Tennessee Titans rookies who have earned playing time versus Seattle
By Will Lomas
Tennessee Titans 3rd round pick, Monty Rice
Last week the Tennessee Titans faced a late addition to the injury report when David Long Jr. couldn’t get back in time for the game. Instead, the Titans used Rashaan Evans and Jayon Brown for the majority of the plays with Nick Dzubnar being the first guy off the bench…for some reason.
The only acceptable reason for Evans playing 50+ snaps or Dzubnar playing less than five snaps is that the Tennessee Titans didn’t spend enough time teaching Monty Rice the defensive game plan for the week and they were afraid that he would be lost on the field.
Long has practiced some this week, but the Titans have to be smart enough to realize that they needed to spend more time with the rookie the week before. Ideally, the Titans would have Brown on the field every play defensively and then rotate Long and Evans according to the situation.
Even if this is the case, the Titans need to start putting Rice on the field in situations where Evans would get a look. The team isn’t holding him accountable for taking false steps, stopping his feet, missing tackles, or the other infractions that he commits on a weekly basis.
For the sake of argument, let’s sake Mike Vrabel is hard-headed and won’t do that. If that is the case, then how about they use Rice at linebacker instead of Harold Landry? On 20% of Landry’s snaps in Week 1, he was asked to line up as an off-the-ball linebacker. Not as an EDGE dropping into coverage, as a true off-ball linebacker…sure, that is a good use of the one EDGE who sacked Kyler Murray.