New leaders get set to step up in Tennessee
Out with the old, in with the new. The Tennessee Titans will have to rely on familiar faces, but new voices as they march into the 2010 season. Their vocal leaders in the past such as Keith Bulluck and Kevin Mawae are no longer with the team, so other guys will have to step up and succeed in taking over the role of “motivational players,” much to the liking of coach Jeff Fisher.
"We've got a good locker room,” Fisher said. "We have young players emerging at each of the positions. This team has had a great foundation laid here over the years and the decades."
While many Titans players have been on the team before, a few will be occupying different roles within the team and have added responsibilities in terms of team leadership. This can either be done with pre-game speeches and acting as a coach on the field or by simply leading by example.
"I just have to show these younger guys how to do things by the way that I do things. I'm not a big rah-rah guy. I just go out to do what I can do, and that way it'll rub off on those guys," Tony Brown said.
The Titans overcame a rough start last season opening the year with 0-6, yet finishing 8-8 partly because of quarterback Vince Young’s strong play midway through the season. Young, who finished the regular season 8-2, will be looking to ride that wave of momentum having for the remainder of camp and during the season opener against the Oakland Raiders on September 12. The quarterback and former Texas Longhorns star will be trying to dispel the notion that he is not a leader on and off the field.
"You just can't come out of nowhere and start trying to lead. You have to start the first day we come back to organized activities during the off-season program. Then when the guys are here early every day, you have to show the guys you're going to lead by example," Ahmard Hall said.
That’s what Young, along with Cortland Finnegan, have been doing since camp started.
"I feel like I'm that piece of the engine as a spark plug. You really can't get the car cranked up unless you've got the spark plug," Finnegan said. Finnegan is Tennessee’s most explosive player in the defensive backfield. He might refer to himself as a spark plug, but he is more like the motor that drives the defence and its players to perform better and never give up.
Both Young and Finnegan have been on the Titans for a few years now and both have shown flashes of their immense talent, especially in the last two seasons. Fisher insists that their former first-rounder, Young, is odds-on favorite to win the starting gig and will almost certainly retake the reins from Kerry Collins.
As for Finnegan, the seventh-rounder is playing like a first-rounder and is a big part the reason why the defence is going to be sound in 2010. Young understands that he will need to lead Titans’ offence and play the way he did towards the end of last year, while Finnegan will need to keep the defence clicking and replace the void left by veteran linebacker Bullock.
These new leaders will try to rally those around them and get the Titans back to their former selves and above the .500 mark. The Titans let their former leaders go because they feel that the new generation of players are ready to take over and carry the team to new heights.
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