Fantasy Football Daily - 2021 Franchise Focus: Tennessee Titants

Episode Date: August 10, 2021

Joe Dolan (@FG_Dolan) and Tom Brolley (@TomBrolley) preview the Tennessee Titans 2021 season in the companion podcast to the 2021 Franchise Focus piece on FantasyPoints.com. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fantasy-points-podcast/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's time for the Fantasy Points podcast, brought to you by FantasyPoints.com. Top level fantasy football and NFL betting analysis from every perspective and angle, from numbers to the film room, with a single goal to help you score more fantasy points. The final week of Franchise Focus is here at the Fantasy Points podcast in the Franchise Focus series. My name is Joe Dolan. His name is Tom Broly. By the time this week is out, as a matter of fact, by the time Wednesday is over, we will have covered all 32 teams with podcast, an article series at fantasy points.com in typical fantasy points fashion, Tom.

I feel like we bid off more than we can chew. We have provided just like outrageous amounts of coverage for all 32 of these NFL teams. Please go to the website and check them out. You're going to be glad you did because we have broken down every possible angle on these teams. I mean it. Like everyone, every player we have projection. It has a little bit of a profile written up. It's going to be the basis for all of our August content.

And, you know, wrapping these up before the first preseason game was the goal. Let's put that out there, Tom, when we decided to start these, that we very much knew that getting them out of the door right before the first week of preseason games was, that was the goal, of course. It's not that we just started them two weeks too early and didn't get them done, two weeks too late and didn't get them done before training camp. That's exactly the goal. We have been scrambling, but we are glad to be bringing them to you today.

And, Tom, today we're going to be talking about, quite frankly, one of the easiest teams to break down for fantasy football. The Tennessee Titans, how are you doing today, my friend? Pretty good. I'm just excited to get these over with. It's been a lot of work. But, you know, you go through this process and you learn more. You think you have a grasp of all the players and the entire league. But then you go through these teams individually and you kind of see it, you know, even like through the coach's lens, you know, how they're, you know,

you know, aligning their depth charts and, you know, how the, how targets and carries might be distributed. And, you know, it's a good process for us to go through. So, you know, it's going to sharpen our August content here. We're already, you know, we're, we're starting to focus in on the guys that we want to draft and don't want to draft. And, you know, those articles will be coming out, you know, in the next week or so, our values and, you know, guys to avoid. and, you know, but this is really the first step in all of our content for the rest of August. So I encourage anybody if you just want to go back and read about your favorite team, maybe about the teams in your favorite team's division, or you can go back and read them all.

I'd highly recommend it. You'll learn a lot doing it. All right, Tom, let's talk Tennessee. Get them out of the way here because there's only really a handful of players you're considering drafting from this team. But let's talk about the basics here. season win total 9, minus 140 to the over, plus 115 to win the AFC South. My question to you is how much has that changed? Minus 150 to make the playoffs, plus 1,400 to win the AFC championship and plus 2,800 to go to the Super Bowl. Or, excuse me, to win the Super Bowl.

Tom, this team was an AFC finalist just two years ago losing to Kansas City. Now, the win total dropped from 9 and a half in late March to 9. However, have these odds changed in the wake of, I mean, in the wake of everything that's going down at Colts camp with the Colts just falling apart? Yeah, it has. I actually need to update that in our franchise focus thing. They're now at minus 120 to be the, you know, as the favorites here. That's even just swung in the last like week or so. they were the Colts were I believe at plus 120 to win the division before the Wents and the Nelson injury and the Colts the Titans were a close second favorite I think at plus 150 so those odds have swung quite a bit here in just the last week or so just after the Carson Wentz injury and the Quentin Nelson injury and for good reason you know this is

it was going to be a tightly contested division now you know just just potentially losing two key players on offense for the Colts, you know, that could potentially swing a game or two at the beginning of the season. So, you know, the Titans have become the favorites. And I personally thought the Titans, I would have made them the favorites. So now that you thought that was a better bet anyway. Yeah, now it's kind of corrected itself. I actually gave out an outright, gave out a, you know,

AFC South winner to the Jaguars at 10 to 1 earlier this year. That's earlier this summer with the, the team betting preview. So that's gotten considerably sweeter here. That's like in the plus 550, 600 range. So the AFC South that's pretty clearly going to be one of the worst divisions in football now. And the Titans are kind of the favorites here. But they did go, they underwent a lot of changes over the off season.

Let's roll through a couple of them here. They lost like Corey Davis and Jonu Smith, then Davian Clowny, Adory Jackson, some big names on both sides of the ball. you know, they brought in the big name, Polio Jones. That's the big one that headline the group. That was after the draft. But they also brought in Bud Dupree from the Steelers coming off an ACL injury. You know, Janoris Jenkins to, you know,

try to shore up that secondary bit. And they also drafted, you know, Caleb Farley early in the draft there. So, you know, they, a lot of changes here for the Titans. but, you know, still the favorite here going into the season. Yeah, so Tom, the question for fantasy now becomes, I think you would argue the defense, which was a strength when Dean Pease was there, is no longer such. And because of that, you question, how are they going to play offensively? Now, we know this team has run through Derek Henry.

I can't imagine that's going to change under Todd Downing, even though Arthur Smith has moved on. But could this team have to throw it a little bit more, Tom, just because, of the weakness of the defense, and then that becomes, and then that becomes maybe self-evident because this is a team that traded for Julio Jones to try to upgrade there, get a little bit more explosiveness in the past game. We know their past game has been super efficient with Ryan Tannahill, but the question I have for you is how much of that is on Arthur Smith, how much of that is the receivers, how much of that is because of Henry. It is a tough team to kind of get a grasp on if you think they're going to have to throw it a little bit more. Yeah, I think at the heart of things,

they still want to be very run-centric. This is, you know, I think they finished, you know, third and overall, you know, the third fewest, you know, passing your targets in the league last year. This offense at the end of the day still runs through Derek Henry, and the offensive line should be in better shape. You know, they'll get Taylor the Wahn back for an entire season here. He left pretty early in the season after the first month with his knee injury. So at the end of the day, it's still going to go through Henry, but if we're just seeing like, even like a marginal, just a slight uptick in passing volume, you know, with Holio Jones in the mix, next to AJ Brown, arguably the top, you know, the top tandem in the league at receiver, you know, big things could

be coming for Ryan Tannahill here. So he's a guy that's progressively risen up draft boards here throughout, you know, since the beginning of the summer, you know, he's, he's now routine. going inside the top 100 picks. And, you know, I see him going as, you know, early as the eighth, seventh, eighth round now. So, you know, people are certainly feeling more optimistic about him after the Holyo Jones trade. And for good reason, you know, he's been one of the most efficient quarterbacks in the league since he took over as the starter midseason two years ago for Marcus Marriota. So, and you bring in a guy like Holyo Jones, who's one of the best receivers of all time.

and for good reason, you know, the Tana Hills stock has certainly been climbing here this summer. All right, Tom, Derek Henry, I've kind of held the position that drafting third and fourth overall are like the worst picks this year because I think there's a clear drop off from McCaffrey and Cook to the next tier where you've got questions on Zique because he had a bad year last year. Camara, because the Saints are a mess. Henry because he doesn't catch passes. He's had the massive workload. Where are you drafting Derek Henry? And look, I have drafted him quite a bit because I have drawn the third and fourth pick in basically every best ball I have done, which is the worst spot to be.

So I have drafted him. But what's your read on Henry in the new offense? Are you worried? I mean, really the only thing that I think people can really have against it is, oh, the workload and he doesn't catch passes, which are valid concerns. Yeah, I'm with you, Joe. I feel like every one of my, I hate picking in like the three through seven or eight range. I feel like it's just kind of like a jumbled mess between Kamara, Derek Henry, Aaron Jones, Zeke, Travis Kelsey, you know, and then the two receivers with Devante Adams and Tyree Kill.

I really have a tough time differentiating there. And even take one bargaly. I didn't even mention him. Now, you know, he's looking much better here with getting cleared for practice. But, you know, at the very top, I moved Camara ahead of Derek Henry into the third spot. So I have Henry in the four spot. You know, it was based on the Michael Thomas information.

I just think, you know, most of the entire Saints offense might be going through Alvin Kamar. And, you know, with the way they might have to play, you know, he has a potential to maybe catch 90 passes this season. So I had to bump up Kamara just a little bit here. But Henry is, you know, he's so tied to game scripts, which is scary. But, you know, he's the one back in the league where you feel pretty comfortable that, you know, he's going to get 20 plus carries every week. You know, he's been up over 300 yards, you know, 300 carries each of the last two seasons. The rushing yards leader in both of those seasons as well.

And he's, you know, for good reason, the favorite again to do it. So, you know, he's the guy that I probably feel the fourth best. about, you know, that's why I have him in that, that fourth pick. But, you know, he is games, a little bit game script dependent. It is a bit scary with him. That's, you know, but he has those high upside games whenever he's able to get, you know, break off a couple big runs or, you know, when the Titans are playing from ahead. So he has those really high ceiling games that we love for fantasy football. Yeah. So my question with Henry is, and maybe it's kind of weird that I'd be talking about the cults when it comes to Henry.

But with the Titans now being the division favorite, Tom, that's good news for Henry. Because when they win, he averages 24.3 fantasy points per game. I believe that's over the last two seasons. In losses, basically half that. So the Titans being the division favorites is actually a feather in Henry's cap. Yeah, I mean, like you said, their one total has crept up here a little bit. You know, it's crept up all summer long, too.

There's been just some momentum here ever since the Holyo Jones trade. So it's just a question, you know, he would be better off with their defense was, you know, did play a little bit better. They did add some pieces, as we said at the top there. They should be a little bit better. They've been, you know, they were quite atrocious last year, you know, basically a bottom five past defense. They couldn't get after the quarterback at all. So they make just even some improvements defending the past this year. that will also help Derek Henry to be a little bit more consistent for fantasy.

Yeah, I know Derek Henry is like betting on an outlier, but the problem is he's been an outlier for like the last three seasons. So like, you know, eventually you're going to be right if you bet against Derek Henry. Eventually you will. I mean, that's just the nature of the position. That's the nature of football. I'm not sure I'm going to be doing it this year. You just look at Derek Henry.

He is an outlier, though. I mean, you know, the way he's built at the, you know, for the position, and everybody is, you know, trending more towards this, you know, 5-11, six-foot kind of back that's sleek in that 205 to 250 pound range. So he is the outlier just physically and for our purposes for fantasy football as well. Yeah. All right, Tom, that'll wrap up the Tennessee Titans analysis here at the Fantasy Points podcast. Make sure you follow Tom at Tom Brawley on Twitter. I'm at FG underscore Dolan.

Follow the site at Fantasy PTS. We have seen the subscriptions at utterly rolling in. And Tom, I guarantee you that's going to be more when people realize preseason football's on. We just got a couple emails this week from some of our long-term leagues starting up. Yep, it's going to be a good time. So a fantasy draft season is, what, three weeks away. Oh, yeah, the doodles are coming out. I just filled out one to get the times right.

So, yeah, it's doodle time to get draft time. Yeah, so we're going to have to fill out doodles. But the thing is there's so many of them that, like, I'm going to have to go and change some other ones once a draft time gets confirmed for another. Oh, man, it's going to be wild. But, I mean, drafts are only fun if everybody's there. It's going to be great. All right, Tom, thank you very much for listening to us here.

We're going to be back with our final two podcasts. One later today. That'll be the Washington football team. And then we talk about the extremely exciting Houston Texans tomorrow. So thank you, everybody, and we will be back later today. Thanks for tuning in to this edition of the Fantasy Points podcast. Remember to subscribe, wait, and. review on your favorite platform and come join the roster at fantasy points.com.