Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: Breaking down the loss to the Bills

Episode Date: October 8, 2018

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Welcome in to another edition of Locked on Titans. I'm Jimmy Morris, joined by Terry Lambert. Terry, how are you tonight? I'm doing alright. I have a little bit of a rough day for us, though. Yeah, it's kind of the opposite of last week, right? Titans got a big win last week. Nobody expected them to get. Today, they were picked by pretty much everybody to win and go to Buffalo and lay an egg. So we'll talk all about it here coming up. Before we do that, I remind you that we write for musicitymiracles.com. We're the Titans for SB Nation. Check that out. You can follow us on Twitter.

I'm at jmorrismcm. Terry's at tlan with FB. Follow the podcast account at LockedOnTitans. And you can get the podcast wherever you get podcasts. Just search out LockedOnTitans, and you will find us there. All right, so the Titans were a pretty heavy favorite heading into Buffalo coming off of three big wins. We talked last week about the fact that this could be a little bit of a letdown game

after, like I said, the three big wins, two division wins, and all three of those games the Titans were underdogs and all that good stuff. But the Bills are not good, so the Titans shouldn't have any problem going up there and winning, especially if you saw the offense look like it finally started to click last week. And then somehow we fell back into what seemed like the Mike Malarkey, Terry Robiskey days today where the offense just kept shooting itself in the foot, couldn't get anything going.

Just kind of bad all the way around. And look, when you play the way that they play on offense today, you have to win the turnover battle. And that's the thing the Titans have been so good at the last couple of weeks is taking care of the football. Turned the ball over three times today, two fumbles and interception. Bill's got points off of two of those three. So 10 points off of three titans

turnovers and you know when you lose the game 13 to 12 that's obviously the difference so a lot to to break down uh we'll start with the offense and you know i the the thing that i think is the most frustrating is marcus mariota hits nick williams on what should have been a touchdown that would have won the game and nick williams just kind of lets it go right through his hands. And it's just kind of been a theme this year. And, you know, Terry and I have, if you've paid attention to us at all, you know, we're huge Marcus Mara fans. We're defending him against all these random people on Twitter

that don't actually watch Titans games, don't know what's been going on. But we get into these types of games and you look at Mariota's numbers, 14-26, 129 yards, no touchdowns and interception, and here these people come again, the Marks and Mariota detractors, and granted, his stat line wouldn't have been that much better. He's 15

of 26 for, what, 150 yards and a touchdown and interception if he catches that ball. But the Titans win, and the conversation is just a little bit different. So it's just frustrating when you've got a quarterback that we feel like has the ability to do a lot of things, but he gets less help than any quarterback in the league, at least it feels like. It's just a constant theme week in and week out,

and until the titans can get some kind of consistency there they're just not going to have any type of consistent offense yeah he he does get the least amount of help you know i tweeted that and i got took some heat from bills fans and i understand well bills don't have any receivers either. Both skill positions are bad. Titans have Corey Davis, who's great. Look behind Corey Davis. You're talking Taewon Taylor, Tajay Sharp. And then you've got Nick Williams and Darius Jennings.

That's just embarrassing. No NFL team is really going to put up huge numbers with those two. We saw last week Corey Davis went off. That's great. team is really going to put up huge numbers with those two. You know, we saw last week Corey Davis went off. That's great. What happens when Corey Davis is blanketed by Tredavious White today? I think you saw that. So Titans just didn't have any options to come open,

didn't attack down the field, didn't really even attack in the intermediate. So couldn't find anything to really get going in the pass game. Marcus Mariota, through all of the crap, did enough to win the ballgame. And that's not real impressive, I understand. That's a game the Titans should have won today. You know, you take away one of the mistakes, maybe the pick where Nick Williams take away one of the mistakes, maybe the pick where Nick Williams,

which, by the way, that's totally on Nick Williams. You know, you've got to bring that route flatter. You don't want to take that up the field. I think Marcus Mariota thought that was going to happen. It didn't happen. Defender jumped it and that's pretty easy. So, Nick Williams has to win inside leverage there.

But, you know, you've got that. You've got the Taewon fumble early on, which gave the Bills their only touchdown or set them up close to the red zone there. And then you've got the drop by Nick Williams there. So you take away one of those mistakes, Titans probably win this ballgame. But I think Jim White said it best, you know, you play poorly, you're going to get beat.

Yeah, and that's the thing. Like, they're having to count on Nick Williams, and there's a lot of reasons for that. You know, they just haven't had good success in the guys that they've brought in. Rashard Matthews decided to leave the team last week. I mean, all that stuff, we obviously talked plenty about that. But, yeah, that route by Nick Williams on the Mario to pick, and, again, I know that, like, people, you know, say,

oh, you're Marcus Mario the Apologist and blah, blah, blah. But, like, go watch that route. I mean, seriously, it was one of the worst routes I've ever seen in all of my days of watching NFL football. Because if you watch Nick Williams coming off the line, like, he looks back twice before Mario throws the ball, almost like, hey, I'm just going to run out here and I hope he doesn't throw me the ball.

And then when he throws it to him, like you said, he's got an easy path to win that inside. And he just kind of just wanders up the field. And it was clear. And Marcus went over to him after that and was, you know, basically, I mean, I don't know what he said to him, but you would hope it was something like, hey, you know, idiot, run the right route. Like, get inside there.

You were open. We could have had a play there. But it's just, it's that stuff week in and week out. And I think that's the most frustrating part about this is there's potential with potential with this quarterback like you said with cory davis who was a stud to for an offense to be good but you you have nothing outside of that and even like the the taylor taylor we're talking about this before we came on a little bit taylor taylor target in the end zone like i feel like he could have caught the ball. He just kind of turned his head the wrong way

and then didn't turn back around to find the ball. I mean, that kind of seems to be an issue with him. I don't know what the deal is there. But the passing game is just, it's not there yet. And I don't, I have concerns that it's ever going to be able to get there because, you know, coming into the season, we knew they had two weapons, Corey Davis and Delaney Walker. Well, Delaney Walker's done, and Jonathan Smith is apparently just a non-factor at best, I guess. So, I mean, they're going to have to find something outside of Corey Davis in the passing game.

They just don't have anything right now, at least not anything this consistent. And so that's going to be a problem for them. You know, the running game was better today. You know, Derrick Henry, his numbers were good. 11 carries, 56 yards, you know, 5.1 yards per carry. That's obviously good. I get frustrated watching Derrick Henry run. Listen, I'm an Alabama fan, okay?

So, like, you know, most of the Alabama fans are like, Derrick Henry giving the ball 30 times a game, times a win. I just, like, it hurts me to watch Derrick Henry run because he runs like he weighs, you know, 180 pounds. And he's, like, tiptoeing around out there and all that kind of stuff. But at the same time, like, he had a good game today. And, you know, you were saying before we jumped on here, if they do give him the ball 20 times in this game, they might have won.

Yeah, he averaged over five yards to carry. So, you know, just do the math there. You probably have a better offensive day if you go ahead and give him 20 touches right there on a day where the pass game wasn't working. But they seemed committed to the pass game despite its struggles. So that was interesting. But, yeah, Henry is just the most unique running back in the NFL. I think if he ran with conviction, he'd be one of the scariest players in the NFL.

But he doesn't. He just tippy-toes and he's hesitant and he won't hit the hole and he won't go run over anybody. So you're going to see just some weird looking runs out of him. He just seems really slow and hesitant. I mean, that's the best way I can put it. I really want him to be good. He's a specimen, one of the best athletes in the NFL once he gets up to speed. The problem is getting him up to speed and getting him in daylight. So I just wonder if the Titans will work to get him involved in space, which is weird to say because you don't really say that about a 6'3", 250-pound back.

But I thought he was better than Deion Lewis today. That's the first time I've said that all year. Deion, for whatever reason, couldn't really get it rolling. But Derrick Henry, working through that big Bills front, did some nice things on the ground today. You just wonder if they can build on it. You wonder if they want to build on it, because they do seem pretty connected to this passing attack.

Yeah, and I said on Twitter that he runs so timid, Derrick Henry, and Austin Stanley came back and said, well, it's because he doesn't know where he's going. And that kind of is what you're saying here. It's almost like he just doesn't trust what he sees. I mean, I don't know what the right terminology is for that. Doesn't have a real good feel for it. Yeah, yeah, just doesn't.

I don't know. It's kind of strange to watch, but he did have his best game, I think, of the season as far as, you know, like a yards per carry average type deal. So, I mean, that's something maybe that they can build on. But they need Deion Lewis to be active in the passing game. We haven't really seen that yet to the extent that I thought we would by this point. You know, and so we'll see. Look, you know, they lost Taylor LeJuan early in this game.

You've got Tyler Merritts out there playing, and, you know, he's a guy they cut. They didn't want on the team. But with all the injuries and stuff that they've had at tackle, he's been forced into duty. So, I mean, hopefully, I don't know, LeJuan's got a foot injury that has apparently been a problem for a while now. I don't know. We'll see how all that plays out. Hopefully Dennis Kelly's back next week.

He looked like he was pretty close this week. So at least if LaJuan's not there, you should be able to have Kelly and Conklin next week. But, I don't know, just a lot of things, a lot of things that they've got to work on. And I don't know. I thought the offense would be further along at this point. We talked about how it would take some time and that kind of stuff.

But, you know, we're five weeks in now, and they need to start clicking. But just kind of with all the issues that we've listed so far, I don't know. I think I have less confidence in this offense now than I have at any point. Look, we're up and down, right, every week in the NFL. And you see this with every team. Mike, who writes for us at MCM, said on Twitter, look, we know the Chiefs and the Rams are good. I don't know what we know about anybody else.

I think the Titans fall into that category. I think that they have some potential, but they have a lot of issues as well, and I think you see that with a lot of teams. Coming up, we're going to talk about the defense, who was actually pretty strong today, even though at times it didn't feel like that. Before we do that, we're going to talk about my bookie. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while,

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but the bills did run for 144 yards, which that's a lot, but it was on 43 carry. So 3.3 yards per carry. I think the frustrating part was there at the end when you knew they were going to be running the titans weren't able to stop it but for the most part they held up pretty well against the run um like i said on the yards per carry average they were good against the pass i mean josh allen had the the touchdown, but 10 of 19 for 82 yards, no touchdowns, no interception. If you would have told me before the game that that was going to be

Josh Allen's line, I would have thought the Titans won pretty easily. The defense, at least to this point, has been holding up its end of the bargain, and I think we probably had more questions about the defense than we did the offense coming in, but that's kind of flip-flopped through five weeks. Yeah, Buffalo's bad on offense. They're okay on defense, but they're really bad on offense. I think what people are seeing on defense or are saying on defense

is the Titans couldn't get the stop with the game on the line. Man, look at how this game developed. Look how many runs were thrown at them. They did so well to get to that point. For the game to be on their shoulders, it was kind of ridiculous. The game should have never been on the defense right there. So I have no problem with how they held up. Bills kind of telegraphed what they wanted to do.

It's pretty clear they don't trust Josh Allen to throw the football right now, as you saw by his stat line. So you knew you were going to get a bunch of runs up the gut. The Bills eventually wore them down. You know, the Titans defense couldn't get off the field when it counted. But, again, I'm not really going to put that on them. Bill's one-time possession by what's like almost seven minutes. So they did all they could.

They deserved a win today, but the offense couldn't get it done. Yeah, and that's the thing. I guess that's the game that they're going to play, the Bills, when you don't have a great quarterback, a good quarterback, maybe even you try to hide him a little bit. And so that's clearly what they're trying to do. But like you said, when you look at their touchdown drive, it was 47 yards, right, set up by the – I guess that was the – yeah, that was the Taewon Taylor fumble on that one.

And then the first field goal that they got, again, was set up by – that was the Deion Lewis fumble. So seven plays, 27 yards on that field goal. And then you had the, like I said, 11 plays, 47 yards on the touchdown. So if you can take away the turnovers, which obviously you can't do, but the defense played well enough for the Titans to win. I mean, in the NFL, if you only give 13 points, you should win. I mean, I think that's the thing that, you know,

when you look at all these games around the league and all these offenses and what they're able to do, you need to be able to score points. The Titans obviously weren't able to do that today. But it wasn't really the defense's fault. Again, I think the frustrating part was the fact that, that really at the end of the game on that last drive, you knew they were going to start a run, run at the clock, and the Titans didn't do a good job of stopping them. It felt like the bills of the ball the whole game.

I don't know if that was just a product of the offense being bad or whatever it was. But there were times where it was like, okay, the Titans' offense hasn't been on the field. I don't understand what's going on here. but it wasn't that big of a disparity. But, you know, they weren't able – they didn't get a lot done in the pass rush department today, which was a little bit disappointing. But, again, the Bills didn't throw a lot, and they weren't taking the deep drops and that kind of stuff. But I really thought this would be a game where the Titans were going to be

able to get ahead, and then you were going to see that pass rush show up like it has the last couple of weeks. And the game script just didn't play out that way. So it's hard to draw too many conclusions about all that kind of stuff because of that. I mean, what we saw, Jarrell Casey is still a stud. I mean, he's out there making plays. He's out there wrecking the game.

You saw that. But, you know, you just didn't see many other guys show up in this game, so that was a little bit frustrating. But I don't know how many other takeaways we can have in just a game that was kind of ugly. And like I said, the defense played well enough to win, but they didn't, you know, with the exception of the Dory Jackson interception, didn't really have that one, you know, with the exception of the Dory Jackson interception, didn't really have that one, you know, game-changing play

that maybe could have flipped the game around on a day where the offense was struggling. And they missed Wesley Woodyard, you know, big in that fourth quarter on that last drive, you know, really all day. He's one of the best defensive players on the team. So did Jayon Brown and Rashawn Evans were tasked with filling in. They showed up on that final drive so they needed that veteran out there.

I thought it tested their depth at linebacker. You take 45 carries up the gut, you're going to wear down. That's what happened at the end of the game. You should mention Kenny Vaccaro, too, good run stuffing safety, a strong safety role, was out today and is going to be out for the next couple of weeks.

So they never made a move there, never signed another safety. I'm not sure how the other guys played in that position. But clearly missing those two guys against this particular offensive attack didn't do the Titans any favors. But again, the guys that did play, played really well enough to win. So this is kind of a tough one to take. Yeah, and I think that's the frustrating thing is when you feel like at least one side of the ball played well enough to win.

You didn't even need the offense to be great. Just make a couple of plays here and there. Again, if Nick Williams catches the ball, it's a completely different conversation. That's kind of, I guess, the most frustrating thing to take away from this. Coming up, we will look ahead a little bit. Before we do that, we're going to tell you about Vivid Seats. Vivid Seats, again, is sponsoring the podcast a little bit. Before we do that, we're going to tell you about Vivid Seats. Vivid Seats, again, is sponsoring the podcast a little bit.

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3-2. I mean, I guess the good thing is Jacksonville lost today, so you didn't lose any ground in the division. Technically, you still lead the division with, you know, the Colts losing on Thursday night and the Texans, as of this recording on Sunday night, are tied with the Cowboys.

So the Titans, when you wake up Monday morning, the Titans are still technically going to be in first in the division. That's a good thing. But again, you just feel like you missed a golden opportunity on a day where the Jaguars lose to really have that full game advantage over them in a game where the Jaguars lose. If you want to feel better about this team, if you want to feel better about where they are,

just go watch the Blake Bortles highlights from the game against the Chiefs. It will make you smile on a day where you probably need something to be happy about. Blake Bortles did the things that Blake Bortles does. But again, it's just frustrating because Titans had an opportunity here to, again, have really what basically amounts to a two-game lead, but to have a game lead in the loss column over the Jaguars if they can just get this win in Buffalo with the Jaguars losing to the Chiefs. But we're unable to take advantage of that.

And so now, you know, we talked about the schedule lightening up a little bit. We thought that this would be, you know, an easy win and you can beat Baltimore and then you've got the one-and-a-gander deal with that for that. Obviously, we have to change the conversation here a little bit. But, look, they're 3-2 after five weeks. So after that, obviously we have to change the conversation here a little bit. But look, they're 3-2 after five weeks. If you had given us kind of the scenario of everything that would happen before the season started, we would have taken 3-2 and run with it. Now we probably would have thought it would have come a little bit differently.

But, you know, you basically win a game. We talked about how last week against the Eagles they were playing with house money. You win that game, so you've basically stolen one. Now you've kind of given that game back with this loss to Buffalo, and you just hope that—I had the Miami game last year kind of bouncing through my head, a game that we looked back at the end of the year and thought, man, if they could have won that game, they would have at least been able to host a playoff game.

They would have won the AFC South. This just feels like a game that's going to come back and haunt the Titans, a game that they should have won, a game against a team that's not going to make the playoffs, you know, is in the bottom half of the league. I don't know. I just feel like we're going to be, you know, come late December, we're going to be looking back at this game,

and it's going to have a major effect on where they finish up. Yeah. Somebody pointed this out. It felt like the Cardinals game from last year, you know, where the defense just kind of stood on their head all day and the offense did absolutely nothing. And, you know, Titans left Arizona with a loss to Blaine Gabbert. So it felt a lot like that today.

But, yeah, now you're staring in the face three really 50-50 games. You have Ravens, Chargers, Cowboys. Those could go either way. I could make an argument for the Titans winning each of those games. I could make an argument for the Titans losing each of those games. So then you've got New England after that, who, shocker, seems to have righted the ship and figured everything out once again. The schedule did lighten up a little bit.

The Jaguars and the Eagles are two of the NFL's best, but Ravens, Chargers, Cowboys, nothing to scoff at. This passing game is going to have to be figured out pretty quick. Ravens got Jimmy Smith the number one cornerback back this week. So I'm already looking at that matchup with Corey Davis and considering

how little help Corey Davis got among his receivers that could spell trouble for the Titans next Sunday. Yeah, and I think that's the thing right there is regardless of who they play and we saw it today right if the if this passing game is not better they're going to struggle to win games you're gonna have to be almost perfect uh to win games and again i just

i really this was the reason that we wanted malarkey and rabisky out right because we didn't want to have to watch this you know such a thin margin of error or for error that they had last year. You didn't want to have to play that game again. But it feels like that's back to where they are. And until we really see them take that step forward that we thought they took forward last week, so it was like two steps forward, at least one step back, until we really see them take that step forward, we're just going to be kind of playing on this edge where if you have two turnovers in a game, you're probably going to

lose. And listen, that's oversimplification. You could say that's true for pretty much any NFL team. If you lose a turnover battle, you're going to lose the game. But the best teams can overcome that with their offense, and the Titans are just not there yet. Hopefully they will be, but, again, I don't know. I mean, do you – I just – I think the – I don't know if I've been fooling myself with what I thought maybe they could do,

but with this lack of weaponry the Titans have, at least from the pass-catching standpoint, I just don't know if they're going to get to a point this season where they're not going to have to be winning every turnover margin

to win a game. Yeah, pass catchers not named Corey Davis are going to have to grow up in a hurry. But, you know, you look at this week. We said it all last week. It's a trap game. And it played out just perfectly. You saw the mistakes.

You saw them kind of come out flat. Right off the bat, Taylor Fumbles and Bills punch it in. So you're digging out of a hole all day to take your first lead in the fourth quarter. So it just had all the ingredients, you know, traveling all the way up north in New York. It was just that perfect situation that you see all the time in the NFL. So for whatever reason, it just happens, you know. It just happens, and I know a lot of people aren't going to like that answer, but I'm not going to jump off the deep end quite yet. It just happens, and I know a lot of people aren't going to like that answer, but I'm not going to jump off the deep end quite yet. It just happens.

You see it happen to the best of teams. You saw this happen to the Vikings. The same Buffalo team came to their house and crushed them. So, sky isn't falling yet. Like you said, still first in the division, but you're seeing some clear issues that need to be ironed out. Yeah's the thing i mean not to get you know too overly negative here at the end of the day they're three and two they're winning the division um you know there have been some very good things that we've seen this year but there's also just kind of these causes for concern but at

the end of the day you know blake bortles is not their quarterback, so things could be worse. Again, it made me feel better. Just go watch some of the highlights from the play where he bounces a pass off of his lineman's head. It's so much fun. And he still threw for 400. Yeah. That was the perfect Bortles game right there.

Yeah, that's perfect Blake Bortles. You want to have him on your fantasy team, but you definitely don't want him to be your life quarterback. So, yeah, go watch that. Like I said, it'll make you feel better. And, again, at the end of the day, look, things are going to get easier, at least from a schedule concept. Injuries, I don't know.

Like I said, we'll have to see what happens with Taylor LeJuan. They're going to be in a better situation if he can't go next week with Dennis Kelly than they were today with Merritt's out there. But that's obviously something to watch because this team is just different without him out there. So that's something to look at. But through five weeks, first in the division, all that kind of stuff. So it's not like the complete sky is falling,

but there are some things that they're going to have to get fixed if they are going to be a legitimate contender. So that'll do it for tonight for us. Keep it up, like I said, we'll see you at miracles.com. We'll have a ton more on this game, and then obviously a lot more leading up to the matchup against the Ravens this week. So check us out there. You can follow us on Twitter.

I'm at jmorrismcm. Terry's at tlambertfb. Podcast account at LockedOnTitans. And just whereverbertfb. Podcast account at LockedOnTitans. And just wherever you get your podcasts, search out LockedOnTitans. Subscribe. As soon as they are available. So for Terry, this is Jimmy. Thanks for listening to LockedOnTitans, and we'll talk to you again tomorrow.