Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - King Henry Reigns Supreme - Game Recap, #TitanUpTitanDown & Song of the AFC South

Episode Date: November 25, 2019

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Welcome to the Locked on Titans podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Rowland. Titans fans, it is a victory Monday! And man, that felt good. When have the Titans put together two back-to-back victories like that? I'm gonna have to go back and take a look after I come down from the happiness of this win. Just an enjoyable watch throughout. Excellent. Always love beating up on the Jaguars. Who doesn't? I mean, that's kind of like our little brother almost or something like that. I can't stand the Jaguars. I was really, really sad with the way the Titans played in week three

and losing that 999 consecutive day streak without a loss. Happy to get that streak back going again. So, of course, we are going to do a little Rollins review and take a look at the game, give you my big picture takeaways from what I saw out there, and kind of just go over some of the key moments and relive the game in general. In our second segment, everybody's favorite, tighten up, tighten down. I'll go over some individual performances, some things that I like, and just a few small things that I wasn't really happy with seeing and hope to see some improvement there.

But it's kind of just nitpicking after a victory like that. And in our third segment, like we always do on Mondays, I will go over Song of the AFC South and the playoff picture preview and give you guys an idea of where the Titans stand now after the weekend's games. And we might just have a little bit of a discussion about what's on the horizon for some of the other possible opponents the Titans are seeing in this playoff chase. So excited to get into all of it with you guys. What a victory. Can't wait to break it all down with you. Let's get it.

Your Tennessee Titans lead story. A huge division win against the Jacksonville Jaguars at home to take the Titans above.500 for the first time since week one, evens the season series with the Jaguars at 1-1, and keeps the Titans squarely in the playoff chase while it kind of eliminates the Jaguars from contention at this point. So let's go ahead and take a look at the ball game. 42-20 and it wasn't really that close. What's crazy about this game is how slow the game started. Let's go back and take a look. First quarter ended 0-0. Halftime 7-3 Titans. You're telling me this game ended 42-20?

Pretty insane. That third quarter, the Titans came out and put it on the Jags. It was like they were done playing with their food. They had shot themselves in the foot a little bit in the first half. Time to finally play our kind of football. And they sure did. 28-8 in that third quarter. It basically salted the game away for the Titans. Everything

else after that was pretty much just garbage time and just kind of getting to the finish line for the defense and for the Jags offense. The Jags defense really didn't want to play anymore either. It's pretty clear after that third quarter that the game was in hand. Some of the big things that I'm taking away from this game, the Titans continue to be scorching hot in the red zone with Ryan Tannehill at quarterback. They went three for four in this game with the only opportunity that they missed being the Ryan Tannehill fumble, which we're going to talk a little bit about. That was our only missed cue in the red zone. And quite frankly, that was just a really unfortunate circumstance. So what happened with that play, it was a strip sack of Ryan Tannehill by the Jaguars

defensive end, Yannick Ngakwe. He's a very talented player, very talented player. So what he did on the play previous to that was Taylor LeJuan was basically done blocking for the play, and he put a cheat shot into his ribs. Thought it was kind of a, it's not really something you're going to see penalized. The guy's not going to get thrown out. They're not going to review it, but it's just a dirty play when you're out there competing and trying to be professional. It's just one of those dirty plays, but against somebody like Taylor, it's hard to complain. But anyway, it knocked Taylor out. It knocked his wind out, it seemed, on the

field. He just lost his breath, and he had to come out for one play. And in that one play, Yannick Ngakwe just whooped Dennis Kelly and got the strip sack, got the recovery, the Holy Trinity for an edge rusher. But that was pretty much the only success that the Jaguars had to speak of until garbage time in the fourth quarter, because when the Titans did come out in the third quarter, we start with the Dennis Kelly touchdown. What a play, and then what a celebration afterwards. I'll try to find a way to get that up on my Twitter account, at Tic Tac Titans, for you guys, but an excellent celebration there. Drinking some beers with all the offensive

linemen, or insinuating that they would be drinking some beers. It was excellent. Love that, and then the two Derrick Henry touchdowns back-to-back after a nice forced fumble by Darren Bates on the kickoff. Gotta love that. And then capped it off with a nice A.J. Brown long touchdown. A great game for A.J. Brown as well. We'll talk about that in our second segment. But those are kind of my big takeaways here. The Titans were 3-4 in the red zone.

4-8 on third down. I want to see a little improvement there, but that's an improvement over the way that they've played so far this year. As for the defense, the Jaguars were able to get a lot of production going. Leonard Fournette had over 90 yards and two touchdowns. Nick Foles had around 270 passing yards, I believe, but a lot of that was just garbage time. It was 35-3 at one point before the Jaguars put more points up on the board. So the Titans defense just played safe, didn't give up any big plays, which is something that we talked about early.

Leonard Fournette had a couple of pretty good runs, one long one, one long catch. But other than that, the Titans basically limited the Jaguars offense, made sure that they weren't able to get any chunk plays down the field. That's all you can really ask for out of this defense and a blowout like that, they're not going to completely eliminate the other offense when they have so many opportunities. The Titans offense is going up and down the field scoring at will. The defense is going to, you know, give up some production from the other team, being garbage time and the type of defense that you're going to play back and often coverage. It's the same thing that happened in the last game, except for the Titans were on the other

end of it, and Mariota got a lot of garbage time yards, and it made his stat line look okay. But either way, a great win for the Titans, 42-20. The defense did what they had to do. The offense exploded. Derrick Henry is the king. The Titans are 6-5, and we will see where the season goes from here. So that's going to do it for my game recap. Went over some memorable plays, just some things that stood out to me about the offense and defense. In our second segment, we were going to do Titan Up and Titan Down, get into some individual performances. I do have a couple of things I want to nitpick on, but for the most part, of course, it is mostly Titan Up. So can't wait to jump into that with you guys. We'll do that next. Fellas, let's talk about the bedroom. Ever wish

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A lot of tighten ups to get to this week, of course. That makes sense. The Titans played fantastic. But there are some tighten downs that I do want to get to. I want to get those out of the way and get to them real quick because they're not very harsh, quite frankly. Rashawn Evans is my first Titan down. He just didn't have a very good game. One tackle.

He did have a sack late in the game, but just wasn't very impactful. Didn't really bring the physicality that I expected going against Leonard Fournette. It seemed like the run game was honestly just getting a little bottled up on some plays before Rashawn had a chance to get there by the defensive line. And then on other plays, it just seemed like Rashawn was overflowing and not really there to make the stops that I expected him to make. So he's been pretty much fantastic for most of the year, but this wasn't one of his better performances whatsoever.

So it felt only right that I had to mention that. LaShawn Sims, I don't think he played bad, but he did get banged up at the end of the game. And we saw Joshua Kalou out there as a cornerback. The Titans are really, really struggling right now in the defensive back group. If for some reason LaShawn Sims' injury is significant or severe, let's hope that he can come back and play because while Josh Kalou made some great plays during the season in special teams, he is primarily a special teams player. I would not want to rely on him to play full-time cornerback

given the circumstances. So that would be my second tighten down just because he did get hurt. And then my last one is Dennis Kelly. While he's one of the better backup tackles, this is just another example. Some people we saw on Titans Twitter or the Facebook communities, you know, saying Dennis Kelly is better than Taylor LeJuan. That's just madness. I've been thoroughly against that for most of the season.

Anyone who says that is just out of control. I know that Taylor gets on all of her nerves with some of his antics, but Dennis Kelly is not the player that Taylor LeJuan is, and it's really not close. And we saw that, as I mentioned in the first segment, Yannick Ngokwe knocked Taylor LeJuan's breath out of him and knocked him out of the game for one play, and literally one play while the Titans are in the red zone. Dennis Kelly gives up the pressure by Ngokwe and gives up the strip sack. So Tannehill definitely, let's do that. Let's do that as well.

Another Titan down. Ryan Tannehill, he had a good game. I'm not saying he played bad, but the strip sacks, he's been stripped in every single game that he started or played for the Titans so far. It's definitely an issue with him. It's something that has to be corrected. I mean, it happens way too often.

It's not, you know, this one, Dennis Kelly got whooped, quite frankly. I'm not putting the strip sack on Ryan Tannehill, but I'm not going to absolve him of blame when this has been a consistent pattern. So at this point, he's partially to blame whether he's mostly to blame or not. It's something consistent about him that he has to sure up. Pretty damn good game for Tannehill. Damn good run here that he's put the team on. But, do have to mention that as a Titan down, his issues with holding on to the ball in the pocket.

But forget all that. The Titans won 42-20. We are going to the Titan Ups. Okay, let's do this. First one, you guys guess. Ah, Derrick Henry. Duh. Who would have thunk it?

19 carries, 159 yards, two touchdowns, running all over Jacksonville as always. The main reason I want to bring him up, I've been kind of in between what the Titans need to pay him in the offseason. At this point, with the way he's running, we're looking at $13 to $14 million a year for Derrick Henry. I think that's a little bit of an overpay because he doesn't add any value in the passing game,

but I don't see how this team can deny him what his importance to the team is. He's more important to this team than any other team in the NFL he knows that his agent is going to know that and we're going to have to pay him accordingly that's just the reality of this situation now what I do want to see is the Titans have some very very difficult run defenses coming up here in the last few games of the season so let's see how he does against you know some of the less porous run defenses in the league. I mean, he just saw back-to-back two of the bottom five run defenses in the league and took care of business. But let's see how the Titans do in the run game with Derrick Henry

against some of the more stout run defenses in the NFL coming up in the next few weeks. Moving forward, A.J. Brown. I'm not doing the wide receiver one thing. I talk about that quite frequently and why that's kind of an irrelevant conversation. But A.J. Brown, I'm not doing the wide receiver one thing. I talk about that quite frequently and why that's kind of an irrelevant conversation. But A.J. Brown, four catches, 135 yards, one touchdown. The long touchdown reception that really, you know, iced the game away. It was 35-3 at that point in time, and you knew there was no chance that the Jaguars were going to be able to come back in that game. A.J. just continues to be a game-breaker.

While he's not an excellent route runner, he doesn't have fantastic hands, any of those qualities. He's just so good with the ball in his hands. He can improve his route running over time. Hopefully his catching ability continues to improve as he gets more comfortable with the offense. But once they get the ball in his hands and he turns up field, being at his size and his speed he is just an absolute force in the open field and seeing him get all those yards after catch that's a weird thing to say yards after catch yards his yak seeing him rack up all that yak it's just a a sight for sore eyes for a franchise that's been devoid of real top-end wide receiver talent for so long.

So really hope A.J. can continue to progress in some of his areas of weakness and just continue to build on the strengths that are obvious out on the field. Adoree Jackson held D.J. Chark to five catches for 38 yards. A couple of those catches came in garbage time. Adoree just played fantastic. I know that he gave up a pretty hefty stat line to Tyreek Hill last week, but as I said last week, Adoree played great. He's just playing great. He's played fantastic this year, and I think not having to worry about the punt return duties has really opened him up to just focus on being a damn good cornerback. Welcome back, Jayon Brown. 11 tackles today and excellent

coverage on Leonard Fournette. The Jacks seem to really be targeting Leonard Fournette. The Jacks seem to really be targeting Leonard Fournette out of the backfield in the flats. And David Long was actually the one who gave up the longest Leonard Fournette catch. But how many times did we see Jayon Brown one-on-one tackle Leonard Fournette out in the flat when it's just them on a catch? Just fantastic from Jayon Brown to be his size and undersized linebacker and be able to so easily take down an oversized running back like Leonard Fournette. Just great. Jayon Brown's a fantastic player. One of the most underrated players in the NFL. Harold Landry, eight sacks. Welcome to the honor roll. It just seems to be a weekly occurrence at this point. Great to see Harold Landry taking that second year leap that we all hoped he would. Ryan Suckup was six for six on his extra points. Not that that's incredibly

impressive, but it's important for Suckup to get some confidence. We know that he's a decent kicker coming off that injury. Just good to see him get into a rhythm, get some confidence, and see every kick go through. You know, it's just like a shooter in basketball. You need to see the ball go through the hoop. Suckup got to see the ball go through the uprights multiple times today, six for six, so hopefully that can carry on to some field goals. The last thing I want to do is a big, big tighten up for J-Rob to go. General Manager John Robinson, look, Kalief Raymond, pretty good on kickoff returns, adds an element of speed

to the Titans' offense when needed, had a catch today. LaShawn Sims, the fourth cornerback on the team, stepping in and having a pretty dang good performance considering the circumstances. Darren Bates, a core special teamer who was brought over here a couple of seasons ago to really be the captain of this special teams unit, forces a fumble in a big situation to help the Titans really turn the tide completely. And then Joshua Kalou getting snaps out at cornerback.

The block that he had last week on the field goal. I mean, all of these end of the roster guys. Think, guys. These aren't even starters. These are the guys who are taking up the roster spots from 35 and beyond, from 38 and beyond. There's 46 active players on game day. We're talking about the last six, last eight guys who are active making huge

plays week to week. This roster is so talented. And during the dark times when we said, yeah, the Titans are maybe a QB away here because of how talented the roster is. This is why. This is exactly what gives me hope, at least, that this Titans team with just a little bit better quarterback play could really turn it on, and we're seeing that. It's coming to fruition, 4-1 in the last five. The Titans are one of the hottest teams in the NFL, and a lot of that is because of how strong this roster is due to John Robinson's skills in drafting. Just excellent. Excellent by J. Robin. Let's not forget that this team is competitive week in and week out

and has been for the last three seasons because of what he has done with this roster, turning over one of the worst teams in the NFL in 2015-2014 into an absolute contender for the playoffs year to year. We get frustrated with this team. I understand why. But year to year they are contending and week to week they are contending to win games and to make the playoffs. Thank you, J-Rob.

Thank you, John Robinson, for making this a real, legit NFL football team. That is going to do it for our second segment. That was Tighten Up, Tighten Down. Went a little long there, but I know everyone enjoys that, and it's good to point out some of the individual performances that we saw out there today that made a huge impact that we need to see going forward. So that is going to do it for Tighten Up and Tighten Down. We are going to jump into our third segment, Song of the AFC South, and our playoff picture preview so we can

take a look at the results from Sunday and see how it impacted the Titans' playoff chances. Also, look at how it impacted the Titans' ability to win the division, which is not out of the realm of possibility and may honestly be the Titans' easiest route to getting a playoff spot. So we're going to talk about that next. Before we do jump into our third segment, I want to remind you guys that Away creates thoughtful products designed to change how you see the world. For $20 off a suitcase, visit awaytravel.com slash locked on and use promo code locked on during checkout. Are you listening on the go? If you can't visit away right now, you can find this and all other offers from Locked On sponsors at lockedonpodcast.com slash offers.

song of the afc south and our playoff picture preview let's take a look at everything that happened around the nfl on sunday that impacts the titans ability to make the playoffs or win the division so we'll go back to Thursday night football. I know I mentioned this on Friday's show, but just to remind you, the Texans did beat the Colts 20-17. The Texans currently lead the division at 7-4. The Colts drop to 6-5, now tied with the Titans. They do have the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Titans at this moment in time, but as we know, the Titans do play the Colts in Indianapolis this weekend or this upcoming weekend with a chance to overtake them

as well. This result was good for the Titans. We want the Texans to be the leader over the Colts since the Titans have two more games against the Texans, so it's definitely possible right now that if the Titans were to win out, they would end 11- they would beat the Texans twice which would even if the Texans win every other game that would make them 10 and 6 and the Titans would win the division so love seeing that the Titans need to go ahead and take care of the Colts and kind of take another step up and move past them as well so that'll be a big matchup but right now that that result turned out in the Titans' favor. The Raiders, as I told all of you, lost to the Jets. I felt it in my bones, folks. You can just feel it sometimes with these NFL upsets.

The Raiders are not as good as they appear. I just don't believe it, and we're seeing that now. Now, does that mean that the Titans won't go out to Oakland and lay an egg egg and the raiders will beat them no the titans are completely capable of doing that but just saying the raiders aren't quite as good as people maybe made them out to out to be and now they got to go into kansas city against a chiefs team coming off of the bye so raiders dropped to six and five now with their conference record they're still ahead of the Titans. So that's another area where, like I've been saying, the Titans got to win that game. So the Titans are just going to have to win a bunch of games.

Also because the person with the second wildcard spot right now is the Pittsburgh Steelers who benched their secondary quarterback, Mason Rudolph, and put in Devlin Hodges, Duck Hodges, a former Duck caller, who's their starting quarterback, I guess now. The Steelers beat the Bengals 6-10, 16-10. The Steelers have an easy schedule the rest of the way. It's very concerning, even though I don't think the Steelers are that good of a football team. It's very frustrating. But they are 6-5, and the Titans are probably going to need some help

and need some upsets for the Steelers to not secure that spot. The Browns did beat the lowly Dolphins today, 41-24. The Browns are 5-6 now, so technically they're in the playoff hunt per se. They're going to be on the graphics. They're going to be on the bubble, as everyone likes to say, but I don't really see the Browns ultimately as a threat here. The Browns ultimately as a threat here. The Browns and the Steelers play next week, so actually the Titans fans will be rooting, or we should be rooting, for the Browns to win that game and knock the Steelers down a peg. Let's have them kind of jumble each other up and kind of cannibalize each other, per se.

That's a way you could phrase it. So hopefully that is the case. A steady reminder the Jags after this butt whooping the Titans put on them dropped to four and seven pretty much eliminated from playoff contention. Not mathematically but generally speaking figuratively speaking they're eliminated from contention and the Chiefs were on a bye this week as I mentioned but they're seven and four tied with the Texans right now. So it looks like as we expected the Chiefs should be able

to win the AFC West. Like I said, they play the Raiders next week, so hopefully they're able to secure that victory, knock the Raiders back down a peg, and we can kind of maybe take a step above some of these other teams that are lingering around the playoff race. Wishful thinking, of course, but at the end of the day, what we do know is if the Titans handle their business and win out the rest of the season, even though it's unlikely, they're going to win the division. That's the reality. If the Titans win every game the rest of the year, we look at all the different playoff scenarios, the math around the percentages and the probabilities and all these things that will start popping up as the playoff race heats up. Just remember, if the Titans win their games, they will win the division and make the playoffs. So let's focus on that. And maybe we can get some help along the way from some other avenues.

But that has to be the primary focus right now in that locker room and in this fan base. So that's going to do it for today's show. What an excellent win over the Jaguars. I had a great time breaking down everything with you guys from our first segment where we did our key takeaways and just our big picture items, and then in our second segment, tighten up, tighten down, going over all the individual performances that stood out to me, and then, of course, recapping all the results from Sunday

and Song of the AFC South in our playoff picture preview. Really hope you guys enjoyed the show. I'm going to be back, as always, with you guys tomorrow to talk about it even further and get ready for this last push. Really excited about this football team. Let's stack these wins together, go into Indianapolis, and take care of business. We'll get ready for that game, of course, throughout the week,

and I'll be here with you the whole time to do it. I'm your host, Tyler Rowland, and this was Locked on Titans.