NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Remember jolly with the deep chuckle?
Isaiah Wilson is back from his one-game suspension but it doesn’t put him any closer to actually playing or playing well. He’s got that PAT and three kneel-downs on offense to grow on from the Nov. 29 win at Indianapolis.
Now he’s been passed by veteran Marshall Newhouse and will likely rank as the ninth offensive lineman as the Titans activate eight on a weekly basis.
Maybe Wilson turns into something in 2021, but the miss is as enormous as the man right now – the healthy 29th pick in the draft has not been able to find his way into the line up even as the Titans are on their third left tackle and have used nine offensive linemen this season.
Wilson was supposed to challenge Dennis Kelly for the right tackle spot somewhere along the way.
Had the rookie been anything like Jon Robinson and Mike Vrabel imagined, they would have flipped Kelly from right tackle to left tackle and plugged Wilson in on the right some time ago.
Instead, Wilson has dressed for two games and played in one. Tuesday he was removed from the suspended list after missing the loss to the Browns for a violation of team rules that was actually an accumulation of offenses.
This is a different level draft miss in a draft class that's contributed extraordinarily little, due in part to injuries.
I went back to refresh myself on what Jon Robinson and Mike Vrabel said about WIlson on April 23 after taking Wilson 29th, and they have to cringe at any reminders of it.
Robinson was asked if he was looking for the tackle to make an impact this season, something I confess I thought was a ridiculous question.
“I think he’s definitely going to make us a better football team,” Robinson said. “We try to get as many good football players at every position as possible, and he’s a guy that certainly fits that mold, just stylistically the way he plays. We’ve talked about his size, and his length, and his power. Like Mike and I have said, excited to work with him and know that he’s going to help our football team.”
And, oh the laugh. It’s happy-time talk for any pick in the moment. But brace yourself as we recollect what the coach had to say about how Wilson would fit in with the rest of the offensive line.
“I think he’ll fit in great,” he said. “I think they’ll love him. I mean, he’s a massive – it almost comes across as jolly. He’s got this big chuckle. He kept saying, ‘Well, I don’t really talk a lot of trash, but when I pancake guys, I just kind of chuckle,’ and he had this deep chuckle, and he kept laughing.
“The easiest way to fit in with teammates is to learn what to do as quickly as possible and play as hard as you possibly can. That’s how you fit in the best. That’s always my suggestion and recommendation to any player, especially young ones.”
Well, Wilson certainly didn’t follow his coach’s advice, because if he’d played as hard as he could there’d surely be better results.
The jolly chuckler hoodwinked the Titans, and he may well still be laughing, with that nearly $6 million signing bonus and over $11 million guaranteed.
It’s your turn to chuckle.
Keywords for Wilson for some time now have been immature, undisciplined and -- as he presents it himself in his Twitter handle (@_LayZay_), which should have been one of the hints for the Titans -- lazy.
But on draft night, Robinson described him as exactly the opposite.
“I think from a self-discipline standpoint he came across as a really mature guy, a really intelligent guy, he said. “He’s a guy who kept saying on the call, ‘I’m ready to go to work, I’m ready to go to work.’ And that’s everything we heard coming out of Georgia, was that he was a hard-worker, he was a coachable guy. So, I think he is a self-disciplined guy and he’s excited for the opportunity.”
Jolly. Big chuckle. Deep chuckle. Really mature. Hard worker. Coachable.
Four games Reserve-Covid. Five games inactive. One game did not play. One game, four snaps. One game suspended.
These are hard times to scout, but the Titans can't get fooled again.
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