Coach Mike Munchak boasts Tennessee Titans success in protecting Jake Locker – NFL News
Tennessee Titans coach Mike Munchak has boasted success of his landmark quarterback protection regimen which has allowed the team to stand out in the National Football League (NFL) by allowing fewer sacks and hits on the offence leader Jake Locker.
Locker has been sacked and hit only two times each in the three games that the Titans have played so far. This makes him one of the most protected quarterbacks in the league. The Buffalo Bills are the only other team who have allowed fewer sacks – just one
– than Titans.
Coach Mike said of the tightened-up security around the QB:
"We all knew that coming in and we threw the ball 50 times, I think, and the quarterback got hit twice. Not sacked, not harassed, he threw for almost 400 yards. That's a heck of an accomplishment for them, and I thought the run blocking, for the most part,
was pretty good all game, for their part in this thing."
The QB himself is pleased for special measures that have been taken for his protection. He said:
"That's been a strength of this team for a long time, and it continues to be. Those guys are professionals. They come out every weekend, and they play really good football games. It's a constant as far as I'm concerned."
Higher level of offence leader protection is a niche in the overall offensive strategy adopted by Munchak since he started coaching offensive line in 1997. The Titans under his coaching reign have finished among top ten teams most of the times in number
of sacks allowed by any team.
It is core of the strategy that the Titans’ offence leaders are less likely to suffer injuries, particularly serious ones. Otherwise, the league has a long list of QBs suffering multiple injuries which are often as serious as concussion.
In the last couple of years, their former offence starter Matt Hasselbeck was on the sidelines only once and that too for only a brief period. It is all safe and secure with Titans otherwise.
The success in protecting their QBs is even more significant as the team has faced some of the strongest defensive lines in the league, sometimes facing as daring and rough defensive players as Pittsburgh Steelers’ linebacker James Harrison. He has knocked
down three players from Cleveland Browns alone with concussion, and in spite of disciplinary actions from the league office he remains as brutal as ever before.
Tags: