Tennessee Titans: Players are fully bought in on Ryan Tannehill

Ryan Tannehill is 1-0 in starts this season, but Tennessee Titans team writer Jim Wyatt gives reasons why the Titans are ready to go all-in on Tannehill.

As Jim Wyatt said, first impressions are very important in any situation, especially as a pro football quarterback. In my opinion, Ryan Tannehill had a pretty good first impression for the Tennessee Titans.

23-of-29 passes for 312 yards and two touchdowns, with a 120.1 quarterback rating in his first start and first win of the season.

It might be difficult for some Titans players to go all-in for Tannehill though after Marcus Mariota has been the team’s quarterback for the past five years.

That is also very important. Of course, you need the coaching staff to trust their quarterback, but you also need your teammates to trust him too.

You need your offensive linemen to trust he’s going to make the right reads and not put them in bad situations. The receivers need to trust that he’s going to put the ball in the right spot and find the open receiver downfield.

There’s a lot that goes into a mid-season quarterback change, and the Titans have their fingers crossed everything will work out.

Titans receiver A.J. Brown is already sold on Tannehill. Brown may be a young player on the Titans, but he’s a future star for the Titans, and he can influence how a lockerroom perceives someone.

"“In the huddle, he is the general,” Brown said about Tannehill. “He leads us. He has a lot of confidence in the huddle, and you can tell — you can hear it in his voice. Every play call, you can hear it. He says it real loud and with authority, and you can feel that.”"

Tannehill isn’t done with the Buccaneers coming to Nashville this weekend. Famous Jameis Winston would love to beat the Titans and virtually end the Winston vs. Mariota debate that has been happening since 2015.

Who would have guessed that Winston would outlast Mariota as a starting quarterback in the NFL? If it weren’t for poor decisions in the front office, that might not be the case, but there’s nothing we can do about that now.

Adam Humphries was another receiver to comment on Tannehill’s early success. Attributing a lot of the success and chemistry starting in the offseason.

"“We build that trust in training camp and OTAs and practice, and we had a good feeling with Ryan and Marcus,” Humphries said. “To go out there in a game, to catch those contested passes and to be able to move the ball down the field and throw for a lot of yards, it does bring that extra confidence that you can do that in a game and hopefully we can carry that momentum forward.”"

The Tampa Bay defense is both really good and really bad. They’re really good in the sense that they’re the best run defense in the NFL. They’re really bad in the sense that they’re the worst pass defense in the NFL.

Tannehill is going to be needed on Sunday for the Titans to come out with the win. If your players don’t trust your quarterback ahead of this game, it could be a long, struggling game. It’s probably a good thing that there’s currently not a trust issue with Tannehill and his teammates.