INDIANAPOLIS -- The untested quarterback provides intrigue.
Especially if the veterans ahead of him could wear question marks on their jerseys just as easily as numbers. Especially if the youngster has a cannon arm. Especially if he looked really good in the preseason.
Plenty of Tennessee Titans fans watched Jake Locker struggle for a half against Dallas and for a game in Cincinnati and wondered about Zach Mettenberger, the sixth-round rookie out of LSU.
With Locker sidelined by an injured right wrist, coach Ken Whisenhunt stayed in the proper order and played backup Charlie Whitehurst against the Colts. And though Whitehurst was hardly great, he played well enough that he isn’t at, or near, the top of the list of the Titans' problems from their 41-17 loss to Indianapolis.
Whisennunt gave Mettenberger his first taste of the regular-season NFL in the fourth quarter, with the Titans down 24 points and with 7:26 left in the game.
Left guard Andy Levitre immediately drew a false start penalty, and Mettenberger sandwiched incomplete passes around a 12-yard connection with Justin Hunter. Three-and-out.
On his second series, Mettenberger hit Kendall Wright for a 5-yard gain, then overshot Wright down the middle and was picked off by safety Mike Adams.
Mettenberger finished 2-for-5 for 17 yards with the pick. He had a passer rating of 10.0.
“It was a good opportunity for me to get some playing time,” Mettenberger said. “It’s not the situation you want to be in as a team. Honestly, I’ve got to do better with my opportunity. I expect more of myself. That’s really just not the way you want to go in. Hopefully, offensively, we can just get better, I can get better and the next opportunity I get, I can play better.”
Mettenberger acknowledged the Colts had a lot of backups in the game by the time he took the field and said that was probably part of why the speed of the game wasn’t so different from what he experienced in the preseason.
Clearly, he is the Titans' quarterback with the most upside. But there is no reason to rush him into another game.
Whisenhunt was not in the mood to talk about Locker after the game.
“We can talk about it later -- there’s no reason to talk about that right now,” Whisenhunt said. “My emotions are not great from this game, so just nothing really to say there.”
The safe presumption is Locker will be back at the helm when he’s able, which could be this week in practice and Sunday against the Browns in Nashville.
“He got better during the week,” Whisenhunt said of Locker’s right wrist injury. “It was just a thing. I didn’t know for sure if he had to play in the game, if it was one shot that would put him out. With where we were, from a standpoint of Ropati [Pitoitua] being out, we had to have the extra defensive lineman up, so I couldn’t carry three quarterbacks.”
As for Mettenberger as a guy the Titans should turn to ASAP? Tap the brakes. That small sample showed he’s got plenty of work to do behind the scenes. He’ll get another chance.
It’ll be better for all involved if it’s not for a while.
