The Tennessee Titans’ 13-10 victory of the defending Super Bowl champion Denver Broncos on Sunday marked their fourth win over an out-of-conference team with an above-.500 record. With a win like that, you would think Nashville’s NFL franchise would be getting a little more love around the league. Pro Bowl tight end Delanie Walker joined The Jim Rome Show on Thursday and said he feels his team isn’t getting the respect they deserve.
“I don’t think that we are getting what we deserved or earned this year,” Walker said. “I think people still think that we are getting lucky with these games that we are winning because we are not winning our division games, and I think that the biggest thing why people doubt because we don’t win in our division. But soon enough, they [are] going to respect it when we get down there, and we have a good game against Kansas City, hopefully.”
Although, Walker believes this slight actually helps them. “I think we actually feed on that, that we don’t get respect and that we go into the games with that attitude like no one respects us, so we’re going to make them respect us today,” Walker said. “It probably won’t be the media respecting us, but this team that’s facing us on Sunday is going to respect us after this game, and I think that’s the mindset everybody has in this locker room.”
Being overlooked is something the 2006 6th round pick can relate to, having put up big numbers and commonly not being mentioned in the class of elite tight ends by others is something the 32-year-old has heard for some time, and he admitted he’s a little irked by that fact.
“It kind of bothers me a little bit, because I feel like I put in all this hard work to be one of the best tight ends in the NFL,” Walker said. “But again, our market is small and we don’t have a lot primetime games, so a lot of people don’t really get to see what I’m doing on Sunday’s and see what I do when I get the ball in my hands, and most defenses, they try to double team me and for me to still have the numbers that I have, that shows a lot, what I do on that field.”
