Tennessee Titans linebacker David Long Jr. didn’t receive a great deal of recognition after the team’s latest 35-32 win over the visiting Kansas City Chiefs.
But he was effective, despite only seeing action on 28 snaps.
He accounted for eight tackles and a forced fumble against Kansas City on Sunday.
On the season, the rookie originally selected out of West Virginia at No. 188 overall in the sixth round of the 2019 NFL Draft has recorded a total of nine tackles and a forced fumble over eight appearances.
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Titans team reporter Jim Wyatt recently addressed a question defense in a mailbag post saying that he was “very impressed” with Long, and thinks “his future is bright” with the team.
“He’s an instinctive player,” head coach Mike Vrabel said of Long last week. “There’s a lot of stuff that we’ve got to continue to coach on him and improve, but he has shown since he’s gotten here that he is an instinctive player, that he makes tackles, that he gets around the football. He got an opportunity to play and showed up. He got the ball out. The thing that I appreciate about David, you can get on him and coach him hard, and he knows when he’s out on the field that he’s going to go play. He’s just a young, instinctive player that has been improving through the course of the season on the show team.”
In college, Long was a defensive force for the Mountaineers, racking up 252 career tackles — 169 of them solo.
Starting at 12 games at Will linebacker, Long led West Virginia with 111 tackles, averaging 9.3 per game, and also led the team in sacks (8), tackles for loss (19) and solo tackles (76).
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He was Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year, and was also a Butkus Award semifinalist.
The Titans face the division rival Jacksonville Jaguars next at 3:05 p.m. CT on Nov. 24 in Nissan Stadium.