Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: Arthur Smith it is....

Episode Date: January 22, 2019

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Welcome in to another edition of Locked On Titans. I'm Jimmy Morris, joined as always by Terry Lambert. Terry, how are you today? I'm alright. What's going on, Jimmy? Well, the Titans finally have an offensive coordinator, so that's good. We'll talk about that. No big surprise there, but we'll get into a little bit of the discussion around Arthur Smith, who was announced as the Titans' offensive coordinator on Monday. Before we get into that, I remind you we are from musiccityofmiracles.com, where we cover the Titans for SB Nation, so you can check us

out there. You can also follow us on Twitter. I'm at jmorrismcm. Terry's at tlambertfb. You can get the podcast or get your podcast, just search out Locked on Titans. You can also get it on your smart speaker. Just say play Podcast Locked on Titans.

We also have a voicemail line set up now where you can call in and give us feedback about the show, ask questions, whatever it is that you want to do. That number is 615-787-8762. We try to dedicate one show per week to listening to those voicemails, answering those questions,

that type of stuff. I think we just have one right now. So plenty of time to get in and get your questions in. 615-787-8762. All right, so Arthur Smith. I mean, I think it became pretty obvious towards the end of last week that that's the way the Titans were going. Paul Kowarski had written an article on his site, paulkowarski.com, basically saying they weren't waiting for anybody that was still involved in the playoffs, which we had kind

of speculated that maybe that was the reason it was taking so long last week. But that obviously turns out not to be the case. You know, listen, my initial thoughts on the hire, fine. I mean, any of these guys, any guy that they were going to hire that wasn't like a college head coach or something like that was going to, we were going to have questions about it. They were called plays before. You don't know what their philosophy necessarily is.

You know, blah, blah, blah. We can go through all that with anybody they would have hired. I think some people are uninspired because he was on the staff and the offense hasn't been good the last couple of years. But I think that from the continuity standpoint, which is important for Marcus Mariota but not just for him, for the offense as a whole, I think this is a good hire and I think it allows them to kind of hit the ground running

to build on some stuff that they did last year. Of course, I'm sure he's going to tweak stuff and that kind of stuff, but you're not starting over from square one, which I think is important for this whole team, not just Mariota. Yeah, the continuity aspect is interesting to me because I don't think we know if the offense is going to be the same I don't think we know who Arthur Smith is you know and and honestly this podcast is a reaction podcast but we don't we don't really know either way it's just kind of a wait and see type hire which is

fine you know that's what you have to do you know I'd much rather try something fresh, something new than something retread like we've talked about. From a familiarity standpoint, he knows the roster. Similar voice, similar face. You don't have to get to know a guy from all reports.

This guy was very involved in game planning and addressed the team and the offense as a whole. So all of that's good. We just don't know about the scheme. I've heard a lot of people throw around that it's going to keep the continuity. I just, I'm hesitant to say that. It certainly is going to be better than hiring someone from the outside.

But I'm just not sure how similar it's going to be better than hiring someone from the outside. But I'm just not sure how similar it's going to be. But just Arthur Smith as a person, he survived. He was brought in by Ken Wisenhunt, and he survived, what, three coaching staffs now? So that tells you something about who he is. It tells you something about how bright he is. Being kept by two or three different coaches that really don't know you says something to me. So clearly Vrabel thinks he's a bright guy.

LeFleur wanted him in Green Bay. So I'm encouraged and kind of cautiously optimistic about the hire. Yeah, and that's a continuity from the standpoint of just a similar voice, similar staff, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, you're right. We don't really have any idea what his philosophy is. I've seen a few different players make comments about him. One of the things that you said just then, Delaney Walker,

was on Midday 180 earlier today talking about Yarver Smith, and obviously when he started as the assistant tight ends coach. So Delaney has been a guy that's worked with him very closely for all these years. He had a lot of good things to say about him, but said that he was the guy that got up in front of the offense this year and talked about what they were going to do in the red zone.

Presentation, all that stuff. So they're used to hearing from this guy, like you were saying. So I think that's really good. Taylor LeJuan had good things to say about him, said some of them to the extent of, you know, he'll mesh together the best parts of Terry Hrabisky's running game and Matt LaFleur's running game. And so that may not make, you know, first when you read that comment,

you might cringe a little bit. But I think that just being a guy that's been here and has seen all the different stuff that he's seen, familiar with the offense and all that, with the roster and that kind of stuff, I don't know, I think he's really good from that standpoint. Like you said, LaFleur had a lot of good things to say about him against the Bulkaharski and was a guy that he certainly wanted to go with him, but I think he knew that that wasn't going to happen.

And again, know it's a guy they've kept through all those different coaching hires so i don't know i mean it'll be it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out but i just i you know you you see the reactions you see a lot are funny um i mean you know it's pretty much anything but especially to this people just uninspired because it's the guy in-house. I just don't get that. I mean, like I said, we don't know anything, but we weren't going to know anything about anybody they hired. If they hired the Rams quarterback's coach, would we be more excited about it than we are of this guy?

I mean, again, anybody that's even vaguely connected to McVay is getting interviews for things now. But I don't know that I would be any more excited about that than I am about Arthur Smith. And it always cracks me up every year, fans critiquing a receivers coach higher or an offensive line coach higher. How do you know? You really don't unless there's a handful of guys that are established, but those guys really don't move around.

So you've got to take the wait-and-see approach. But I thought it was interesting. F-Words Pod tweeted out a really interesting fact that all of these offensive coordinators and head coaches got their start as tight ends coach. And it's not something that we really realize. I certainly didn't realize it. But it's interesting to think about because when you're coaching tight ends, you're kind of involved in the run game and you've got to be involved in the

pass game. So you kind of get both ends of the spectrum. You're not really just coaching a position. You've got to be involved in the run blocking schemes, the passing game tree, the quarterbacks and all of that. So that's an interesting thought there. Again, wait and see. If anyone is reacting negatively to this, I'm with you. I really don't understand keeping it in-house. Some sort of continuity. Again, we don't know how much, but clearly this guy was thought of enough by each of the past three coaching

staffs to keep around. So, again, cautiously optimistic. I think they could have done a lot worse here. Yeah, absolutely. So coming up, we'll talk a little bit about some of those names that you mentioned that our friends, the F4s podcast guys had mentioned. We'll run through a few of those and then talk about maybe what this means for the rest of the offensive staff all right so uh at f words pod on twitter and they ran through these names that guys that started out as tight end coaches to some extent i mean michelle mcveigh

got his start he was an assistant tight end coach back in 2010 with the Redskins. Ken Wisenhunt, who I know is not a popular name around these parts, but he's proven to be a good offensive coordinator. He got his start as a tight end coach with the Steelers. You've got Greg Roman, who was a tight end coach at Stanford before he came to the NFL. Mike Malarkey, a guy we're all familiar with. He's been a tight end coach a bunch of different places.

Rob Chudzinski, I never can say his name right. Pat Shermer. Freddie Kitchen's a guy that's obviously very popular right now, and we saw the good work that he did with Baker Mayfield this past season. Kevin Stefanski, who's in Minnesota, and then Andy Reid. So a lot of big names on that list. And like you're saying, it just makes sense because, you know, on one hand, it's one of the easier positions to coach tight ends is

because you have a smaller number of people in your room. When you think about just all the other positions on a football team, you know, tight ends, most teams are carrying three or four. The Titans sometimes carry five or six. But, you know, you've got less guys that you're dealing with. But like you said, you have to really know the ins and the outs of the running game and the passing game. And you've got to know, you know, pass blocking as well as run blocking, pass routes. I mean, all that stuff.

And you can't really say that as much for any other position, maybe running backs a little bit. much for any other position, maybe running backs a little bit. But for the most part, I would think the most, I guess, detailed nuance of the offense, tight end has to be pretty high on that list. I mean, the quarterback obviously being the highest. But a lot of different things at play there. So it may make sense for these guys to come from there. And then you made the point before we came on about you know what this could mean to the titan staff you know it was announced earlier but obviously

before matt lafleur got that job in green bay that the staff was going to say the same mike was going to make any changes now you've got obviously the floor gone arthur smith moving to offensive coordinator so you have a you have an opening at tight ends coach you could just hire a tight ends coach, or like I said, as you were mentioning, you could shuffle some things around in the offensive staff if there was another position coach that you wanted to bring in. Yeah, maybe it's something where you like Keith Carter in another spot and you want another offensive line coach. Again, that's all speculation, but it's possible.

Obviously a spot on the staff is open, so we'll see what they do there. But let's look at Arthur Smith's work. The only thing we can judge him on is tight end position, right? So you've got Delaney Walker, who was great before Smith showed up. Then you've got Johnnie Johnny Smith who took some strides Before he went down then you got the guys like Anthony first sir who they found and turned into something They got something out of Luke stalker. Who's just been a journeyman type guy Michael Pruitt he was he was a valuable piece down the stretch as strange as that is

He's done some some really good work there. Again, we don't know how he is as a play caller. We didn't know how Matt LaFleur was as a play caller. I think it took LaFleur half the year to really find a groove as a play caller. It wouldn't surprise me if Arthur Smith is the same way. Judging him on what

we know, which is the tight ends, he's had success there. The Titans tight end group is one of the strongest in the league. He was an offensive lineman in college. He's been an offensive line assistant, offensive quality control. So I don't think it's really fair for anyone to pigeonhole him as just a tight ends coach. I think he's been around the block a time or two uh and really earned this opportunity yeah that's the thing i mean when you look we just go back and look through his track record um and we talked about him uh a couple weeks ago when his name first kind of came

to the forefront um you know a guy who's really just has put in the work i mean started as a graduate assistant in college and has worked his way all the way to here. And a guy, again, you know, that is the son of Fred Smith, who started FedEx, who's obviously, you know, a multi-billionaire. And when they were talking to Delaney Walker today on the Midday 180, Delaney Walker said it was like year two before he even knew that that's who his dad was. So, I mean, I think it, you know, just kind of speaks to his character. In fact, he wants to be a football coach. Like, that's what he loves. A lot of talk about him, you know, being one of those guys that was first guy in the morning, last guy, and really just like position coaches are not required typically

to put in the same hours that obviously a head coach or even the coordinators are. But he was the guy that was always there, was always grinding, always doing that stuff. So it sounds like, and again, this is all speculation on our part. We have no idea what he's going to be like as a play caller, what his philosophy is, and we don't know anything on that. But it sounds like a guy that has put in the time, has grinded it out, and that he was ready to be given an opportunity like this.

And so, you know, again, I'm sure there's a handful of guys in the league that are currently position coaches who are ready for an offensive coordinator like this and so you know again that there's i'm sure there's a handful of guys in the league that are currently position coaches um who are ready for an offensive coordinator position would would be good at it um but just aren't getting it you know for whatever reason and so glad to smith getting that getting that shot and like you said honestly just glad they're bringing in something a little bit different not different from you know not being on the staff but not a guy that's that's a retread or whatever. You know, and I had somebody tell me the other day about how we shouldn't talk so negatively about retreads.

Mine, and I think you feel the same way, but when we talk about retreads we don't want, it's guys that have had multiple chances and failed. You know, whoever it was, Bill Belichick's a retread. Yes, he is. You're 100% correct. He was a head coach before he failed. He got a different head coaching job. But when you've had these guys that have had two or three chances and the result is always the same, those are the type of guys that

I don't want my team to hire. Yeah, for every Bill Belichick, there's two or three guys like John Fox and Jim Caldwell. That's what we're talking about there. If you're on strike three, you're probably not going to make it in this league. But, yeah, I'm with you. It's sort of outside the box, but sort of inside the box too. I think it's a good blend of both worlds there. Look, they could have gone after a big name,

but they wanted some sort of continuity, some guy that didn't have to come in and study who Marcus Mariota was. This guy's been with Marcus from the start. He knows him well. So excited. I think this is probably the closest thing we were going to get to Matt LeFleur coming back for year two. So I think it's the best-case scenario for Marcus Mariota.

Now, once again, he's got to go prove it. Yeah, and that's obviously going to be the thing with him until he does. And then if he doesn't, then we're having a conversation about who the quarterback in this team is going to be in 2020. All right, so that'll do it for that conversation. We will finish up today with our thoughts on the conference championship games. So it was a really fun weekend of football. These playoffs, for the most part, had been kind of a dud.

You hadn't had that many games that were really close, late, compelling, whatever. You get both conference championship games, go to overtime, first time that's ever happened. The two teams that I wanted to win both lost. I really wanted a Saints-Chiefs Super Bowl, kind of anybody with the Patriots type deal for me. But obviously the only thing anybody's talking about from the first game, the NFC game, is the missed pass interference call against the Rams that would have given the Saints a first and goal and probably would have allowed the Saints to win that game I appreciated Drew Brees and his comments of the game talking about you know there's other plays that we missed that if we'd have made you know you wouldn't have left

that up to chance or up to that route in that scenario but man when when you saw that play happen I just it blows my mind that there wasn't a flag thrown on that play. Just the latest example of these NFL referees, it just seems like it's been that way all year. It's just the ref show. It seems like every primetime game this year has just been hijacked by referees. So just missing that call. That's one of the most egregious pass interference calls I've ever seen. And it's such a big spy. It's just such, it's so unfortunate. I mean, I've seen a

lot of people say, well, you've got to make pass interference reviewable. And we're going to grind these games to a halt if we do that. I mean, if you want to minimize the referees in this game, I mean, that's going to really lengthen these games because these coaches are going to start challenging everything. So I don't know if that's the answer. Maybe it's something to where you can install an under-two-minute rule or something like that, but it's just so unfortunate. I'm not sure there's a really good answer other than the NFL

simply making their referees better because that product is horrible. Yeah, that's the thing. I mean, I'm with you. You can't make penalties reviewable. If you were going to do it, it would have to be something. I would think it would have to be something that would come from the booth inside of two minutes. Something that's just as egregious as what we saw in that game on Sunday. Anything else?

I mean, can you imagine if you could like, that guy was holding, and they're going to throw the challenge flag every time. There's all kinds of things like that, and then you get a review and all that kind of stuff. So you would have to have some really, really tight rules on what you could challenge and what you couldn't challenge if you were ever going to open that door. I don't think they should do that. Like you said, I think the answer is for the rest to be better. That, to me, is the only thing that really makes sense here. The other game, the Chiefs-Patriots, another great game.

You pretty much knew when the Patriots won the coin toss that that was going to be the game. I mean, we've seen it so many times, Tom Brady in the playoffs, Tom Brady-Bill Belichick, that combination. And it's just funny, you know, in a week where everybody kind of counted them out. I mean, actually, the two weeks, really, that everybody was counting them out. Last week against the Chargers and this week against the Chiefs. Everybody thought the Patriots couldn't win. But until somebody knocks off Tom Brady and Bill Belichick in the playoffs, they've shown us the last couple of years that the regular season hiccups

that they have or the rough patches that they have, they don't really matter. Those two guys are the best when you get into January football. Patriots just aren't ever going to die. Brady brady's gonna play till he's 60 i'm pretty convinced uh isn't it funny though how just every little break seems to to fall their way it's just and i know d ford was offside i'm not really talking about that but uh the the roughing the passer call where he got hit in the shoulder. Some of these reviews down the stretch where the ball was juggled and kind of hit the ground.

I'm here to tell you, the Titans receiver makes the same play. That's incomplete. I've seen it too many times. So just interesting to me how they seem to get all the calls. And I'm not saying anything's rigged or anything. But, man, it's just really super convenient how they get all the calls right when they need them. And, look, we saw that in the playoff game two years ago. I remember that first half, Titans were down, what, 14 by halftime?

But they had really given the Patriots a good game and honestly should have been tied or down one possession. Yeah, absolutely. So I don't know, man. Like you said, it's they're just they seem like they're never going to die. It's like the thing we're going to be watching for all these years. You know, it's funny. The Titans lost to the Patriots in the playoffs, you know, back in what, 2004.

And, you know, just to think about how long this team has been as good as they have been and to think about you know the super bowl after titans rams the 2001 super bowl was uh rams patriots right i mean that was tom brady that was that year and so you think about how long i mean think about how long it's been since titans were in the super bowl and no the ravens were the next year after that anyway um you know you're talking back to the early 2000s that Tom Brady has been their quarterback, that they've been this good. And we talked about this with other teams, but it's just amazing. The Titans have spent all this time trying to find a quarterback.

And you've got the guys that are really at the top right now. I mean, obviously you've got some guys that are up and coming, Patrick Mahomes, those types of guys. But you look at Breeze and Brady, just the guys that have been with their respective teams for a long, long time. And those teams have been good for a long, long time. It just goes to show you what having that quarterback can do. And again, we'll spend the next couple months talking about draft and who they should

draft and what position and all that kind of stuff. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I don't think there's anything more important. I think the two most important things in the league right now are quarterback play and coaching. Yeah, I'll go quarterback play and offensive line play.

I just think being able to run the football, especially in the Titans case at will, you're really hard to beat if you can just carve teams up on the ground above all else, just about, especially in these winter games, as we saw with Derrick Henry. I just think offensive line play trumps nearly everything. Obviously, a transcendent quarterback can fix a lot of your

or mask a lot of your problems. But offensive line play for me, it's the most important thing. It's the easiest way to win in the league without an elite quarterback. So, you know, like you're saying, all these teams can really run the football. I'd love to see the Titans really max it out because they're pretty good at it as it stands, but they could stand to be better. Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, that'll do it for today.

Later on this week, we'll get back into position groups. We've done the offense. So if you miss any of those shows, you can go back and listen to them. We'll get into the defense as this week goes along. Again, don't forget 615-787-8762 give us a voicemail around a minute and we'll get to them on a show at the end of this week

so for Terry this is Jimmy saying thanks for listening to Locked on Titans and we will talk to you again tomorrow