Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: Breaking down the loss to the Patriots; End of season news

Episode Date: January 15, 2018

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Locked On Titans covering the Titans for SB Nation. You can follow us on Twitter. The blog account is at TitansMCM. My account is at jmorphmcm. Terry is at TLambertFB. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. You'll get the latest episodes as soon as they're available. And you can rate and review us there. We would appreciate that as well. So check all that stuff out.

And we'll still be here uh even though the season's over uh we're getting into you know arguably maybe the most fun part of the season draft season draft season um yeah we we love draft season and it gets a little bit old and redundant this year at least we know we're starting it a few weeks later than we have in prior years last year i guess we didn't really get there until after week 16 um but then the years before that it seems like we've gotten there about week eight which is never fun but so i mean the titans gave us a little bit a little bit more football to talk about this year which is a good thing but anyway before we get to the the massacre that happened in uh in foxborough for the titans the patriots we're going to talk a little bit about

the news of the day because i think that's a little bit more of a pressing issue at this point. Mike Malarkey had his final Monday press conference. It was on Sunday, but his final wrap-up press conference of the season and learned that Jack Conklin tore his ACL in the game last night. You knew it was bad when he left the field like he did and never came back. There was a little bit of hope when we saw him walking off under his own power and walking to the locker room under his own power. But he had a pretty good idea that it was pretty sick.

He wasn't able to come back in the game when that happened as early as it did. So the announcement today towards ACL, he'll have surgery, I'm sure, in the next couple of days, next week or so. Start his rehab. days next week or so start his rehab you know acl acl surgeries repairs recoveries and quicker now than they used to uh he'll miss otas i think we would expect that but he might be able to be back for training camp and hopefully at least they can get him on the field maybe for a preseason game or two just to get him out there with the line, you know, and get that continuity that's so important for an offensive line. So, you know, obviously it stinks that you have a guy when that happens to him,

but, you know, it happened the last game of the season. Won't have to miss any game time, hopefully. And, you know, he should be back at least for some training camp or slash the preseason. So I hate to see it. You saw a huge drop drop off when he went out dennis kelly who has you know been serviceable for this team at times was definitely overmatched last night and probably leaves you with the feeling that they're going to need to address

that backup swing tackle guy in the offseason no doubt about it a, big change. You saw Mariota come out hot. He was accurate getting through his rig. It looked like the old Mariota again that we saw in the second half against Kansas City. And then Conklin goes out and the whole game changes. So, like I was telling you, pressure in your face. He's a right-handed quarterback, so he's looking at that side. You see pressure coming at you every play.

It's going to affect you. So that was his issue way back in 2015 when Wisenhunt was fired because he couldn't protect Mariota. It looked really similar last night. The offense really went off the rails, especially in the second half. But, yeah, Conklin is a huge loss to this team. You just kind of hope that maybe he misses all of training camp, which wouldn't be good for the continuity of this offensive line.

But, like you said, ACL seems to be progressing in the league, and they seem to be coming back faster from it. So maybe he can come back and be healthy for the start of 2018. Yeah, that's obviously the hope. And like you said, I mean, you hate for it to happen to a guy. But as far as timing is concerned, this is, you know, I guess the best possible time that it could happen. The other major injury from the game, Jonu Smith tore an MCL.

And I don't know if he. They didn't say anything about him having surgery. That's usually something they can heal up on its own. They expect him to be ready for OTAs. He's going to take on a bigger role in this offense as time goes on. At some point, we'll get to

breaking down the season for individual positions, individual guys. Delaney Walker didn't have that good of a year. You know, looked like a drop-off. He had some injuries and stuff that he battled. But, you know, the time for John O. Smith to take over that role, maybe is sooner than we thought it would be.

And, again, that's something that we'll look at as we get deeper into this. But he's going to be a guy they're going to count on moving forward. And I think, for the most part, had a pretty positive rookie year, some ups and downs, but I think overall you have to be pretty pleased with the way he played. Yeah, he started faster than he finished. That's true. And you didn't see the next step taken,

but obviously he'll be fine with the MCL. But I think the end is nearer than we all want to admit with delaney uh so that that might be it might be something that we look at during the draft maybe they take another guy similar to johnny in the mid to late rounds another guy that can develop uh and we'll see if luke stalker sticks around but uh yeah they obviously need another heir apparent because if Malarkey's going to stick around, which it sounds like he's going to,

they're clearly going to run the two, three tight end sets. Yeah, they love that. And all the jokes were going around on Twitter last night. It's funny watching these national guys that don't ever get to watch the Titans. They never want to watch the Titans. It's funny seeing them react to Titans games when it's the only game on and all the jokes about all the Titans on the field. Obviously, they love that.

That kind of leads us into the next topic. You said that it sounds like Mike Malarkey is going to be back. Ian Rappaport of the NFL Network said tonight that the Titans have offered or are working on a contract extension for Mike Malarkey. Now, the wording around these things has been interesting. Amy Adams-Strunk came out last week with the vote of confidence, if you want to call it that. But Mike Malarkey is our coach and is our coach moving forward. That's about as vague as you can get for a vote of confidence.

And then the report tonight, not that Mike Malarkey has signed a contract extension, but that the Titans have offered him a contract extension. So we've talked a lot about this, right? Just kind of going all the way back, when we started talking about the issues with the offense and everybody wants Terry Rubisky fired. Okay, now we have the same issues, think the offense is bad, think it needs an upgrade.

But we said then, and the same thing remains true now, unless something changes in this contract negotiation firing terry rubisky if you don't get mike malarkey to change his philosophy doesn't do you any good this is mike malarkey's offense he's signed off on this he said today in the press conference that he thinks that terry rubisky did a quote very good job this year which is just ridiculous okay but we know that mike malarkey is married to terry rubisky that's his guy this is his offense he's fine with what has been going on i wonder if there is something in this contract extension that says you can have a couple more years or whatever

but in order to do that you have to make x y, Y, and Z changes to your staff. If that is involved in the contract extension, does he sign it? Is that something that he wants to do? You know, and Mike Malarkey has been pretty hush-hush about his contract. He said today in the press conference that he hasn't talked about his contract. He's not going to start now. But we assume that he has, you know, full control over his staff. Does that change with this contract extension? Because, again, we talked about it.

Look, if he only has one year left on his deal, he's not going to be – if they make him fire Terry Rubisky or whoever else, he's not going to be able to attract anybody to come here because nobody's going to want to come here when you've got a lame duck coach. The only way to get – to make an offer to somebody and to get somebody that's worth getting is for the coach to have some security. He can offer his assistant a two-year deal, whatever it is that he would offer, but he can't do that if he's only got one year left. So is it a deal where they say to him, all right, two more years, so he'd have three years left on

his contract or whatever, but you have to fire Robrabisky, you have to fire Jason Michael, whatever it may be. Is that the offer that they've extended to him? We don't know. This is all speculation on our part. I hope that that's the case, but I don't know. At this point, all that we know is it's been reported that the Titans have offered him a contract extension. How weird is this? You're in the second round of the playoffs.

You win a playoff game, and you're still wondering if the coach is back. So that right there tells me that they are not sold. Something is amiss. It's obvious to us, to the people that have followed this team closely, it's obvious what's wrong. You know, this team didn't deserve to be 9-7. They didn't really deserve to be in the playoffs. The AFC South was down.

The AFC was down. So I think ownership knows. But at the same time, I don't know. It's such a weird situation for them. You know, you like the progress that Malarkey has made. Like we've said for the past few weeks, you like the culture that he's established. But the team took a clear step back this year.

But they advanced further in the playoff. So it's just strange. I'm not sure that there's been any situation like this in the league history. So I don't think – the more I think about it, I just don't think you're going to get a change at offensive coordinator. I mean, the league is not stupid. People around the league understand, hey, this guy just went into the final eight of the playoffs

and doesn't know if he's got a job. So they know if he misses the playoffs next year, they go 7-9, 6-10, the plug's probably going to be pulled. So I don't know that you're going to attract anybody, and I'm not sure what firing Hrabiski and promoting someone like Jason Michael would do. So I don't know that there's a really good answer here. But like I was telling you, if before, you know, this morning, if you've got Joss McDaniels, you think he's the guy.

Maybe they reach out to him and say, hey, if we offer you this job, will you take it? We can match whatever the Colts are going to offer you. We'll offer you more money. Maybe you go that route. Maybe they did. I don't know. It certainly seems like that was their guy. will offer you more money maybe you give that route maybe they did i don't know uh it certainly seems like that was their guy but um the wording of this is just strange so we can't totally put

to bed we can't say for certain hey malarkey's still going to be the coach so uh one way or another they need to figure this out and maybe they have by the time you're listening to this but it's just kind of odd leaving everybody in suspense yeah and so like we'll keep an eye on it and we'll obviously you know bring when we have news we'll bring it to you and we'll break it down but i i think i think in the coming days we find out more about this and i don't know i just i can't imagine a scenario where everything just goes forward as it was this year because like you said i mean you have you have a playoff win you have something you can possibly build on but the 99 of the fans agree that something with this offense needs to change and you know that there there is the

occasional fan out there that like i've had three or four of them that have that have blasted me on twitter for you know suggesting that they should move on from for mike malarkey and how could you you know possibly move on from the guy that brought the titans our first playoff win in 14 blah blah and i do understand all that and understand how important it all is but the vast majority of people want some type of change you're not satisfied with what happened this year and again like you said there's never going to be, you're never going to get a softer schedule than what they had this year. And I've had people point to me,

well, yeah, they went 5-1 in the division this year. They haven't done that. That's progress. Well, sure, it is. But, again, you got the Texans with Tom Savage the second time, and you didn't see Andrew Luck either time for the Colts. You're telling me that if we played Deshaun Watson in both of those games and you play Andrew Luck twice,

you still think this team is 5-1 in the division? Absolutely not. We don't know what Andrew Luck's status is. It's still up in the air. I still assume that he's going to be able to play next year. Maybe he is done. We'll find out that as time goes on. But next year, they're not going 5-1 if those are the quarterbacks in this division, if the offense doesn't change. So, I mean, there's just, I don't know. We can see it.

We can see that even at 9-7, even winning a playoff game that this team underachieved. You know, Malarkey said today that he was happy with the progress that Mariota made in his third year, which is just the most ridiculous statement you could possibly make. progress that Mariota made in his third year, which is just the most ridiculous statement you could possibly make. I mean, when you've got a guy that was just, you know, his arc was just, you know, ascending straight up last year, and then for him to have the crash season this year, and we saw some blips at the end of the year. Now, yesterday wasn't good, but I mean, the offense was a disaster as a whole.

But we did see at the end of the year a little bit of signs of life, and we felt a little bit better about him. But he was down for the majority of the year. And sure, he was injured. You saw the difference that did him being healthy made. And again, they went back to him getting hurt in that game last night. I'm sure that he did. I'm not that he did.

I mean, I'm not saying that they're making that up. But at the same time, it seems like that they've used that as an excuse. Well, Marcus can't run, so we can't run. We can't run an offense. You know, it's not even our – like, we just can't – we can't do anything because he can't run. And that's just dumb to me. And I just – again, I can't imagine that John Robinson is seeing this differently than we are. He knows what's happened in that building.

He knows how far back things have gone this year. He knows that if you run out this same group next year, that you're not going to get 9-7, that you're going to get something probably more like 6-10 with a tougher schedule and all that kind of stuff. He knows all that. I don't know. Maybe he thinks he can bring in enough talent to overcome the coaching, but I just can't see

that as a thing. I am still holding out hope that there's something here in this extension or whatever it may be that says that there are going to be changes to the staff. How ridiculous was Malarkey's press conference today?

For me, it just really made me mad uh just not owning anything you know he came out with everything is great and and everything's perfect and and we're gonna go win next year i just i take some ownership uh you know how frustrating this offense has been. You can't be happy with the offense. Fans see right through that. That part of it really burned me up today. Saying that he was happy with Terry Hrabisky. He was happy with Marcus Mario's development.

Don't give me that. That's not something I want to hear out of my coach. I want to hear something real. I want to hear something with some substance. And to be fair, he's been that guy in the past, but he certainly was not today. He's turned into a pretty defensive guy.

And look, he's 9-7. He deserves to be somewhat defensive. But, man, you've got to look a little deeper and look at the schedule and look at the things that broke the Titans' way. You're beating Tom Savage and you're beating Jacoby Brissett. You're not beating Watson and Luck. So I just see a very different outlook already going forward for the team.

I just, like I said on Twitter a few minutes ago, I could really see the bottom falling out for this team. Yeah, exactly. And so, like I said, we'll keep an eye on this as it goes along. And I'm just, again, holding out hope that there's something more that is going to happen. All right, so coming up, we'll talk a little bit about the game last night and what we saw on the field in the Titans' final game of this year. All right, so it's funny that we're how many minutes into this

and we still haven't actually talked about the game that the Titans finished up on last night. But it was ugly. And, you know, for the first quarter it was fun, right? We saw the defense get a couple of stops. The offense had a nice drive. You saw just a beautiful one-handed play, one-handed catch by Corey Davis for a touchdown. We saw something from Corey Davis last night, so that was exciting. That gives us something to build off of going into next year.

But overall, you were a rational person, and you really stopped and broke down the matchups in this game. It should have been pretty much what we expected. Now, the offense performed worse than I thought they would. The Patriots defense, we talked about how it had gotten better as the season went along, but still the front seven wasn't very good. We talked about how there would be some plays that would be made. The offense wasn't able to take advantage of that outside of you know real early on in the game to me part of that's adjustments and the fact that you know our offense couldn't make those with Jack Conklin going down that obviously things Dennis Kelly

didn't play very well in relief we talked a little bit about that before but you know overall like I said it kind of played out the way that I thought it would. And I said on Twitter before the game, the question that I kept asking myself is, can the Titans offense keep up in this game? Because there was never any doubt in my mind the Patriots were going to get 30-plus points. I kind of felt that way all week. You knew they were going to go to that short passing game, the underneath stuff. Again, if you go back to Bill Belichick last week and just the informed answer that he gave on the Titans on Tuesday or whatever day it was when he broke down the entire roster,

like from Marcus Mariota all the way down to the 53rd man on the roster. You knew they were coming prepared. You knew they were going to have done their homework. They saw what the Steelers were able to do against the Titans in the short passing game. They saw what the Rams were able to do in the screen game. So you knew you were going to see some of that stuff. You wondered if the Titans would have any answers for it on defense.

They didn't. And, again, you know, so at that point, the offense had to score a bunch of points to keep up, and they just weren't able to do it. And predictably, they went right back to the jumbo sets. That was the number one thing that I noticed right off the bat. They came out in condensed formations and, shock that I noticed right off the bat. They came out and condensed formations and shockingly could not run the football.

After the Kansas City game, you really thought, hey, they figured things out. They scored however many unanswered to come back and win that game. The run game was working. Granted, the Kansas City run defense was bad, but New England's run defense is bad too.

But they did not expand at all on the power spread, which was really disappointing. Malarkey, of course, blamed it on Mariota's quad injury. But still, from the opening whistle, they didn't from the opening whistle they didn't run hardly any of it so that was really frustrating to see uh it just just really confirms what i believe to be true about the staff they're they're just stubborn uh you know in the nfl it takes adaptation uh you gotta be ahead of the curve the patriots are always ahead of the curve and it seems like the titans are just kind of stuck spinning in the mud.

So, still, all that considered, Marcus Marietta was going to put this offense on the back last night. He started out really hot. He was really sharp. You saw Corey Davis come out with an edge about him that I hadn't seen all year. You saw Eric Decker even making some plays. I thought the receivers were pretty good last night in the first half. Of course, all of that was derailed by the two penalties that I'll let you talk about.

Yeah, and so, okay, again, I don't want this to come off as either one of us saying that we think the referees lost this game for the Titans because they clearly didn't. But there are two huge calls in this game that really did change the complexion of this game, especially in the first half. Again, I think that we would have seen a closer game for longer had these calls gone a different way. I think the Patriots still run away through the second half. But I've never in my life seen a play where, you know, all the time you see somebody jump offside, somebody move.

The offensive lineman is pointing to the defensive lineman. The defensive lineman is pointing to the offensive lineman. They point at each other. The referees get together and talk. They make a decision. Or the officials get together and talk. The referee comes out and says, you know, false start or offsides or whatever. Right? They mark the penalty off.

You go about your business. Never in my life have I seen a conference, the referee come out and call a penalty, mark the penalty off, and then come back and say, oh, nope, never mind. We're going to call it the other way. And that's exactly what you saw last night in the game where they call a false start on the Patriots guy. The Patriots are out there to punt from like their 14 or their 19 or something. The Titans had them pinned way back, gotten off the field. The guy, whatever, I don't know if it was the guards,

whatever it was on the punt team there, he clearly moved. The Titans guy jumped across. They called a false start, so you're back in the 5 yards on a 4th and 5. And so the Patriots are still going to have to punt. After they do that, they come back out and say, well, never mind. The linemen moved because the defensive linemen jumped across. And so they end up giving the Patriots the 5 yards. It's called an offside instead of a false start.

That gives them the first down. Patriots go down the field and score. Huge. I mean, you can't understate how important that was in the game because the Titans are probably at that point going to get the ball back with, you know, you assume pretty good field position because of where they were punting from. The Titans had been backed up the entire game, you know, as far as field position was concerned at the point. Now, again, from that point, the Titans defense had the opportunity to stop them again.

They didn't. The Patriots go down and score a touchdown. It was just a terrible, like, momentum killer for the Titans at that point. All right. The other play on a third down, they call Eric Decker for offensive pass interference. He runs a route on Malcolm Butler. There's some contact there, but Butler is falling down. Decker runs past him.

You got a first down. You know, Titans are on the move. Instead, offensive pass interference, back them up, creates like a third and 17, which I haven't gone back and looked, but there were more third and 12 pluses that the Titans were in last night than I think I've ever seen from a team ever. I mean, it was just ridiculous. But again, the Titans are on the move.

If they get that first down, they're going down the field. But instead, now it's third and I mean, it was just ridiculous. But again, the Titans are on the move. If they get that first down, they're going down the field, but instead, now it's 3rd and 17 or whatever it was, and you're not going to pick that up against hardly anybody, especially not against that Patriots defense. So two huge plays right there. If they go the other way, who knows what happens on those

drives. Maybe the Titans can take advantage of the field position on the punt, get a touchdown. Maybe they can continue that drive, get a touchdown. Defense stays off the field. Tom Brady stays off the field. All of those things are in play there. So it was just unbelievable. And then all of that, and

we'll get your thoughts on it in just a sec. And then the play right at the end of the half where they throw the pass to Amendola, I think. He goes down, and they stop the clock on Amendola's way to the ground. I mean, come on. Watch the play. Obviously, we're Titans fans.

We're going to have some bias here. But it was one of those things where as the play was happening, I'm watching the clock. I'm watching him catch the ball. He starts to go to the ground, and so I kind of almost stopped watching because, well, there's no way he's going to get down. They're going to have time to call a timeout, all that stuff. And then, like, I look back up, and there's still one second on the clock,

and they've called a timeout. And I was like, what in the world? Even Tony Romo, you know, he said something along the lines of, you know, there's a Gillette second left or something like that. And then it was pretty funny that, you know, they count second half, and Tony Romo goes into his spill. Well, you know, the clock operator is from a neutral city and he blah, blah, blah. So I think somebody talked to Tony Romo at halftime to make sure,

to let him know that he shouldn't be saying, you know, that the Patriots were getting any favorable calls because the clock operator was, you know, not the guy. And the NFL controls the clock in cities anyway. But it was just all of those things combined, it raises your eyebrows, we'll say, just to see all that stuff. And maybe one thing, because we've seen some ticky-tack offensive pass interference calls at times this year.

We've seen the other side where DeAndre Hopkins pushes off on every single play. There's a play later in the game where Gronk absolutely just extends his arm and shoves Kevin Byard, catches the pass for first down, no call. And so, I mean, you expect some of that stuff throughout the course of the game. Generally, that stuff's all going to kind of even out. But, again, it just makes you raise your eyebrow a little bit when you see that many calls go against a team like they did against the Titans last night.

And I typically hate blaming it on the refs guy. I'm just not that kind of person. The game is decided on the field usually. Titans fans have a legit gripe here. They got blown away in the second half. But, I mean, who's to say that if those calls go there go their way uh maybe marcus puts together two more touchdown drop drives in that first half so he was robbed of two possessions essentially and those possessions were given to the greatest

quarterback of all time uh being coached all time so i mean you do the math there so after that titans were cooked. Just think about the Titans' luck with some of these calls this year. You go back to that Dolphins game, the fumble that traveled 15 yards forward in the air, that pass interference call on Jonu on the same game. You go back to San Francisco, that pick from Eric Walton. So you'd like to think I'm probably leaving some out. You'd like to think

that these calls would even out and some would go your way. That didn't seem to happen at all for the Titans at all this year. So it's kind of bizarre. The NFL owes them one. But like you said, it kind of gets you thinking. know you go back to

the Jesse James play in Pittsburgh against New England and that goes their way and then those those three things go their way you know the Patriots don't need any help they've done this for 17 years they do not need any help uh so it was kind of interesting to see all of that develop kind of while the game was still in question. But, you know, anyways, the thing that stuck out to me right before halftime was the way Malarkey handled that two-minute drive. That was awful. They were faced with a fourth and one. He burned through his timeouts.

There was 20 seconds left. They were faced with a fourth and one. He burned through his timeouts. There was 20 seconds left. He took another timeout and dialed up a fourth and one play out of the jumbo set. Didn't get it. Derek Henry made an awful cut and bounced it outside. That's not even the point.

The point is, what if you do get it? You don't have any timeouts left. You're not in field goal position. You've got the jumbo package on the field, so you've got to change personnel. So that means you're going to have to spike the ball somewhere around seven or eight seconds left, and you're still not in field goal range. So it's little stuff like that that just makes you wonder, hey, is Malarkey the guy for this job? Can he handle this?

The moment just kind of seemed too big for him. And to be fair, it's Gillette. It does that to a lot of people. But, man, last night was rough, especially after that whole sequence in the second half where I thought the Titans just pretty much quit. So you hate to sour on a team after a trip to Gillette. But here we are, you know. Yeah, and the moment, I think we have to say it was too big for, outside of Corey Davis, I think it was pretty much too big for anybody.

I mean, for everybody on the team. Because, I mean, you saw Taylor LeJuan turn into a turnstile, you know, on like two or three consecutive plays last night where he just let the guys run right by him. You know, I got the email from PFF talking about how it was by far his worst game of the year. He allowed, I think, four sacks when he had allowed three or four, whatever it was, all year.

You know, and so it was just a rough night for him. They had a couple of plays. Like, Taewon Taylor had a couple of balls that hit him in the hands. They would have been, you know, really good catches. They had a couple of plays. Taewon Taylor had a couple of balls that hit him in the hands. They would have been really good catches. I mean, were tough catches. But if you're going to be, you know, if you're a 13.5-point underdog, you have to make some of those plays to win those types of games. Rashard Matthews, another one, you know, like a play that he could have made

that goes off of his hands. I mean, there was a lot of stuff like that. It seemed like they did kind of get shell-shocked. Titans fans were killing Dan Shaughnessy last week for talking about how this was no game. The Patriots got two bye weeks in a row and all that stuff. But I heard him on the midday 180, and he said something along the extent of there's a psychological thing, a disadvantage that teams have when they come into foxborough just because of the the patriots and tom brady and bill velichick

and teams get psyched out by that and it almost seemed like that's what happened to the science team especially again after those calls go against them and all that stuff it just seemed like like you said they just they were just kind of done at that point. Hopefully, it's something that this team learns from. You have a very young core of players, a very young nucleus for this team. And you said weeks ago that there was something to getting into the playoffs, getting that playoff experience under your belt, even if it's not a year where you think they actually have a chance to go and win the Super Bowl. But to get out there, to play those games, to go to Foxborough, I mean, I think all of

that stuff will be beneficial to these guys down the road, but it just sure didn't look like they were ready for primetime last night. I'll say this. You said the bright spot was Corey Davis. I'm still saying Marcus Marietta was pretty good last night. And I'm not going to fault him for when Dennis Kelly entered the game at right tackle. You're just, like you said, a bunch of turnstiles out there. There was nothing happening.

The Titans were done. They were done playing with that game. They wanted to get on the bus and head to the airport. So what I saw out of Marcus in the first quarter has me excited about him, no matter who the coach is. What I saw out of him in the second half against the Chiefs has me excited. What I saw from him in crutch time over the last three weeks really just kind of reaffirmed my belief in Marcus.

So, you know, the Titans, yeah, they crapped the bed in the second half. But I still believe Marcus Mariota is the guy at quarterback. I've never felt more confident in that. It's good to see Corey Davis actually get some production, you know. And the thing with Davis is he was coming open. The chemistry with him and Mariota just simply hasn't been there. You saw too many mistakes out of Davis. I'll be the first to tell you that.

He ran wrong routes. He ended up in the wrong spots. He caused interceptions. It's going to happen. That's a rookie receiver for you. But you saw him come open. You saw him come open against Kansas City. He should have had a touchdown against KC.

You saw these flashes, the first game against Oakland. So it was really good to see that. If this passing attack ever gets some chemistry to it, if it ever gets off the ground, Corey Davis is going to be a star in this league. I'm just not sure he's going to be a star in this offense. And that's where we all come back to what to do with this coaching staff so i i just i don't have an answer for you hopefully you'll have one by the time you listen to this yeah and like you said that's the concern that's the thing

that we're watching for and and we'll see how it plays out so i think we've we've talked long enough about this tonight um we'll continue to break this down. And, again, stay with us because we'll be here at least a few times a week throughout the offseason, and we will have free agency in the drafts and all that stuff coming up, and we'll be here, obviously, through all of that. And we'll, at some point, really break down the roster, break down the different positions and what they were able to do this year, where we saw some progress,

where we saw some regression, all those types of things. So there's still plenty to dissect from this season. It stinks that the Titans season is over. Again, fun, we got a couple of extra games this year. That hasn't happened in a really long time for this franchise. Something to build on, but again, hopefully some changes will be made fun. We got a couple of extra games this year. That hasn't happened in a really long time for this franchise. Something

to build on, but again, hopefully some changes will be made and we'll see some positive steps that lead us into next year. Is there anything else we need to cover before we get out tonight? I don't believe so. Alright, so that'll do it for us on Locked on Titans tonight. Again, you can follow

us on Twitter at jmorrismcm at tlambertfb. Check us out there. Subscribe to the podcast so that you get the latest episodes as soon as they are available. We'll be back tomorrow with a little bit more on this and hopefully maybe a little bit more clarity on what's going on with Mike Malarkey and the alleged contract extension. So for Terry, this is Jimmy saying thanks for listening to Locked on Titans,

and we will talk to you tomorrow.