Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: Amari Cooper dealt, who can the Titans get now?

Episode Date: October 23, 2018

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Welcome in to another edition of Locked On Titans. I'm Jimmy Warnes, joined as always by Terry Lambert. Terry, how are you tonight? Doing alright. What's up, man? Not too much. We got a few things to talk about. Kind of wrap up the discussion around the Titans and Chargers game from London. Talk a little bit about the Amari Cooper trade that was made today, and then look at maybe some options the Titans could have if they decide that they're going to trade for a wide receiver. Before we do all that, I want to remind you that we are from UnicityMiracles.com. We cover the Titans for SB Nation. So you can follow us there. You can follow us on Twitter.

I'm at jmoresmcm. Terry's at tlambertfb. Podcast account at LockedOnTitans. And you can get the podcast. Just search out LockedOnTitans. iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, you can find us there. All right, so Mike Vrabel had his normal Monday press conference today. It's going to be a little bit of a weird week just it being a bye.

I think they'll probably get some work in, maybe Tuesday and Wednesday, and then let the players go off, get a little bit of time away before they come back and take on what's basically the second half of the season. More talk around the two-point play, the decision there. Made it clear again that that was the call that they decided. They had the 42nd mark for whatever reason. That was the matching number. If they scored under that, they were going to go for two and go for the win um so basically he just you know said look that was the decision if i had to do all over

again i would try it again uh kind of i think alluded to the fact that basically he told matt lafleur that he thought they needed to throw it um i guess and he was asked specifically about the derrick henry touchdown play and said that they had run that play again later in the game and it got stopped for no gain. So kind of some things they were looking at there. I think you said you wanted to talk about the percentage chances on, you know, the two-point play and all that stuff. Oh, you know, yeah.

That's all I've heard about all day. Just Vrabel is who he is. That's great. You know, I like an aggressive coach overall. I just, again, I just don't love that. Man, I just, with what this offense has been all year, I know you get to a certain point. You feel like you have a size advantage up front.

And you feel like the offense is moving. And it's your shot to go leave London with a win. I don't know. I thought the Titans had an advantage there. They had worn them down. I would have just liked to see an overtime. Whatever, we'll move on, but the debate around this whole deal has been pretty interesting.

You either love it or you hate it. I'm kind of on the hate it end, and I really didn't expect that I would because, like I said, I love aggressive calls. Yeah, and obviously we know that the whole discussion around it is different if they get it. And, you know, they can get their point going over time. You don't know what's going to happen. And basically that's what he got into was basically everything in overtime

is a coin flip. It's kind of what he was getting at. And if you win the coin toss, do you ever get to touch the ball? All that kind of stuff. So anyway, like I said, I like the call. I wish they would have called a different play, especially after you get the penalty on the first one. Looking at, if you follow me on Twitter, a couple of screenshots from those two, or actually I guess kind of two screenshots from that first play,

looks like the snake's wide open. Now, I mean, I know a lot of stuff has to happen in order for that to happen. But, I mean, there was a gap to Marcus's right that I felt like he probably could have pretty easily gotten to that would have gotten him in the end zone. I don't know. I'm assuming he has a way to check to that. If they get to the line, they get that look. I mean, a lot of people are saying, oh, you know, Brady or Rogers or whatever, they would have automatically checked into that.

Maybe. Maybe they would have. You know, maybe they have something in there that they're going to call it. But Marcus can't. I mean, I think it's important to say that Marcus can't walk up to the line and decide he's going to sneak it and not let anybody else know because if they go to pass protect and he tries to sneak, he's going to run into a lineman.

He's not going to be able to do that. Again, I would assume they have some way they can check in there to that, but I don't know. It's just one of those things when you see it, you're just like, why did they not try this? And then the Deion Lewis, the first play that ended up in the penalty, when you watch the play, I mean, there is a point where Deion Lewis is wide open. Now, I mean, I think the point was made a couple of different times where,

you know, when the play first starts, Melvin Ingram basically drops to cover Deion Lewis. And then when Marcus looks off, he starts to rush. And if you watch what they were doing, they were doing a good job all day, the Chargers were, on trying to take away a little shortstop. That's what happened on the interception. You know, a guy getting his hands up in the passing lane for that quick, you know, stuff that we know Marcus likes to do.

If Marcus does go back to it, it's a pretty easy play there. He still probably would have had to make a pretty good throw to just kind of lead Deion Lewis into the end zone. But I think that was there. But there's just a lot of circumstances. And it's real easy for us to sit around and pull shots off of NFL game pass. It's a whole lot different when you're actually out there having to make the calls, having to make the throws and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, the screenshot you tweeted, it's hard to kind of paint the picture in a picture. If you watch the video, it's super obvious. The picture kind of makes it look like Melvin Ingram is right there ready to bat the ball down or potentially

jump up and pick it off. Derwin James is on his way out to cover the flat, but you just watch the raw video. You float that out to Deion Lewis right off the bat. It's easy. It's an easy six points, or in this case, a two-point version. But again, on the quarterback sneak like you were talking about, the hole was off right guard.

So it was weird. Like they had the center covered up, but they could have gone – they would have had to go over a full gap. So I don't know if that was particularly there. There was definitely a hole there. It was weird how the Chargers aligned on that. So I don't know if that would have been

a successful play or not. But it just seems like that's probably the more successful play, at least in terms of percentages. You're on the one yard line. With Marcus Mariota, you sneak the ball. Maybe

you spread it out a little like they did. And then you sneak it, get some defenders out of the box. But man, you just don't throw to Taewon Taylor in the back of the end zone through three defenders. That's the one thing you don't do. You can do a lot of things, but you can't do that. Yeah, absolutely. Somebody said, well, Derwin James would have gotten there. Listen, if Marcus makes a halfway decent throw,

there's no way Derwin James is closing that gap to get to where Deion Lewis was. But yeah, just a lot of stuff going on there. And just the other thing to mention from Braybill's press conference, he basically admitted that on the challenge, on the Keenan Allen catch, that he got frustrated. The defense gave him a third down. He thought it was kind of close, so he went ahead and threw the flag. And, you know, basically

he said, look, I can't do that. And, you know, he's learning as he goes through this. It's a whole different thing, obviously, from being a player and those emotions, even being a coordinator because you don't have that red flag in your hand, so you don't have the opportunity to do that. But, you know,

again, i have been impressed with vrabel's press conferences in these in these days after losses um because you know we we talked about when he first got hired and really in training camp his personal was just kind of weird and he was not combative but the whole thing was just kind of strange but he i think he's been really good um in his day after deals and been honest and does a good job of, you know, I mean, he'll talk about it. Somebody asks him a question about, you know, well, do we need this player to be better? He'll talk about that.

He's not going to not answer the question. But he is always quick to point back to himself. You know, basically it all starts with me and all that kind of stuff. Stuff like that. That has nothing to do with whether or not he's going to be a successful nfl coach it has nothing to do with with whether or not they're going to win you know in two weeks against the cowboys um and none of it has anything to do with that but it's just been i've enjoyed listening to his press conferences and i think that he is taking the right approach in that you know he's you know a lot of times you

listen to these coaches and they're just they don't seem very self-aware, and you feel like they're going to keep making the same mistakes over and over, and we see that with certain guys. They just basically can't ever admit they've made a mistake, so they don't ever learn from it. I don't feel like Mike Brayboy is that. I feel like he's going to try to learn from the things that he does that don't go well. Now, whether or not he'll be able to do that and be successful, I don't have any idea. But I feel like he's kind of going down the right path with that.

Yeah, he's come a long way. You touched on it. When he first got here, man, it was just – I don't know if he was kind of hostile. I didn't know how to take him. I think a lot of people said that. But, yeah, he's settled in. Seemed like all through training camp all we talked about was his injury stuff.

But even that has chilled out. He's figuring it out as he goes. As a coach, that was a moment, the Keenan Allen challenge, that was a moment that he said he was going to learn from, and he already has clearly. So you're going to get that with a rookie head coach. So it's cool to see. I just think he's probably as real as they come.

You get these Monday morning pressers around the NFL, just get a lot of coach speak and stuff like that. You don't really get that with Vrabel. So that's really nice to hear. Interested to see where he goes as a person. I think the on-the-field stuff is going to eventually work itself out.

He's had a lot of stuff thrown at him by way of injuries. That's just a lot to deal with. I don't think we've talked about that enough with him negotiating these rocky seas over the first two months of the season. Yeah, I mean, he's had pretty much any scenario you can imagine.

He's gotten, and like you said, they've hopefully weathered that storm. And I think we talked a little bit about it last night. I mean, the schedule, you've got the Patriots the first couple games after the bye. But after that, it lightens up a little bit. So we'll see how all that goes. But like I said, as long as he learns from this stuff, I think he has the opportunity to be a successful head coach. All right, coming up, we're going to talk about the Amari Cooper trade.

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if you guys wait till after, you know, like I said, after 7 PM, you get that deal, my bookie, you play, you win, you get paid. Well, the Raiders pulled it off. They got a first-round pick for Amari Cooper.

That report was out there last week, and I tweeted at the time that Amari Cooper would be staying with the Raiders. Leave it to the Cowboys, right? It just takes one team in order to get something like this done. There was a report out there that the Eagles had offered a second to the Raiders for Marty Cooper. So from that standpoint, it makes sense as to why, if the Cowboys really wanted him, didn't want him in the division competing against them, that they'd be willing to give up a first. But you get into a deal, and we talked about this a little bit i think last week or the week before you know you've got a guy who's fairly cheap this year playing on you know the fourth year of his rookie deal but they've picked up a fifth year option i think it's something like 13

and a half million next year not sure the cowboys can afford to pay that with where they are but salary cap so they've basically given up a first round pick forround pick for half a season rental, it's a bold choice in my opinion. Yeah, it's a choice that I would never do. We were texting when the details were breaking, and I said it would be for a third. And then it comes out that it's a first. That's just shocking.

So I just don't think Amari is the type of player that you give up a first-round pick for The things he did at Alabama Hadn't really translated to the league you got to be physically dominant Or have one trait that really set you apart and I'm not just not sure Amari has that Not really doesn't really have the game-breaking speed like he did at Alabama Isn't gonna be a guy that out-physicals people for the football. I know the Cowboys were desperate for a receiver.

The Titans are desperate for a receiver, but thank goodness they didn't do that because I would feel absolutely awful if John Robinson gave up a first for Mark Cooper. Yeah, and again, any guy, and we're going to get into this in the next segment about maybe potential targets for the Titans. Any guy that you're going to acquire at this point is going to have some type of issue

because teams are not willing to give away guys that don't have issues. And this goes back to the whole Bill Barnwell article a couple weeks ago where he was doing potential trade targets or whatever and said that the lions should trade golden tate to the titans for the fourth or fourth or whatever it was it never made any sense to me because that's a guy who is a really good receiver doesn't have any character questions doesn't have drop issues i get he's in last year was contracting all that stuff blah blah blah but that one never made sense

to me because you don't give up on a solid player in a season where you're going well all that stuff, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that one never made sense to me because you don't give up on a solid player in a season where you're going well, all that kind of stuff. With Amari Cooper, I mean, obviously, whatever has gone wrong with him in Oakland, it's gotten to the point to where they just decided it was time to move on. First-round pick is pretty steep. I mean, I get the argument. Look, he's a guy that has produced. He's had a couple of really good seasons, or a couple of good seasons at least.

You know what you're getting when you do that versus whatever you would take in the first round. I do get that argument, but there's just something out there. There are reports that he doesn't really care about playing football. All that stuff's out there. It's a risky deal, in my opinion. And then now you look at the Raiders, though. They've got three first-round picks next year. So that's the chance to really rebuild your franchise.

Now, the issue is, and this is something that we both said earlier today as well, you've got John Gruden, who's the one making those calls, and has shown in his short time that he's been back in the NFL that he may not have the best judgment when it comes to today's league. But that's just – they're going to have a lot of fun. The guys at Silver and Black Pride are going to have a lot of fun leading up to draft season.

All those mock drafts with three first-round picks and all that stuff to cover. I mean, that's an exciting part of it. But, I mean, they're basically tanking the rest of this year. Yeah, as a draft fan, I'm just slightly jealous of three first-round picks. That's just going to be a lot of fun, like you said. It's interesting. You know, John Gruden's kind of gone from a punchline to, hey,

maybe this guy might just have a plan. But the problem with his plan is he's pretty old school. I'm not sure he's marrying the analytics side with what he's doing on the football field. So that's a fascinating deal there. The Khalil Mack trade, that's awful. There's no other way you can put that. Unless you just don't have the money to sign the guy, I don't understand that. So it's going to be kind of awkward when they have to use one of those first-round picks on a pass rusher.

But, yeah, five first-round picks over the next two years. You can get a lot done with that. Like you said, though, they've got to pick the right guys. And I just don't have a lot of faith in that. I think they took what colton miller uh they overdrafted him ended up not taking derwin james who has just been an absolute rock star so far so it's going to be very interesting a 10-year deal there uh so plenty of stability uh they're clearly committed to him so green's going to have a chance to build this thing from

the ground up yeah Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, I mean, there's – the Cleomac thing is not ever going to make sense because, I mean, the best you can hope for is to get a player as good as him, right? And that's – we know what kind of odds that is. The Mark Huber thing makes a whole lot more sense just with the way that's all played out. So anyway, we'll see how that goes. Coming up, we're going to talk about potential guys the Titans could be looking at. Before we do that, tell you about Swap.com. Swap.com has been sponsoring us for a couple weeks, and we appreciate them doing so.

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Use the promo code LOCKEDON. So, like I said, go back, check their homepage every day. 35% off of your first item, select item, use the promo code LOCKEDON. So check out swap.com. Check out swap.com. All right, so I firmly believe that the Titans are in the market for a wide receiver. I think they'd be crazy not to be. Now, you've got a few options. We have seen, floated out there, that the Broncos are listening to offers for Demarius Thomas.

For some reason, whenever we say that, people are like, well, I'd rather have Emmanuel Sandersmanuel sanders well of course you would but the broncos are not listening to offers on emmanuel sanders they're listening to offers on demarius thomas um their report has been out there for it seems like forever that dolphins are looking to move devante parker and then you've got torell prior who was cut by the jets earlier this week who hurt. Not sure what his injury status is. But, I mean, there's some options there. Now, the one thing I will say about Devontae Parker, they've lost. Kenny Stills is at least out for this game on Thursday, the Dolphins play. The other guy, his name is escaping me now, Albert Wilson, that's his name,

is hurt. They said his season is probably done. So they don't have a lot of depth at wide receiver right now but when they when adam gaze was asked about that today and about if that was going to mean more playing time for devante parker he said something along the lines of well we don't have anybody else i guess we'll have to put him out there so not exactly a ringing endorsement for that guy but you know of all the options that are available what do you think would be the best one the best fit for the titans oh man uh that's tough it depends on what the price tag is yeah so obviously

a guy like demarius thomas is very interesting he's 30 years old not quite what he once was a dynamic threat with payton manning but still still a pretty good player in this league, something the Titans do not have. We talked about it last night. They just don't have anybody on this roster that's done it before. It's kind of crazy. So they're relying on these young guys to just figure it out. Demarius Thomas gives you a guy that's done it at the highest level.

So if it's a fourth-round pick, I'm doing that in a heartbeat. But the third-round pick, that gets a little tougher. I'm still probably going to do it. But, yeah, that's probably the door I would knock on first. And I think you've got to check in on Terrell Pryor just because he's a free agent. You don't have to give up anything to get him. Again, he had a groin injury. That was the reason that Jets cut him.

If you've got a guy that can be back in a couple of weeks from an injury, you don't necessarily cut him. So there has to have been some other things going on there. But at this point, I don't think it would be crazy at all for the Titans to at least take a look. I mean, at this point in the season, you're going to be able to get him on a short-term deal. It's not going to cost you a lot of money. It's going to be easy to get out of.

They've got plenty of cap room anyway. So, I mean, I think if you can bring him in and's going to be easy to get out of they got plenty of cap room anyway um so i mean i think you know if you if you can bring him in and and not have to give up anything for him that's probably the best deal you know devante parker i mean he's the first round pick right out of louisville oh yeah um yeah i mean yeah all the you know ceiling in the world it seems like but it hasn't worked out there for whatever reason he's been hurt um and that's been a big part of it too but it just hasn't hasn't lived up to the expectations obviously that they had so um i don't know you know i think at this point i i would prefer to barry thomas as well i mean the guy that's done it a guy that has um you know a resume that could come in could maybe help with the with the

younger receivers um and again you know they just they just they don't have anybody right now the titans don't on this roster that has really done it uh successfully done it consistently um you know and there's just a lot of they're just lacking there so anything that they could do to upgrade that position and i just think again i said it last night but i really think that you're looking at this window right here, and you've got an AFC South that's still very winnable. Why are you holding on to

mid to late round picks to build for the future? It just doesn't make a lot of sense. You've got your window, your quarterback contract, all that kind of stuff. You get into the playoffs, you never know what could happen. I think they've got to be aggressive. We said last night that, I think it was Jakeier that said this is going to be a very active trade deadline um so i mean i think the titans have got to at least try to do something now you don't

overreact don't overpay for don't send a second for demarius thomas i mean you know don't do something stupid like that but they need to be at least exploring all the avenues because i just don't think that they can. I'm not sure they can win the AFC South with the group that they have, and I definitely don't think they can make any noise in the playoffs with what they're running out there right now. That's saying something because the AFC South is apparently pretty bad. So, yeah, you've got to do something. We've seen Robinson stay aggressive since he's been in Nashville.

It's kind of insur surprising that it's taken this long you know what your product is out there it's not getting better if anything it's getting worse ESPN tweeted a graphic today that Titans were second worst in the league in terms of drops only the Browns were worse you gotta do something

even if it's just like Pryor or some sort of free agent like that. Apparently the Dez Bryant thing isn't going to happen for anybody, but Pryor is an interesting name that maybe you could get something out of if he's healthy. But for me, I'm done with the unknowns. You've got too many unknowns already on this roster. Give me a sure thing.

Call the 49ers about Pierre Garcon. Call the Cardinals about Larry Fitzgerald. Do something. Think outside of the box and get Marcus Mario to some help because it's getting pretty sad to watch him do it time and time again, only for everybody on the team to get

crushed by some sort of drop in a key spot. Here's something you forget about, the report out there today that Patrick Peterson wants to be traded. The Titans are not your traders for Patrick Peterson. I mean, that's dumb. People say, oh, the Titans need to go get him. Well, listen, they got plenty of money invested in the quarterback position.

I know Malcolm Butler's been an issue. I know they've had issues at times. But you're going to give up at least a first and a first probably plus to get that guy. Not the huge upgrade that this team needs. If they're going to make an addition, it's going to be – I mean, I guess you could look at an interior offensive lineman. I don't think that's going to happen. I'd throw a tight end out there.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, tight end, but who's available there? Yeah, yeah. Maybe a Cameron Brate, someone like that. Maybe a Charles Clay, someone like that. A veteran that can kind of stabilize that room would go a long way yeah yeah so that's what you're looking at a pass catcher of some sort i think that's what we're going to see so anyway we'll obviously keep an eye on that as it goes along um all right so we'll probably hit one more show this week um just kind of looking at where the season is as a whole and kind of what they can

build on going forward and what some things they need to address. We obviously talk about that pretty much every day, but just kind of wrapping up what is, I mean, it's obviously not exactly the first half of the season, but you kind of feel like that with the bye coming up. Anyway, in the meantime, check out UCMiracles.com.

We'll have a lot more about this game, about any potential developments that happen on the trade market or whatever musicmiracles.com. We'll have a lot more about this game, about any potential developments that happen on the trade market or whatever it may be. You can also follow us on Twitter. I'm at jmorsmcm. Terry's at tlembertfb. So thanks for listening to Locked on Titans, and we will talk to you again later this week.