Nashville, TN (SportsNetwork.com) – The Tennessee Titans are going with rookie Zach Mettenberger as the starting quarterback moving forward, deciding to bench veteran signal-callers Jake Locker and Charlie Whitehurst in favor of a youth movement.<\/p>\n
The change comes after Locker has completed just 58 percent of his passes for 764 yards with four touchdowns and four interceptions in just four games. He missed Week 4 and the last two weeks due to a right thumb injury.<\/p>\n
Charlie Whitehurst started in place of Locker in those games for the Titans, who are 2-5 this season and preparing to face the Houston Texans this Sunday.<\/p>\n
Titans head coach Ken Whisenhunt informed the quarterbacks on Tuesday of the change, but held out on releasing the news.<\/p>\n
In last week’s 19-17 loss to Washington, Whitehurst completed 17-of-26 passes for 160 yards with two touchdowns and one interception. For the year, he has completed 60 percent of his passes for 764 yards with five touchdowns and two interceptions.<\/p>\n
In limited action this season, Mettenberger, a sixth-round draft pick out of LSU this past offseason, has completed 2-of-5 passes for 17 yards with an interception.<\/p>\n
“We feel like it’s an opportunity to see what Zach can do just like a number of our younger players that have already started to contribute, and we’re looking forward to seeing where we go from here,” said Whisenhunt on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, Whisenhunt didn’t mention that he was even thinking a change under center.<\/p>\n
“I was trying to buy a day,” said Whisenhunt on Thursday. “You might not think there is a competitive advantage to that, but I think there is. The best thing to do is wait until Sunday to make the announcement, but that can’t happen.”<\/p>\n
Whisenhunt added that Locker is expected to serve as the No. 2 quarterback behind Mettenberger.<\/p>\n
“We were still waiting to see where Jake’s hand was going to be as far as whether he was going to be the backup or not depending on if he could do that,” the head coach added. “We feel good after two good days of practice with Jake that he can do that. So that’s the order in which we’re going to go from this point.”<\/p>\n
In four injury-filled seasons, Locker has completed 57 percent of his passes for 4,738 yards with 26 touchdowns and 19 picks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nashville, TN (SportsNetwork.com) – The Tennessee Titans are going with rookie Zach Mettenberger as the starting quarterback moving forward, deciding to bench veteran signal-callers Jake Locker and Charlie Whitehurst in favor of a youth movement. The change comes after Locker has completed just 58 percent of his passes for 764 yards with four touchdowns and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[101,100,102],"class_list":["post-24868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nfl","tag-tennessee","tag-tennessee-titans","tag-titans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24868\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}