Should Locker have been running the option?

Even with the NFL trending more toward use of the quarterback option after last season, Titans coach Mike Munchak was understandably cautious about the Titans using it too often this year.

“Maybe we wouldn’t do it to the degree you have seen other teams do it,” Munchak said last March, “because I don’t know if the quarterback can hold up doing that.”

Munchak’s statemement eight months ago proved prophetic on both accounts.

The Titans only ran the option with Jake Locker once before Sunday, per Pro Football Focus. But the second time proved too much. Locker suffered a Lisfranc injury to his right foot at the end of an option run during Sunday’s loss to Jacksonville. He stayed in the game for one more play, a fumbled hand-off to Chris Johnson, before limping off the field – probably for the last time this season.

So the 20-20 hindsight question: Should the Titans have been running any option with Locker, who was starting only his third game after returning from hip and knee sprains?

It was one thing, after all, to expose Locker in the option early this season, when he was completely healthy. The Titans first ran the option with Locker in the opener against Pittsburgh, prior to the knee and hip injuries he suffered against the New York Jets.

It was another thing to expose Locker on the option again on Sunday, after the previous right leg injuries this year – injuries that were still affecting him to some small degree, since he was wearing a knee brace.

In the Titans’ defense, one could argue that Locker was still pretty mobile even after returning from the hip/knee injuries, evidenced by the eight times he’d scrambled for 49 yards during those contests.

But it’s one thing for a quarterback to scramble away from pressure because he has to, and quite another for a team to purposefully put a quarterback at risk with an option call.

Looking back again at Munchak’s offseason comments regarding Locker running the option, I found another one that was insightful:

“You want to take advantage of all the skills (Locker) does have, though it’s hard to survive if you’re running it all the time,” Munchak said last March. “So it has to be a happy medium, and that’s what we’ll try and find.”

The Titans certainly didn’t overuse the option, but once in the last three weeks proved too much for a quarterback with an injury history.

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Posted In: Team News

Source: Titans Insider