Former Tennessee Titans First Round pick Treylon Burks is out for the season after having ACL surgery, as revealed by Head Coach Brian Callahan Wednesday.

This is news that comes at a bit of a delay, as Burks suffered the knee injury in practice before the Titans’ Week 7 game in Buffalo. He was placed on IR shortly after it was announced he was hurt, and presumably got his diagnosis and ensuing surgery weeks ago.

It’s a development that slipped through the cracks, but has had significant ramifications for another Titans receiver becoming one of the stories of the year.

Injury Timeline

On Friday, October 18th Brian Callahan had his usual post-practice media availability before the team traveled to Buffalo. He opened with an injury update, saying Keondre Coburn and Tyjae Spears would be ruled out for Week 7, which didn’t come as a surprise. But then Callahan added “and then (Treylon) Burks got hurt in practice. He will also be out.”

This came as news to everybody. When did it happen exactly? What was the extent of the injury? There were questions that went unanswered because, frankly, the main story here was that the player most everyone was fed up with seeing on the field would once again miss time with an injury. “Same old story with Treylon, who won’t be frustrating you on Sundays for a while” was the collective takeaway. Harsh, yes, but true.

The following day, Tennessee formally announced they had place Burks on Injured Reserve. He’d miss at least a month. That was the last anybody spoke of it, until over three weeks later on November 11th.

It was the Monday press conference after the Titans loss at the Chargers, and near the end of the session the question was posed: Burks is technically eligible to come off of IR soon, so what’s the update on him?

“(Treylon) Burks probably not anytime soon” Callahan said succinctly. And that was left at that. Perhaps the injury was more serious than we thought. Perhaps the team was finally done with him, and he wasn’t being ushered back from injury because he was being shadow-banned.

There’s no way to say it without it sounding a bit cruel: nobody knew, because nobody asked, because nobody really cared. This team had much bigger fish to fry, Titans fans had played the “when will Burks be back from injury” game before, and frankly, nobody was particularly excited to get him back out there.

The Emergence of NWI

The most shocking element of this revelation is what a fluke knee injury in practice meant for the record-setting season Nick Westbrook-Ikhine is having.

When Burks went down in October, nobody knew how serious it was or how long he’d be out. What we did know is that it was going to force the Titans to play NWI more on Sundays, which was something fans had been loudly clamoring for throughout an early season of plentiful Burks snaps. It turns out, a deeply unfortunate season-ending injury during practice led to the opportunity for Westbrook-Ikhine to have a fantastic contract year.

In the first five games of the season, NWI played mostly special teams snaps as the WR5. He broke into the offensive rotation 9, 10, 13, 17, and 13 times during that stretch. Meanwhile, Burks was WR4 in the rotation and played 44, 33, 26, 35, and 9 offensive snaps in those games.

The correlation here isn’t perfect. The ramping-up of DeAndre Hopkins who was coming back from a preseason injury, and then the eventual trading of him to Kansas City after the Titans played the Bills in Week 7 was part of this equation as well.

After scoring a touchdown on his sole reception in Week 6, NWI played a season-high 34 offensive snaps in that Week 7 Bills game (where he scored another touchdown, because that’s all the man does). After that, the absence of Burks and Hopkins bumped him way up the depth chart and he was off to the races.

From Week 8 on, NWI has played in the 50-70 snap range as a key starter on offense. His numbers and impact on the team are at all-time highs, and he now stands to receive a handsome new contract in the spring.

Whether it was the coaching staff’s plan to finally begin phasing-out Burks and working NWI into the lineup before Treylon suffered his season-ending injury, we may never know. But ultimately, one man’s tragic season became another man’s feel good story.

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