After a failed 2013 season, Titans tight end Delanie Walker claimed that six or seven of his teammates were cancers, sparking a stream of reactions as people like coach Ken Whisenhunt said the concerns should have been kept in house, cornerback Jason McCourty and receiver Nate Washington said Walker should have called a team meeting, and now-former Titans running back Chris Johnson (who may have been one of the tumors to whom Walker was referring) said Walker should have named names.
Now, Titans safety Michael Griffin has voiced concerns similar to Walker’s, with slightly less inflammatory language -- and slightly less flair than teammate Bernard Pollard, who has declared that the Titans “sucked butt” last year.
“It’s a different team now,” Griffin said, via Terry McCormick of TitanInsider.com. “It’s a different team in the fact that it’s different all the way around. You see this team in a positive direction, aimed in the right direction. The guys we’ve brought in the last two years, the coaching staff -- all of this you can see where this team can go. . . . It’s a different mood when you come here. You’re just excited and ready to play football. [Before] you just had a lot of guys that had other things on their minds. Other things were more important. They were just happy to be here rather than more happy to win football games. That being said, the guys who are here [now] want to play football.”
Griffin didn’t say who those guys with “other things on their minds” were or what those “other things” were. But his views mesh with Walker’s, and it’s good news for a franchise that by all appearances has struggled to find its way since blowing the No. 1 seed via a division-round home loss to the Ravens in January 2009. If Griffin is right, the Titans may be finding their way again.
It would help to find an answer at quarterback.