On Titans QB Malik Willis’s performance against the Vikings

I sent this out at some late in the second half of the Tennessee Titans preseason game against the Minnesota Vikings:

It seemed to me like a fairly simple and obvious observation. As you can see from the number of comments, people had a lot to say about it.

Some people said he doesn’t look any different than preseason. That is just absurd. If you watch it without any type of bias, you can see that he has a much better command of the offense. He is more decisive with where to go with the football. He even looks like a completely different player when he tucks the ball and runs. Last year he was doing a lot of side to side running and getting nowhere. This year he gets north and south and gains yards. He had 91 yards on 11 carries Saturday night.

Then there were people who said it doesn’t matter that he looked different than last year because of how bad he looked last year. Well ok, but I didn’t say anything about that in my tweet. It was an observation of progress - which is always good.

I also had people pushing back on the idea that the Titans are in trouble if he has to play. That is where the benchmark on the improvement comes in. I agree that he was a disaster last preseason. While progress has been made, there are still some obvious deficiencies. Now, is that the case with pretty much every backup in the NFL? Probably so, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Titans are in trouble if Ryan Tannehill gets hurt.

I talked more about that on today’s Home Run Throwback podcast. You can listen to that here.

It is too early to give up on Willis ever having a shot to be a franchise quarterback. I have my doubts that he will be, but I’m not closing that door just yet.

What did you think about Willis’s performance on Saturday?