles out a reason that’s so half-assed, it’s obvious he hasn’t bothered to think about it much. It leaves the core conflict of the documentary up in the air, like a musical symphony that ends with a note of tension instead of resolution.

Of course, documentaries are only as revealing as their interviewees are willing to be (or how willing their directors are to ask difficult questions — both may be an issue here), and Young, despite showing some enlightenment and self-awareness with regards to his past mistakes, doesn’t offer much insight into the hard-partying days that contributed to him being relegated to Fisher’s doghouse. His financial troubles are blamed on bad actors forging his signature. The point is somewhat unsatisfactorily punctuated with a title card explaining that the issue was settled confidentially out of court. The doc skips over Young’s post-NFL life, which wasn’t without incident; he was arrested twice for drunk driving and was fired from his job at UT, although they subsequently hired him back in a different position.

The documentary brims with subtext that, somewhat frustratingly, feels like it needs to be addressed in the text itself. Several thematic implications emerge: One, how Young’s “gun incident” likely would be seen more sympathetically today, reframed as a mental health crisis. Two, how the NFL has somewhat recently worked to educate its young players about wealth management, to avoid situations like Young’s. Three, how former NFL quarterbacks have recently stumped for more patient development of rookies, pushing back against throwing them to the wolves like Fisher did to Young, setting the table for burnout and failure. And four, the overall unforgiving nature of the pro-sports business, which for decades has allowed little margin for personal error, even for athletes in their early 20s who suddenly find themselves in a bright spotlight with freshly fattened wallets.

If anything emerges as a thematic throughline in Testimony, it’s Young’s repeated exhortations that he needed a “father figure.” Brown functioned as one, as did McNair (until he was tragically murdered by his mistress in 2009), but Fisher? He apparently wasn’t interested. The ex-Titans coach emerges as the face of a dying breed of testosterone-driven sports blowhards. Crucially, although Young only vaguely addresses some of his personal issues, he doesn’t necessarily play the victim, and the documentary becomes more an indictment on how the system failed him. Apparently, all Fisher had to offer the kid was tough love — minus the love.

Our Call: Vince Young’s travails are ripe subject matter for Untold, and this doc is watchable, and occasionally fascinating, even though it sometimes feels incomplete. So STREAM IT, and maybe there’ll be a sequel one of these days.