The development of the Tennessee Titans second-year signal caller, Malik Willis, has been one of the more intriguing storylines of the offseason.
Titans head coach, Mike Vrabel, recently admitted that Willis has made a “glaring improvement” from where he was last season and fell just short of being named one of the team’s offseason award winners.
Truth be told, Willis mostly looked horrendous in his limited sample size in 2022, so the only realistic direction for him to go was up.
Nonetheless, the Liberty legend is at least re-establishing himself to the point where many are starting to believe that the Titans should keep him around in order to set up a true starting quarterback battle between himself and Will Levis in 2024.
However, Alex Ballentine of Bleacher Report is not one of those people. He named Willis as the one player the Titans should trade before the season, suggesting they send him to the Arizona Cardinals for a sixth-round pick.
Here is what Ballentine had to say about his trade proposal:
The fact that the Titans drafted Will Levis in the second round of the draft tells you all you need to know about how they feel about Malik Willis.
The former Liberty quarterback was a surprise faller in the 2022 draft. The Titans stopped his fall in the third round after he had some first-round buzz. The athletic quarterback showed that he’s not quite ready to be starting games in the NFL, completing just 31 of his 61 pass attempts for 276 yards with no touchdowns and three interceptions in three starts when Tannehill was injured.
The team opted to go with Josh Dobbs after those three games, and the writing has been on the wall for Willis since. The Titans’ best course of action would be to acknowledge the situation and move on. If they can get a pick in return for him, that would at least bring some consolation.
Truthfully, had this article been written months ago, I probably would’ve agreed with the Bleacher Report analyst.
But with all of the growing hype surrounding Willis’ development, combined with the fact that this trade proposal would only net the Titans a 2024 sixth-round pick, I’d much rather see the Willis experiment through in hopes that he gets to a point where he’s ready to compete for the starting job by next year.
