The Tennessean has confirmed that head coach Mike Munchak will go with second-year pro Jake Locker as his starting quarterback for this season as he replaces the veteran Hasselbeck.
Munchak stated after Friday night's preseason game that he wanted to name a starter Monday. An official announcement should come sometime later Monday afternoon.
Pundits suggested that Locker hasn’t had that good of a preseason. His first NFL start was minimal at best. He completed just 4-of-11 passes for 21 yards and a touchdown in the team’s win over the Buccaneers.
Munchak spoke about Locker’s preseason and his Friday night start.
“We talked about the (Tampa Bay) game and watched it. There are a lot of things that you can turn a lot of ways in games. He made mistakes early but came back and made better decisions later on when he had the same decision to make. Like when he took off and ran, after we converted on a third and eight and had a first down and we had a penalty on holding and now we are third and 18, there was no one open and he got enough yards for us to make the field goal,’’ Munchak said of Locker. “He made good decisions after he made a couple of bad ones. I think you can find the positive in a lot of things and you want to see how guys handle struggling. Like today he had a couple bad practices and how he bounced back. I think that is another part of the equation. You have to look at the quarterback spot for both of those guys and other positions. In this league you are going to have some days and games that will not start the way they want them to. You hope you have less of those than a lot of those but you have to learn how to deal with that too.”
Questions have been rampant about whether Locker really is a franchise quarterback. Many question if he is even deserving of taking the job from Hasselbeck at this point. What you can’t argue is that when you spend the eighth overall pick in the 2011 NFL draft on a guy like him, you must now see if the goods are there and if you got a bargain for your buck.
The Titans have to find out over the next few seasons if Locker can indeed play or then they’ll have to go back to the drawing board like so many teams before them.
Glenn Erby is a NFL writer for FootBasket. He also owns the NFL blog, Tha Cover 2. You can read more about him over there. Follow him on Twitter @thacover2.
