After choosing a biggest disappointment, it is time to end the week on a happier note by choosing a biggest surprise for the 2014 Tennessee Titans. It may seem incongruous to choose a surprise in a good way for a team that goes 2-14 and ends the season with the second overall pick. As with the offensive and defensive most valuable players, plus the rookie of the year, that a team goes 2-14 does not mean that no player exceeds reasonable expectations.
My choice as the most pleasant surprise for the 2014 Tennessee Titans was inside linebacker Avery Williamson. He rates as the most pleasant surprise to me for most of the reasons I enumerated in my rookie of the year post. He was a fifth round pick. Rookies drafted after the third round hadn’t been allowed to do almost anything for the Titans in recent years; the last to see significant playing time on either offense or defense was probably Jason McCourty back in 2009, and that was out of absolute necessity. After Zach Brown’s injury, Williamson got on the field, and once he was there, seized increasingly more responsibility thanks to his level of performance on the field. He ended the season clearly surpassing veteran Wesley Woodyard, even in sub package situations, and played every snap in the final five games. That would be a solid initial season for any rookie. To see it from a fifth round pick makes Williamson an easy selection as my biggest surprise for the 2014 Titans.
Beyond Williamson, who else surprised me in a positive way? If I wanted to reverse the trend from the past couple years and give this award to a player who didn’t win one of my other awards, I would have given it to Charlie Whitehurst. As I said before the season, my expectations for Whitehurst based on what he had done when he played in the past were incredibly low. I really thought the Titans were there with the San Francisco 49ers, employers of Blaine Gabbert, in terms of the worst backup quarterback situations in the league. Instead, Whitehurst played reasonably for a backup quarterback; not as well as Ryan Fitzpatrick did in 2013 (or for the Texans in 2014). He was just below average, not dismal, and in my estimation played better than the Titans’ two other quarterbacks (Jordan Palmer N/R). Ultimately, I went with Williamson because I didn’t think Whitehurst actually played that well; outside of Week 17, he just wasn’t awful.
Honorable mention goes to Delanie Walker’s speed on some of his runs after the catch, notably against Dallas and Philadelphia.
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