After two lackluster showings to start his Tennessee Titans career, left tackle Andre Dillard was once again a major issue in the team’s Week 3 loss to the Cleveland Browns.
Granted, Dillard’s struggles came against one of the best pass-rushers in the NFL in Myles Garrett and the Titans didn’t help him out nearly enough, but it’s fair to expect better out of a pretty well-paid left tackle.
“It’s never an easy thing,” Dillard said, per ESPN’s Turron Davenport. “You’ve got a lot of good players around the league and (the Browns have) some really good guys on there. Third-and-long they’re going to be coming and bringing the pressures and we’ve just got to do better as a unit, I’ve got to do better as an individual and sit down those pressures and those defenders.”
Following the loss, Garrett, who tallied 3.5 sacks and even had two Titans tight ends following him near the end of the game, gave Dillard some pointers on what he could’ve done differently.
“I think I just need to do better with my hands and my sets and all that stuff,” Dillard explained. “I talked to [Garrett] after the game and he told me his inputs. I’m just trying to get better and so he kind of told me what he saw, what he liked about my game and what I could’ve done differently.”
Despite the poor showing that already has fans and media calling for his head, Dillard knows he can’t let his poor performance fester if he wants to rebound moving forward.
“When you go through stuff like that, all you can do is just keep playing the next play and don’t let your head hang, because then it’ll just spiral and it’ll get out of control,” he said. “What you do from that is you just learn from it. You watch the film, you study it, take the constructive criticism and you just move forward, that’s all you can do.”
The Titans should definitely at least consider giving rookie Peter Skoronski a look at left tackle once he’s healthy, but chances are head coach Mike Vrabel, who rode with Dennis Daley in 2022, won’t make a switch this quickly.
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