NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Several Twitter followers and radio callers have shared their feeling that Jake Locker shouldn’t have been playing late in the loss at Cincinnati.

Given his injury history, why risk him there?

I completely disagree with that thinking.

The Titans need Locker to be good as well as healthy. And he was bad Sunday. He clearly needs as much game work as he can get to iron things out and get better.

You don’t put Locker in bubble wrap at the end of a blowout for the sake of keeping him healthy. You play him for the sake of getting him more experience in a system he’s not mastered, so hopefully he can start to find some sort of rhythm and get the Titans moving and scoring.

The team didn't determined he was injured to the extent he couldn't play, so it played him. As it should have.

Also, coach Ken Whisenhunt made it clear the Titans don’t know when the injury happened. The soreness and inability to grip a ball were evident in the locker room 30 minutes after the game, not the moment after it happened.

Some injuries work that way.

Pulling him early doesn’t mean the Titans would have avoided the injury. And yes, he’s fragile. But if an unproven quarterback is so fragile he needs to be pulled from games that are no longer in question, then he shouldn’t be playing at all.

We’ll find out at least a little more about Locker’s status on Wednesday, when Whisenhunt will at the very least tell us if he sits out practice, is limited or participates fully.

We should hear from Locker Wednesday, too.

But if it turns out to be significant enough for him to miss Sunday’s game at Indianapolis, odds are we won’t know it until during warm-ups that morning at Lucas Oil Stadium.