After quarterback, running back, fullback, wide receiver, tight end, offensive tackle, and guard, the final stop on the offensive half of our trip around the Tennessee Titans position by position as we head into the 2016 offseason is a look at center.
Once upon a time, the Titans entered into a season with an incumbent starter and a sixth-round rookie backup. The situation worried me, because while the Titans liked the starter when he was in the lineup, he wasn’t in the lineup nearly as often as he needed to be, and I wasn’t quite as high on him even when he was in the lineup as I think the Titans were. When the starter then got injured, the Titans ended up turning to the sixth-round rookie, who played like a sixth-round rookie to the detriment of the team’s overall performance en route to a very high pick in the NFL draft. But at least the Titans ended up with Marcus Mariota out of the whole mess, so it wasn’t all bad.
Whoops, sorry, I got stuck in an overview of the previous year’s worth of quarterback maneuvering when I was supposed to be giving the center positional analysis. So, in that case, just take that whole paragraph and strike the last sentence because this was another example of Ruston Webster And Ken Whisenhunt Refuse To Learn From Last Year’s Mistakes, Pt. XIV. The parallels kind of break down this offseason, since the incumbent starter, unlike Jake Locker, has a year left on his deal, nobody’s talking up the sixth-round rookie, and the third player who played is still a young player, but on the whole it’s about as much of a mess in need of a good solution as quarterback was last February.
The player the Titans want to be the starter is, or has been, Brian Schwenke. The broken leg he suffered in Week 6 against Miami was absolutely not his fault, but it was the third time in three seasons his playing time has been limited and/or significantly affected by injury. A hamstring injury his first preseason. A high ankle sprain he played through suffered just a couple games into his starting tenure as a rookie. A knee injury ended his second season after 11 games. Only 309 snaps (29.8% of total) his third season. Maybe I’m not giving him enough credit, but when you’ve only played about 18 healthy games in three seasons, I don’t know what to say aside from that you need a good backup plan and I wouldn’t blame them if they went with a different plan.
Andy Gallik was the sixth-round rookie thrust into the lineup after Schwenke’s injury. He ended up starting 8 of the final 11 games, missing the 7-sack disaster against the Texans after suffering a concussion in his first start, and the final two games of the year. Let’s go to Mike Mularkey for why he made a change in-game from Gallik to the next guy I’ll mention: “We had some (communication issues), we definitely had some. We talked about the multitudes of fronts that they had, the personnel groupings that correlated with the fronts. It’s not just ID’ing, but it was also how loud the verbal ID’ing was going on. It was not consistent enough, it was not at the level we needed it, so we thought we’d make a change with Joe (Looney) and I’m glad we did it. Obviously, we produced better in the second half than we did in the first.” And so Gallik was benched the final two game as well (506 snaps, 48.7% of total).
On the whole, it’s not that surprising a lowly-drafted rookie would struggle playing a complex defense in a hostile environment. The issue I have is not with Gallik, but with Webster (and Whisenhunt, for the influence he had on setting the initial 53) for thinking this was a good plan.
Maybe I should have listed Joe Looney before Gallik, since he finished the season as the starter (425 snaps, 40.9% of total). But Gallik was the first choice as Schwenke’s replacement, Looney played some left guard and got benched for Quinton Spain, and my uneducated guess is that Schwenke and Gallik are each much more likely to be the Titans’ 2016 starting center than Looney. Heck, I don’t even have a strong take on him and don’t feel the need to sit down and watch him to develop a stronger take like I did Spain in yesterday’s guards analysis. My general feeling is that Schwenke and particularly Gallik are likely to be centers-only, and Looney may have a bit more versatility. Squaring that with my informal starting C possibilities is an interesting and fun theoretical roster competition exercise and might be useful for telling us something about Jon Robinson’s philosophy of roster construction. Or not.
Conclusion-Type Thoughts
The Titans have a very interesting decision to make at center, and there are number of different directions they could plausibly go. Rough outlines of possible directions they could go:
1. All in on Schwenke. No major additions at the position, Gallik and/or Looney will be the backup.
2. Competition for Schwenke. Upgrade on the inexperienced Gallik and Looney with a modestly-priced veteran with starting experience, like Ben Jones or Ryan Wendell.
3. Remake the offensive line by replacing Schwenke. The best/only good candidate in free agency for this role is Alex Mack. But it’s been a popular suggestion for obvious reasons-the Titans have a fairly young offensive line overall and could use a standout veteran who could be the leader at center. This is an especially popular suggestion in Tennessee because we saw Floyd Reese follow this model as Titans general manager twice, first with Mark Stepnoski and more recently with Kevin Mawae, with generally good results.
Like other people, I see the attraction of path #3. Players play and general managers GM, but Delanie Walker has spoken about how the Titans don’t need more youth on the offensive line (N.B. I didn’t suggest drafting a center, even if one of the top ones is available at 33) and the line does lack quality veterans. Adding Mack would also match with Robinson and Mularkey’s stated vision for the team. The competition for Mack will probably be intense, in terms of both dollars and potential interest, and Robinson has also spoken about how the second wave of free agency provides much better value. That’s of course much easier to say in January than execute in March, especially if you’re not in love with the in-house options. #1 is a viable strategy, though, and this is easily a place where the Titans could decide to satisfice for 2016 and fix in 2017 if need be.
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