Logan Woodside experiment should be over for the Tennessee Titans
NASHVILLE — Quarterback Logan Woodside belongs on the Tennessee Titans practice squad. The back-up quarterback competition will continue, but everyone watching Saturday night at Nissan Stadium can agree on that much. Get Malik Willis all the reps you can. Tennessee still has uses for Woodside. Willis is far from a finished product and would not successfully […]
NASHVILLE — Quarterback Logan Woodside belongs on the Tennessee Titans practice squad. The back-up quarterback competition will continue, but everyone watching Saturday night at Nissan Stadium can agree on that much.
Get Malik Willis all the reps you can.
Tennessee still has uses for Woodside. Willis is far from a finished product and would not successfully manage, much less win, the Titans any games as of this very moment. The rookie has shown enough, however, to think that it would not be worth the team's while to carry three players at the position into the regular season.
As training camp winds down, the roster math gets more complicated.
Woodside is not improving
Drafted in 2018 as a seventh-round pick of the Cincinnati Bengals, Woodside has been the ultimate NFL survivor.
Tennessee signed the quarterback to their practice squad in the 2018 season and gave him a two-year, $1.08 million deal in April of the following year. Since then, Woodside has appeared in 11 total games for the Titans. He has completed one of his three passing attempts for seven yards and has six rushes (kneel downs) for a total of -6.
Woodside entered Tennessee's eventual 13-3 preseason victory in the middle of the third quarter.
"Gotta stop turning the ball over," Woodside told me on Saturday night. "Other than that, I felt good out there, man. I thought I made some good decisions. I thought we moved the ball. We just had some penalties kind of shoot us in the foot. We've got to finish drives in the end zone."
The Titans long-time back-up completed seven of his eleven passing attempts for 56 yards and a pick.
Woodside's interception was to an open Treylon Burks down the field, but the ball was underthrown and into the clutches of Bucs corner Don Gardner. Willis was not overwhelming by any stretch in his second preseason start for Tennessee. What the rookie did show was growth from the Baltimore game last Thursday through two joint training camp practices and translate portions of it into Saturday night's action.
The kind of growth necessary to make a player like Woodside more expendable.
"I wanted to give Treylon a shot at it," said Woodside of the missed opportunity. "Sometimes, that's how it goes. I could have probably put a better ball on him. I was trying to give him a chance to go down and make a play."
Where Woodside does continue to hold the upper hand, though, is with institutional knowledge. Lasting in the Titans system as long as he has is a tribute to him and the trust Tennessee's coaches have built with him over time. Three turnovers in less than four quarters of preseason action are damning, however.
The back-up quarterback cannot put his offense in that kind of jeopardy once the regular season arrives. A practice squad spot for Woodside is the only thing that makes sense right now.
Featured Image: USA TODAY Sports.
