The Tennessee Titans open their season against the Saints on Sunday and it will be somewhat of a homecoming for rookie running back Tyjae Spears. Spears will have the opportunity to make his NFL debut in front of friends and family as he grew up less than an hour north of New Orleans in the city of Ponchatoula, Louisiana.
Spears will hope he is able to duplicate and build on what we saw from the rookie in the preseason. Spears took 22 carries for 117 yards and a touchdown in three games. Averaging 5.3 yards per carry while laying some nasty stiff arms and even hurdling some defenders.
Spears was no doubt impressive when he touched the ball in the warmup games and that caught everyone's attention, but Spears may have earned his teammates respect with something he did without the ball during training camp.
The Titans took on the Minnesota Vikings in their second preseason game and during the week leading up to the game, the Titans and Vikings had joint practices together. The Vikings' defense is led by coordinator Brian Flores who is known from bringing the heat.
On one of those plays where the Vikings were living up to their coordinator's pressure-filled desires, Spears stepped up and took on a blitzing linebacker to protect his quarterback. This not only caught the eye of Vrabel and the offense, but the defensive players took notice as well.
"I think there was a time in Minnesota," Vrabel described, "where during practice Tyjae stepped up and met a linebacker right in the hole. Just from the different looks that they gave us, I pointed it out to the team and the defensive guys were like 'Oh," you kind of hear them talking. That was the reaction I expected when I showed the tape of the play to the team knowing the offensive players would've seen it or had seen it, but the defensive players didn't."
"I said, 'That's the way a young running back earns the respect of his teammates is that they are able to protect the guy with the ball, not just do what they do with the ball.' Seeing examples of him making plays with the football in his hands, but it's how you play without the football that I think really guys appreciate or certainly I appreciate."
While the rest of the world was focused on the highlight plays Spears was putting up while having the ball, it is no surprise his coach was focused on the smaller, less exciting details and pointed it out to the team. Earning the respect of your teammates and coaches is critical for a young player, after all
The reality is though, Spears will need to do those small things and be explosive with the ball in his hands for him to be what this team needs. If what we have seen and Mike Vrabel's words mean anything, Spears should be able to start doing that in his homecoming game on Sunday.
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