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Tennessee Titans players have elected five captains for the 2020 season, the team announced on Monday night.
Per Jim Wyatt of Titans Online, the five captains will be quarterback Ryan Tannehill, running back Derrick Henry, safety Kevin Byard, defensive lineman DaQuan Jones and punter Brett Kern.
Tannehill, Henry, Jones and Kern are all captains for the first time with Tennessee, while Byard earns the honor for the second straight season. Tannehill has been a captain before, but it was with the Miami Dolphins.
Here’s what head coach Mike Vrabel had to say about some of the selections, per Wyatt.
“We voted this morning,” Titans coach Mike Vrabel said on his weekly radio show with Mike Keith on 104.5-FM on Monday night. “There were some guys that got a lot of votes on defense, kind of split that next wave of votes. But in the end, I think that those guys were the runaway winners.
“I think with Derrick, we have talked about the leadership role, and the improvement that he’s made in that area. Obviously, Brett has been such a consistent, positive player for us on our punt team, and the job that he does. You let the players vote, and then we’ll hold one spot for (a game day captain) that we feel like each week deserve it or are worthy of it.”
While the Titans are returning much of the same team that made it all the way to the AFC Championship Game last season, they did part ways with multiple veterans who had been key locker room leaders in the past, like Delanie Walker, Jurrell Casey and Logan Ryan.
However, as we’ve found out during the course of last season and into this offseason, guys like Tannehill, Henry and Byard, among others, have all stepped up more to fill the void left by the aforementioned players.
Overall, the Titans have a great culture in the locker room, so it seems like they’ll be just fine without the players they let go from a leadership standpoint.
We’ll have a better idea just how true that is when the Titans hit the field for their first contest of the 2020 campaign against the Denver Broncos on September 14.
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