Who Tennessee Titans should start on offense, today
By Will Lomas
The Tennessee Titans have a 90-man roster right now, and there are a lot of interesting positional battles to watch. Offensive line, wide receiver, cornerback, safety, and defensive line are all really up for debate at this point.
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Even knowing this, NFL.com put out an article on who they believe should/will start on this team as it sits right now.
While there are many changes you could throw out depending on situation, my goal is to figure out if there are any changes that I would make in the starting, base personnel.
For this article I will focus on offense and the one player that I believe should start that isn’t mentioned: Sebastian Tretola.
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Who does NFL.com say?
Byron Bell is currently the starter at left guard right now, which is completely understandable. He was above average there last year, he is experienced, he has familiarity with Taylor Lewan, and he was a leader at times.
Why should Tretola start over him?
Tretola should be the starter for two reasons. First of all, this is a young team, and deliberately so. Jon Robinson made a clear effort to go only after younger guys in free agency in his first year as a GM.
I believe he did this because he knows he needs to find a core group of young players to develop with Marcus Mariota and who can become cornerstones of this team with him.
So it makes sense that a young quarterback has a young offensive line to protect him so in 3+ years they know each other so well that everything is perfectly cohesive. Byron Bell is 27 now so he isn’t exactly old, in fact he is the same age as Ben Jones the center. However, center is a position that ages very well, where guard (in a scheme that looks to run a lot of zone runs) isn’t always that way.
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The other reason is because Sebastian Tretola has all the makings of a starting guard in the NFL. Now, whether that means this year or next year (if they don’t re-sign Chance Warmack) I believe that by 2017 he will be starting somewhere on this offensive line.
He comes out of a classic “NFL-type” offense in college and he is an absolute tempo setter along with new right tackle Jack Conklin.
The reason you start him over Bell is because Bell can play both guard and tackle spots, and he is much more valuable as a 6th offensive lineman than Tretola. If you had to dress 7 guys, I don’t know if you could justify dressing Tretola if he isn’t a starter and I think that is a bad management of resources.
Let Tretola start, keep Bell as a swing tackle/6th man, and use that versatility to keep the game-day OL to 7 and use that extra spot on a strong special teams player, it is that simple.