Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Football Friday - Keys to the Ravens Game, #TicTacTitans Film Review of the Ravens Defense & Gambling/Fantasy Breakdown

Episode Date: January 10, 2020

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Welcome to the Locked on Titans podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Rowland. Titans fans, it is a playoff divisional round, football Friday. The Titans continue to have games. It is fantastic. Hopefully they will be able to be victorious against the Ravens, and we can do this again next week.

I hope you guys are ready for this game as our three-step game prep process began on Tuesday with setting a statistical foundation, matching that up with adding context from our Crossover Wednesday conversation with Kevin Allstriker from the Locked on Ravens podcast. Yesterday in our Tic-Tac Titans film breakdown, we started looking at the Ravens by taking a look at the offense, and today we will cap that off by talking about the Ravens defense in our Tic Tac

Titans film breakdown this Friday before we jump into that breakdown in our first segment as always we are going to do a little game preview I'm going to give you my keys to the game in terms of the game plan on offense and defense and then my key players and key matchups to watch as well and then in our final segment we will make sure to give you guys all the fantasy and gambling information that we do every week. Talk about who are some options in daily fantasy if you guys are still doing that. And then talk about the line and over under for this game as well. So a jam-packed show.

Excited to get into everything with you guys. Let's get it. How can the Tennessee Titans defeat the Baltimore Ravens in the divisional round and advance to the conference championship? Let's talk about some keys to the game. First, let's talk some larger overall points about the game plan here. The Titans are going to have to contain Lamar Jackson. So to do that, you're going to have to have your edge rushers come up the field off the edge and force Lamar Jackson to give the ball to his running back up

the middle. The quarterback running on the outside and Lamar Jackson and his talent is something that defenses are not used to seeing. One thing that defenses are used to seeing is a run play up the middle. So the Titans need to give themselves the best opportunity possible to see plays that they've seen before and that's forcing Lamar Jackson to get the ball out of his hands. I would expect the Titans edge rushers to come up the field quickly and just go straight after Lamar Jackson. Now when he does keep the ball and finds a way to get outside because he will the Titans outside defenders are going to have to keep contained. They're going to have to stay disciplined, not fall for the fakes and the misdirection and the motion that the Ravens' offense will throw at you. Now, on the offensive side of the ball, the Titans are obviously going

to have to run the ball, but they're going to have to do it the same way they did it against the Patriots. From heavy personnel, multiple tight ends, a fullback. We saw a few plays out there where the Titans had all three tight ends and Kari Blossom game at fullback on the field. What they're trying to do is get the Ravens out of their preferred package of personnel. That is multiple cornerbacks on the field, five defensive backs, six defensive backs. Same thing as the Patriots. Their strength is their secondary. They want to utilize as many of those players as they can. The Titans going heavy will make the Ravens go into

their base personnel with more linebackers, and that should give them an advantage just like it did last week. The passing game, however, is going to have to get going for the Titans. They're not going to be able to survive the way that they survived last week against the Patriots because the Ravens offense is going to score more than the Patriots did last week. One easy way to take advantage of this Baltimore Ravens aggressive defense, which we are going to break down the Ravens defense more in our second segment today on the Locked on Titans podcast, but what they do is they blitz. They blitz nonstop. They blitz the most of any team in the league, and when you have a team bringing pressure like that and dedicating itself to bring in pressure, you have to utilize the screen game. The screen game is going to be

critical for the Titans to kind of neutralize the pressure that the Ravens are bringing. Make them think twice about bringing all that pressure because you're going to get taken advantage of in the screen game. If the Titans offensive tackles and tight ends can get out on the perimeter, get their hands on the Ravens defensive backs, and get the ball in the hands of an A.J. Brown, Jonu Smith, or Corey Davis, have them break tackles and get up the field like they've been so successful at all year, that is the recipe for success for the Titans. And then you might get the Ravens to adjust, not bring as much pressure throughout the game because you're getting them in bad spots with

the screens. And then you can run a little bit more of your regular offense when you have less heat on your quarterback non-stop every single play. Now, I don't expect the Ravens to back off from what they do, but I do expect the Titans to utilize the screen game, and not only that, they'll need to utilize bunch formations on the outside. That's when you have three guys all together within about a yard of each other outside. What that allows is the Titans to get more clean releases. When the Ravens are playing man coverage, they are up on the wide receiver, hands on, right in their face, pressing. The best way to get a good release when you've got people on you like that is to cross different offensive players right

at the snap, right at the line of scrimmage. That's going to create confusion for the Titans. If you guys go back and remember when the Titans gave up that long touchdown in the Texans game, it was on man coverage and the Titans with Logan Ryan and Tremaine Brock, they blew an assignment. They miscommunicated the man coverage. It left somebody wide open. The Texans were in a bunch formation there. So it causes confusion with the defensive backs and they don't know who to pick up, who their responsibility is. The Titans are going to have to utilize those bunch formations as well, along with screens on offense to get this passing game going.

As for the key players to the game, Taylor LeJuan and Jack Conklin as the tackles outside, not just setting the edge in the run game for those outside zone runs, but having success in screens will rely on them getting outside quickly and getting hands on defensive backs. Also, Logan Ryan, Kenny Vaccaro, Kevin Byard, Harold Landry, Kamalei Correa, Derek Roberson on the edges, on the outsides. These players are going to have to stay disciplined. They're going to have to hold their responsibility and they're going to have to stay home and not get fooled for the Titans have a chance to slow down this Ravens rushing attack. And then Ryan Tannehill ultimately will have to

have a better game than he had last week it's cut and dry it's simple he's going to have to play better if the Titans expect to win in Baltimore on the road and advance to the conference championship before we jump into our tick-tack Titans film breakdown of the Ravens defense let's get a little update on the most recent injury report from Thursday's practice for the Titans. Adam Humphreys and Jayon Brown both missed practice. It's pretty obvious at this moment in time that they're not going to be able to play in the game.

Jayon is a huge loss for the Titans as, you know, considering the offense this is going against and everything I've been breaking down for you guys, having somebody like Jayon Brown in there with his speed and his quickness to deal with Lamar Jackson in this running game, that would be ideal. He was one of the main players that I had in mind when I said multiple weeks ago, I want the Ravens. I want a shot at the Ravens. I think the Titans are ideally suited to beat the Ravens offense.

And the reason that I said that is because of someone like Jayon Brown. Now, they're going to rely on all the other guys I mentioned in my game preview just now, you know, Kenny Vaccaro, Kevin Byard, Logan Ryan, the outside guys, the edge rushers, but J. Allen Brown's speed sideline to sideline would have been a huge help. And it is unfortunate that it doesn't look like the Titans will have him on Saturday night. But in a positive development, Adoree Jackson was able to get back to practice today.

As I had mentioned at the beginning of the week, I figured it was just maintenance, him missing practice early on. He's coming back from an injury. He can't be in fantastic shape. He's probably sore from playing his first football in quite some time. So it makes sense that they would bring him back slowly. But if he played last week and didn't re-injure himself, Adoree Jackson is going to play this week,

despite seeing some internet rumors that he's going to be one and done in the playoffs. No, Adoree Jackson will be out on the practice field, and he was able to practice on Thursday, so that kind of proves that for us. He'll be ready to go. That wraps up everything from the Titans side. It's still up in the air whether Mark Ingram will play for the Ravens, but as soon as I see information on that, I will make sure to tweet that out at TicTacTitans. So make sure you're following me on Twitter there and please subscribe to the show and download if you have not already. Now, let's get into that Tic-Tac

Titans defensive breakdown for the Baltimore Ravens next. It's time for a Tick-Tack Titans film review. Let's go ahead and complete our three-step game prep process that started with our statistical foundation on Tuesday, the context added with our crossover Wednesday conversation, and then yesterday's breakdown on the offense matched up with today's breakdown on the defense. I actually wanted to show you guys two plays from the Baltimore Ravens defense that I think illustrate exactly what we're going to see from them against the Titans and kind of tell the story of what they've had success with since the acquisition of cornerback Marcus Peters that really changed their defense from the beginning

of the season until now. So we will talk about that before we jump into the two plays. Just like yesterday, I want to kind of set the stage for you guys about what their defense does. So, like the Patriots last week, the strength of the Ravens' defense is in their secondary. Their three cornerbacks are all studs. Jimmy Smith and Marcus Peters on the outside. Marlon Humphrey, who isn't a natural slot corner, but has played slot corner for the Ravens this year, is fantastic as well. Earl Thomas at the deep back end safety. Free safety is one of the best in the NFL and has been for about a decade now. And then they did lose starting

strong safety Tony Jefferson, like Keith mentioned on Wednesday, but Chuck Clark and Brandon Carr have both played the safety position for the Ravens this year and done a fantastic job for them. So they rely on those guys to play man coverage, just like how the Patriots did with Stephon Gilmore and JC Jackson and Patrick Chung, those guys. The Ravens defense is predicated on the fact that they're going to be able to have success in man coverage. That allows you to blitz 55% of the time with your front seven and your linebackers and do stunts with your defensive linemen and have time to do that because you trust your defensive back. So all of the coverages and all of the concepts that we see from the Ravens are all based

on the fact that they think they can hold up in-man coverage. And if they're able to hold up in-man coverage, well then opposing offenses don't have a chance against the pressure that they're bringing. Now, in the plays that I show you, both from the San Francisco game, I kept going back to that game because out of all the games I watched, that's the only game where I saw a team really put up a fight against them, and that's a high-level offense in San Francisco. If the Ravens are giving them trouble with the plays that I'm going to show you, then you best believe that they're going to give the Titans trouble with those, and they're going to have to be ready for these looks. So, one thing that you guys know without me showing you any footage, any plays, any film is that the Ravens blitz.

I've mentioned this number throughout the week. I mentioned it in the last minute, 55% blitz rate for this team. You guys know what that looks like. You know, when they're bringing the house and they're playing man everywhere else, you've seen the cover zero blitzes. I broke that down last week with the Patriots, the cover zero blitz. I've talked about that. So you guys know what that looks like. So you know that the Ravens are going to do that. And that's kind of the foundation of what they're going to do.

They're going to bring everybody. They're going to play man on the outsides with whoever's left. So you know that. And we can move forward to what they do other than that. The Titans are going to have to plan for the cover zero blitz, but when the Ravens are showing you these stacked boxes with nine people in the box, everyone up on the line of scrimmage, and it looks like they're bringing the house, what can they do besides just bring everybody to confuse offenses and cause mistakes?

Well, we are going to answer that question with our two plays, so let's jump into our film breakdown before I do. Remember, please follow me on Twitter at Tic Tac Titans, where I'll be posting the visuals to line up with these breakdowns. Let's look at play one. There's about 13 minutes left in the first quarter. The 49ers have the ball in the Baltimore 33. It is third and two. Here, the 49ers offense does what I expect the Titans to do a little bit they come out in five wide and they have a bunch with three wide receivers all within a yard of each other on the right hand side they're trying to get a clean release for a wide receiver cause a miscommunication by Baltimore's defense now that doesn't happen very often and it didn't happen on this play so

looking at the Ravens defense they come out in a 50 front. All five offensive linemen are covered by defensive linemen. They have everybody. We're not talking about a stacked box of eight people, a stacked box of nine people. The Ravens literally have every player on their defense within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage. They are telling the 49ers, we're blitzing everybody. We're playing man. We're stacking the box we don't care we're not worried about getting beat deep by your wide receivers that the Ravens defense has no fear here it's it's incredible so what they do is they stay in base personnel which is something I have been saying they want to get out of but with it being third and two they're worried about the run

so what the Ravens want to do here because of that, having more linebackers on the field, they're not going to blitz six people and leave everybody one-on-one with no safety help. They are going to blitz five people, the five on the line of scrimmage, help out their linebackers and man coverage by having Earl Thomas play a robber look. They don't even have a safety deep to actually drop back and be that single high safety.

They're leaving Earl Thomas within eight yards of the line of scrimmage to take away anything over the middle or anything short and intermediate over the middle and help out those linebackers who are going to be in man coverage. So this is a way that they give you a variation of that cover zero blitz. They're going to show cover zero. They're going to have eight people in the box, and then they may not even drop a safety deep. They'll just play man coverage, trust their outside corners to cover anything deep, and then have Earl Thomas play a robber over the middle and take away anything that the quarterback is looking at.

It's very effective, especially when you're expecting six people to come and thinking you're going to have to get rid of the ball immediately. When you drop back and you don't have that immediate pressure, well, now as a quarterback, you kind of have to make a decision of what to do. It throws you off of what you expected. The Ravens are able to soak up everything that the 49ers do on this play. They run a couple man-beating routes where they try to get a good release, but the Ravens play solid man coverage, don't allow anything to happen.

Like I said, Jimmy G doesn't know where to go. He gets a look he's not expecting completely. He panics in the pocket, tries to take up a middle, and it turns into a sack for the Ravens defense, and they force the 49ers to a fourth down. So right there, that show and cover zero, all 11 guys within 10 yards in the box, but they don't bring six. They don't run that cover zero blitz. They bring five, and then they have Earl Thomas or a safety play a robber and take over everything in the middle because they aren't even worried about deep because of the talent of their outside cornerbacks and man coverage that's a tough task to deal with the Titans are going to

have to win one-on-one on the outside with their wide receivers if they expect to have a chance or run some screens like I mentioned in the first segment and give their guys an opportunity to get the ball in their hands and turn up field with blockers in front of them so look for that we are going to jump into play two the 49ers have the ball with four minutes left in the third quarter it is third and eight in the red zone on Baltimore's 14 yard line here the Ravens are doing a similar thing now they are finally into their nickel coverage where they have five defensive backs on the field. This is what they like to do. They got four defensive linemen on the line of scrimmage, two linebackers there, and they're looking like they're going to bring everybody.

They have nine people or eight people in the box, both safeties, both linebackers, and the four defensive linemen. They're all in the box showing a cover zero blitz potential. Well, here, this is a completely different variation out of a different personnel group. They don't bring that blitz on third and eight like Jimmy G is expecting. They drop Earl Thomas back deep as an actual post safety. Not only do they do that, they drop Chuck Clark back as a deep safety, who's typically their strong safety. They drop him back to cover anything deep

in the middle of the field and then they have Earl Thomas who is on the left hand side of the offense looking like he's going to blitz off the edge run back into the middle and become a robber and take away anything in the middle of the field just like he did with the last play but this time he has safety help behind him so he can be a little more risky there. This puts the 49ers offense in a really tough spot. When you're expecting pressure and you're running these coverages that are just expected to beat man coverage right off the snap and be open, but then you have two players in a zone, a robber, and a deep post safety, that just throws you off of what you were expecting to get.

You don't get quite the pressure that you were expecting and it throws off the timing of when you were expecting to throw. You don't get quite the pressure that you were expecting and it throws off the timing of when you were expecting to throw the ball. So really it just creates confusion, all the movement, all of the blitzing and then backing off out of the blitzes. It just really puts offenses on their heels and that's why the Ravens have been so dominant on defense since they traded for Marcus Peters. That improved their ability to play man coverage which allowed them and opened them up to do all these different things that they like to do on defense now. So hopefully that gives you guys a better understanding. Ultimately, with the five guys bringing pressure on him, Jimmy G sitting in the

pocket, not getting the look that he expected. He had to go ahead and throw the ball away and ended up being an incompletion. The 49ers had to settle for a field goal that tied up the game at the time, but ultimately got them beat because they were only able to get a field goal on this red zone possession. So the Ravens mixing up coverages, giving you that cover zero blitz, making you think about that, and then later in the game, using variations of those looks and giving you different coverage concepts is how the Ravens defense is eliminating offenses here in the second half of the season. The Titans will have to be ready for not only the cover zero blitz, but the looks that the Ravens will show you after they go off of that. That is going to do it for our Tick Tack Titans

film breakdown for the week. Hopefully you guys did enjoy that. We covered the offense yesterday, covered the defense today, so you should have a great idea of what to expect from the Ravens on Saturday night. Next, we are going to talk about who are some daily fantasy options for you guys in the Titans game that you could pop into your lineup and potentially win you some money. Speaking of winning some money, we're also going to talk about the line, talk about the over-under, and see if we can use our Titans knowledge to help out our wallets this weekend in the playoffs my beautiful dark twisted fantasy preview let's talk about some daily fantasy options for you guys on the Titans offense and possibly the defense. Get an idea of who's a pretty good bargain right now and who

could help the Titans out in a big spot where they really need to improve the offensive production if they expect to stay with this high scoring dynamic offense of the Baltimore Ravens. But before we talk about our options, of course, let's just run down here and see how the Ravens perform against fantasy players. Against quarterbacks, they are only allowing 12 points per game. That is the second best fantasy defense going against quarterbacks in the NFL to the first one, which the Titans faced last week, the New England Patriots. Against running backs, they give up 19 points a game. That is fourth best in the NFL. Wide receivers, this is really the only area of opportunity just based on the numbers.

They give up 33 points to wide receivers per week. That's 14th best in the NFL. Tight ends, they are the very best defense in the NFL at limiting tight end production in terms of fantasy points. They only give up seven points a week. And then obviously with their dynamic offense, they are not friendly to fantasy defenses, giving up 3.13 points per game to fantasy defenses. That is the third best in the NFL.

So taking a look at those options, I know Derrick Henry is expensive. I know A.J. Brown is expensive, but with Derrick Henry, A.J. Brown, and Tajay Sharp, I think you could have a decent option from the Titans game to put into your daily fantasy lineup. I wouldn't trust Tannehill at this moment in time because the Ravens do so many things on defense. If things go poorly, time because the Ravens do so many things on defense. If things go poorly, he could have some turnovers with all the confusion they create. And against a defense very similar to the Ravens last week, he just didn't have a lot of success. So can't really count on Tannehill as a fantasy option this week, even if I expect him to play a little bit better. Derrick Henry is incredibly

expensive. He's only going to be more expensive after last week's showing. He is worth the money. I don't know how else to say it. Anybody who took Henry last week would tell you in Daily Fantasy, he is worth the money. Find other areas of opportunity to cut down your budget, but you want Derrick Henry in that lineup. The Titans have proven that they can run on any defense, regardless of what the numbers prior show. The Titans' strength is running the ball, and nobody can stop them right now. So Derek Henry, a great option as the foundation of your daily fantasy lineup. I also love A.J. Brown here. The Titans have to get him involved.

They have to get him the ball, and I expect Arthur Smith early to focus on getting him opportunities in wide receiver screens, maybe running him the ball on a reverse. Either way, I expect the ball to get into A.J. Brown's hands on Saturday night. And finally, Tajay Sharp, I expect him to have a very big game here. The Ravens have vulnerability against slot receivers, even though Marlon Humphrey has been so good in that role. So Tajay Sharp is Ryan Tannehill's red zone option as well, more often than not, because he runs such precise routes and has such good, reliable hands, catches with his hands. So I expect Tajay Sharp to have a pretty decent game here as well.

When you're talking about daily fantasy in the playoffs, guys, you've got to take a few risks on some lesser known people, some people in the Tajay Sharp area that maybe aren't getting as many targets each week, but you're just going to have to have somebody who is cheap in daily fantasy pop for you. That's the reality of the situation when it comes to playoff daily fantasy. So Tajay Sharp is a lock for my daily fantasy lineup this week in my flex position or my third wide receiver spot based on his price, opportunity, and what the Ravens allow on defense. So that wraps up my conversation here about fantasy.

Not a lot of options left. I know I am playing daily fantasy in the playoffs. You guys are as well. And it's very difficult to pick a solid team with the amount of games that you're choosing from. But those are my three options for daily fantasy that I would point you guys towards. We are going to jump into keeping it plus 100 and talk about the gambling information for this game as well. The Titans right now are nine and a half

point underdogs. They are getting nine and a half points. That's outrageous. Just like last week, it was outrageous that the Titans were getting five points, four and a half points against the Patriots. This is an outrageous line as well. I know that the Ravens offense is great. I know that their defense is great. They're the best team in the AFC, but this Titans offense is obviously going to get more explosive. They're still going to be able to run the ball and the defense is starting to play better now that Adoree Jackson is back. So nine and a half points is insane. I would take the Titans in that scenario. That's too many points for a playoff game. And if you could tease the Titans up,

that would be even more insane to get them at 15.5 or something like that. Find another game you like. That would just be incredible. And I would feel very confident going into that game that the Titans can keep it within 15.5. And I think I'm pretty confident that they'll keep it within 9.5 as well. The over-under here is 47 points. I'm pretty confident that they'll keep it within 9.5 as well. The over-under here is 47 points. I'm less confident on that. If you wanted to do a little bit of a teaser

where you got the Titans up to 15.5 and then you got the over-under down to 41 and then took the over, that would be a pretty safe bet. I think it's going to be over 47, but Vegas does a great job of giving you a number that makes you sweat, and 47 is one of those because of all the different possibilities in this game. I don't feel very comfortable going with the over-under. I would lean over, but if I had the opportunity to tease the Titans up and tease that over-under down, that's really where I would be trying to make

my bed. So that is going to wrap up our show for today. We completed our three-step game prep process by going over the Ravens defense in our second segment. I gave you guys my keys to the game as for the game plan and for the key players in the game in our first segment. And then we just went over all the fantasy and gambling information. It's been a heck of a week of shows. If you've been subscribed and been following along all week, we talked about the statistical foundation for the Ravens, added context with our crossover Wednesday conversation, did our film breakdown so you guys can see how it manifests itself out on the field. And I feel like I am fully ready and you guys are fully ready for this game on Saturday night and as informed as we could possibly be about

the Ravens and this matchup. So look forward to watching the game. That's all it comes down to now, folks. I hope you guys enjoyed everything. Please subscribe if you aren't already. Follow me on Twitter at TicTacTitans. As always, I am your host, Tyler Rowland, hoping to be back with you guys on another Victory Monday.

This is the Locked on Titans podcast.