Lockout may be Locker's key roadblock in Tennessee

I don't know if Jake Locker starts for Tennessee this season, but I know I would like his chances a lot better if there weren't a lockout.
The eighth player and second quarterback taken in last weekend's draft, Locker goes to a team where he could step in tomorrow and take over. I say "could" because I don't know what the Titans do for a veteran at the position, and I don't know when ... or if ... the lockout ends.
All I know is that, for the moment, Jake Locker is The Man, and with no minicamps, no OTAs, no contact and no nothing involving players, that's a tough deal for him, the Titans' coaches and the Tennessee team in general.
"It makes you lie awake at night," said Tennessee offensive coordinator Chris Palmer. "As a coach, there's a blank in your life."
I can see why. Tennessee is coming off a season where it lost just about everything, including its head coach the past 16½ seasons, Jeff Fisher. With former starter Vince Young all but gone, the Titans have no quarterback with experience, and wide receiver Kenny Britt's latest travails make you wonder what the future is for him.

New coach Mike Munchak and new QB Jake Locker can't begin their new Titans positions yet. (US Presswire)

With a new head coach and a new quarterback, the Titans could use an extensive offseason to get acquainted ... only they're not getting one. In fact, they're not even close, with the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals failing to lift a temporary stay that would put NFL players back in business.
So Jake Locker sits and waits, Chris Palmer sits and waits and the two wonder when they move forward on this season.
"You kind of think it's going to happen," said Palmer, "and then you're reading on the Internet that it's not going to happen and that we may not get together until June at the earliest. So you come in and say, 'OK, what do we have to cut back to get the reps we want?' I've got my installation all done, assuming we were going to get up and get running, but now I'm going to have to go back to that installation. And with each day that passes, you're saying, 'Well, we can't do all these things.'
"For a team that is a veteran team, it will be easier. But when you have a new quarterback or a new veteran quarterback it doesn't allow you to do all the things you'd like to do. Plus, you have no OTAs, and people don't realize how valuable they are for players, especially the young players.
"I would say most coaches go with the Harvard method of teaching where they teach the whole, then hit the parts, then come back to teach the whole, then go back to teach the parts. When you can't do that it's hard to present the whole package, then come back. You're going to have to make that whole package smaller."
That has an impact on everyone, but I would think it would affect a quarterback most, especially one who doesn't know the system and hasn't played a down of pro football -- someone like Locker. Palmer doesn't agree, though he acknowledged that the learning curve gets steeper with each day that is missed.
Nevertheless, he believes it takes four to six years for a quarterback to develop, and I'll second that. It took Drew Brees four years to become the quarterback he is today. But Brees was taken at the top of the second round and sat behind veteran Doug Flutie. Locker was a top-10 choice and may sit behind no one.
That can be tricky, and no need to remind Palmer. He was the head coach in Cleveland when Tim Couch was a rookie starter, and he was the offensive coordinator in Houston when the Texans opened with rookie David Carr at quarterback.
Both were expansion teams, and both got their quarterbacks clobbered. Couch was sacked 56 times as a rookie; Carr was sacked 76 times. The difference, of course, is that Tennessee is not an expansion team and doesn't have the holes that Cleveland or Houston did. Moreover, the Titans have a solid offensive line capable of protecting a young quarterback like Locker, one of the game's premier running backs in Chris Johnson and a defense that historically has been one of the NFL's best.
Basically, it's an ideal situation for Locker. All that is missing is time.
"The thing you have to work on is keeping the quarterback's confidence," said Palmer, "and when fans and the media are critiquing the quarterback spot you try to avoid listening to those things. You try to be yourself, but it's easier said than done. But once you lose [confidence] and get knocked around, quarterbacks lose their focus and their fundamentals."
Carr is a good example. He was hammered in Houston, sacked 208 times in his first four seasons, and it knocked him off his game. He tried to play faster, which affected his rhythm and his delivery, and the result was that five years after the Texans made him the first pick of the draft he was gone. Now he's a journeyman, serving as a backup in San Francisco.
I don't know what the future holds for Jake Locker, but he's with a team that should make life easier on him than it did for Couch and Carr -- provided, of course, he can get started. But he can't, and that becomes an issue the longer the lockout goes on.
"He's a special guy and has all the intangibles you're looking for," said Palmer. "He worked out under [former quarterback Ken O'Brien], and when he worked out for us I thought he threw the ball better than he did his senior year.
"I asked him then 'How much time do you spend jumping rope?' And he said, 'I don't spend much time at all.' So I gave him an assignment to see how many successful rotations he could accomplish in 30 seconds. It was about four weeks before he was going to come in and see us, and he started in the 80s, went into the 90s, then into the low 100s before finally topping out at 113, which is very, very good.
"It just indicated to me the type of work ethic he had. You give him an assignment, and he continues to get better, go after it and work to be good. I think here in Tennessee we will have a different culture at the quarterback spot where the guy will come in, be the first one in and the last one to leave."
That's great. The only question is: When does Jake Locker get to come in?
extracted from cbssports.com