Any good season starts with a good offseason. As Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Vrabel likes to say, being an NFL player is not a seasonal or nine to five job. It is a year long grind in which results are a reflection of preparation.

That's something the Titans may have been lacking in 2022.

With the team looking for improvement next season, two players on the Titans' 2022 roster stand out as needing to have a good offseason in order to have a better 2023 campaign: Linebacker David Long Jr. and cornerback Kristian Fulton.

Long and Fulton are both immensely talented players that are essential parts of the Titans' starting defense.

Fulton was drafted in the second round of the 2020 NFL Draft, and has recorded four interceptions and 20 passes defended in his three seasons (26 starts) with Tennessee. Long, a sixth round selection in 2019, will be a free agent this upcoming offseason, but has continued to improve over his four career seasons, having the best production of his career in 12 games in 2022.

In an ideal world, both Fulton and Long are back starting for the Titans' defense in 2023, but in order for that to become reality, each of them will have to work hard this offseason to overcome their chronic injury issues. The best ability is availability, and neither Fulton or Long have had that in recent years.

They have missed a combined 22 games over the last two seasons due to injury, prompting Vrabel to call both of them out in his end of season press conference for their training habits.

"We look at soft tissue injuries. We look at those soft tissue injuries of repeat offenders," said Vrabel regarding the Titans' ongoing injury issues. "It doesn't take too hard to look and see that Kristian Fulton and David Long were repeat offenders of soft tissue injuries. They have to figure out a way to train. The game is played at a high speed. Kevin Byard has not pulled a hamstring since we have been here. There is a durability factor to playing professional football that we should not overlook. That is real. There are guys that are durable and there are guys that are not."

Vrabel does make an interesting point.

Kevin Byard, who goes through the same practices, is treated by the same medical staff, and plays on the same playing surface has never missed a game in his seven-year Titans career. Byard credits his durability to the way he trains and takes care of his body in the offseason. Clearly Vrabel does too.

Vrabel went on to pose the rhetorical question of whether Titans players want to be a "blister or callus," asserting his belief that playing through some discomfort early in the season will harden your body (like a callus) to withstand the rigor of the season.

Fulton and Long are both highly capable, but taking the next step towards NFL stardom will require them to both have a good offseason of training and be on the field in 2023. Tennessee cannot afford another injury ridden season.

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