Zach Mettenberger's Inconsistent Play Holding Back Tennessee Offense

After a first quarter that even the most optimistic Titans fan probably wouldn't have imagined, Zach Mettenberger and the Tennessee offense came back down to Earth. The Titans picked up 137 yards on their first two drives.

Over their next eight drives, they found just four yards, as the offense found itself under an avalanche of penalties and negative plays. 

Head coach Ken Whisenhunt's plan to doctor the offense's penalty problems was to bring in referees during the practices this week. That changed nothing. But more importantly, Mettenberger's statue-esque pocket presence led to five sacks that outright killed drives. 

After watching two games of Mettenberger, I'm beginning to see what Matt Waldman of The Rookie Scouting Porfolio meant when he said Mettenberger is "at his best when he's in a rhythm." Tennessee's rookie passer not only requires a lot of time in the pocket, but he also has inconsistency within his reads and the flow of the offense.

When Mettenberger is on, you get the first two drives of the game, where he led the offense downfield for what would have been two scores if not for running back Shonn Greene's fumble. But in this game, after Mettenberger took a few hits, his timing began to falter a bit. He began to stay on one read too long, and he began to lose the flow of the game. 

Even against a banged-up Baltimore Ravens secondary full of no-name players, the Titans couldn't generate much downfield. Part of that is Mettenberger's inability to make reads when he's out of rhythm. But, perhaps another part of that is that we need to re-evaluate our expectations for this receiving corps. Wideout Justin Hunter in particular has not shown the consistency needed to be a starting receiver in this league. 

Regardless of whether the weapons around Mettenberger make his numbers pretty, the real problem here is that he can't afford to take five sacks in a game. When you mix this with his penchant for not seeing underneath zone defenders, there are so many potential negatives on every Mettenberger throw that they outweigh the potential benefits of his big arm.

It's hard to win an NFL game when one out of every three dropbacks results in a negative play with a potential for turnovers. 

Of course, it's kind of a moot point for Tennessee to get flustered by what it's seen from Mettenberger. It's 2-7 in a conference where 11 teams are over .500. The Titans can live with Mettenberger's growing pains because they have no prayer of going to the playoffs anyway. 

But Mettenberger has just seven games left to prove to Titans brass that he should be given any consideration for a job beyond the Rusty Smith Memorial "Break in Case of Disaster" third-quarterback job. 

It's too early to completely write off Mettenberger's odds of growing into the job. According to recent research into stabilization rates for quarterback stats by Danny Tuccitto of Intentional Rounding, it generally takes about 400 pass attempts before a quarterback's yards per attempt hits 50 percent of his "true" ability.

In layman's terms: We need to see a few more games of potential adjustment patterns to figure out if this is all Mettenberger is going to be. 

But given Mettenberger's low draft pedigree, problems we've seen since Day 1 of the preseason and the seeming lack of any ability to change those problems, I think you can build a subjective case that this is the Mettenberger the NFL is going to get. 

Michael Vick has played in the NFL for 12 seasons, and he hasn't changed in the slightest. Coaches like to believe that they can change players, but sometimes, the players are who they are. And right now, Mettenberger looks to be exactly what he seemed to be coming out of college. 

Rivers McCown is the AFC South lead writer for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Three-Cone Drill podcast. His work has also appeared on Football Outsiders and ESPN.com. Follow him on Twitter at @riversmccown.