Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: Coordinators introduced; taking your questions

Episode Date: February 8, 2018

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Welcome in to another edition of Locked on Titans. I am Jimmy Morris, joined as always by Terry Lambert. Terry, coming off National Signing Day, how are you feeling? I'm exhausted. That was a long day. We did about 15 or so posts on the site. Glad it's behind me and can focus on some Titans once again. Yes, so before we get started tonight, we will remind you, as always, Terry and I write for musicofmiracles.com, covering the Titans for SB Nation, so you can check that out. We have a ton of stuff going up there every day.

You can follow us on Twitter. I'm at jmoresmcm. Terry is at tlambertfb. We have a Twitter account for the podcast now, at LockedOnTitans, so follow that. We asked some questions there today, so we'll do that from time to time, and we'll do that through that account, so follow it there. We'll post the episodes there and all that stuff. So anyway, tonight we're going to jump into a few of those questions.

Before we do that, the Titans held media availability for the coaching staff today. The coordinators and coaching coaches, Drabel was not involved. So I got to hear for the first time from Dean Pease and Matt LaFleur in their official capacity as Titans coordinators. I'm impressed by both guys. Obviously, time will tell.

We haven't seen the game plans they're going to put together here or anything of that nature. That obviously won't happen until later on. But I thought Dean Pease did a really good job. Before he even took any questions at the press conference, he basically gave the story on why he decided so quickly to come out of retirement. And basically just said he had decided before the year last year that 2017 was going to be his last season um said that that harbaugh actually offered him a contract extension there um but he decided he wanted to retire then a couple weeks into retirement

kind of decided it wasn't for him um and so when vrabel called him a couple times he decided to come on back and talked about the attractiveness of coaching with Vrabel uh you know coaching for Vrabel a guy that played for him uh in New England then um the the attractiveness of the city of Nashville uh about how his wife wanted to be here and that kind of stuff so um it sounded like a guy that wants to be here uh not a guy that you know was really you know all in retirement and then just kind of came back as a favor like i mean i think he did to some extent come back as a favor to rabel but also a guy that still has that desire to coach said he signed a multi-year deal so um you know just good to hear that and then hearing a little floor talk offense go listen to the to the press conference they were

i watched them on facebook live so i'm so i'm sure they're still there they're probably on the team side as well but um just hearing him talk about how he's going to tailor the offense to the personnel, which is obviously something different than what we had here. Talking about getting Marcus to play with confidence. So, I mean, he didn't come out and say that it looked like Marcus wasn't playing with confidence last year. But if you're reading between the lines there, I think you can kind of take that away from his comments. And then he also said that we're going to have Marcus in meetings and we're going to expect him to tell us if there are things that we put in

that he doesn't like. And he talked about how Marcus is such a nice guy and that might be hard for him. But I don't know. It's really refreshing to hear the coaching staff come in, being willing to look at the personnel and decide what they're going to do based off of that, not we have our scheme, here's what we're going to run regardless of who's out there. Yeah, and that's how it should be, and that's what we didn't have with the last staff. So I don't know how you can't be excited after listening to what LaFleur had to say

about how he's going to lean on the run game and how the run game is going to tie into the passing games. It sounds like there's going to be a ton of play action. Rams led the league in play action plays last year, where the Titans were, I believe, 10th. So we know how good Marcus Mariota is off the play action already. It's going to be interesting to see how this new staff can kind of maximize that ability. And he talked about being aggressive and getting big plays.

He said you can't dink and dunk your way down the field. And he said defenses are too good. You've got to have those chunk plays. And that, to me, sounds like he wants to be aggressive. He wants to take some shots down the field. But that also means he wants to generate big plays in the game. He wants to get big chunks with Derrick Henry, and that involves getting him some lanes to run in,

which we didn't see a whole lot of last year. So just excited, really, for the offense to have a new leadership, a new guy calling calling the shots and some fresh ideas because yeah we really deserve that here in nashville yeah absolutely it's been kind of brutal on that front and yeah i'm glad you brought that up because one of the things that he did say was talking about you know making plays that start out looking the same but different um so you know like you said marrying the run game and the passing game there and obviously talking about play action.

And so, I mean, I think we're going to see a lot of that. And I don't know. It's going to be fun. It's going to be fun to have an offense from, you know, this century and have an offense. He talked about, you know, playing fast and how they want guys out there just reacting basically, not having to do a whole lot of thinking, playing fast and getting out there.

And we know how well Marcus did in the no huddle and that kind of stuff when he was just out there playing. I feel like in the other stuff, there was too much thinking going on, and I think that he just kind of got confused with everything that was happening. And so they're going to run an offense that's more like what he used to run at Oregon. Menlo Floor said, you know, we'll go back and look at what he's done to be successful in the NFL, what he did to be successful at Oregon, and do our best to get that stuff together and, you know,

put in something that he's comfortable with. So, obviously, again, we're just really excited to hear that, probably a little bit too excited, but based on what we had before, it's just a breath of fresh air. So like I said, no game plans or anything. We won't see any of that until later on, but you feel good about where this group is going. Okay, so we asked for questions earlier today on the Twitter account,

and we got a few, so we'll run through those. The first one we got was from South Texas Titan, and he asked if Pat O'Hara is the right choice for Marcus or will LaFleur have more of an impact. We don't know. I mean, it's tough to know with position coaches and really tough to know who's good. I mean, you know, everybody assumes that Kerry Coombs

is this great defensive backs coach because, you know, he had Lattimore and he had Garyon Conley and he had Eli Apple. You know, everybody's like, oh, look how good he was. Those guys are really good. Now, I don't say that he didn't coach them up, but, you know, it's just hard to know what position coach is. I did think it was interesting that LeFleur said today that he didn't know Pat O'Hara before, you know before they're now together on this Titan staff.

He didn't know Mike Vrabel. So, I mean, Vrabel has a good job of assembling a staff and trying to get the guys that he thinks are the best fit for these positions. But, you know, time will tell on that. I go back to listening to Greg Cosell in the Midday 180 a few weeks ago when they were talking about interviewing LaFleur for the head coaching job and about how well Cosell said LaFleur coaches quarterbacks. I think obviously it's going to be a joint effort. I think that it's safe to say that with these two guys, you're going to have much better communicators and a much better coaching,

attention to detail, all that stuff with them than we had with Terry Hrabisky and Jason Michael. Yeah, to me it's LaFleur because you're talking about changing up the entire team. You're talking about maximizing a scheme to Mariota's strengths, which we've already said the other staff didn't do. Yeah, just getting the receivers on the same page as Marcus Mariota would do him the most good, more good than any coaching could do. So for me, it's more scheme related.

I don't know enough about Pat O'Hara, like Jimmy was saying. We don't know. Nobody's going to know unless they're in the room there. So I'm sure it is kind of interesting that they didn't know each other, though. I'm not really sure how that works. But I'm excited to see LeFleur's scheme. You know you saw him. For example.

You saw him work that screen against the Titans. You know obviously he didn't call the plays. But they obviously picked up on that. And they called it. And the Titans could not stop it. So just little things like that. I mean it's really simple. It's kind of crazy how difficult the last staff made things on themselves here.

Just run plays that work. At the end of the day, it's that simple. Yeah, and again, it's just going to be fun to watch them look for things like that and try to attack them. Next question was from Charles Brown at at l do l deuce brown on twitter um free agents of interest for the titans and cap room so it's always tough to speculate on free agents this early um you know there are plenty of lists out there that of guys that are scheduled to become free agents but the thing is is, teams can negotiate with their own guys up to

a point. A lot of these guys that are supposed to hit the market, wouldn't have hit the market. As far as cap space goes, the Titans have 49 million available for 2018. That's like 8th or 9th in the league so yeah 49 103 268 according to over the

cap.com um so you know a good number part of that's just the product of them you know the drafts being bad and not having anybody to really pay they're going to have to do a deal with taylor lewan at some point he's under contract 4 18 on you know the fifth year option but they will i would imagine they do a long-term deal with him at some point uh before maybe before the season starts but i would imagine definitely before the season's over this year um but other than that i mean obviously at some point you gotta pay you gotta pay marcus mariota but you know there's not there's not any other really guy that you've got that's waiting that you're going to spend a bunch of money on. Now, as far as free

agents go, like I said, I just pulled up a list on Walter Football here, and Le'Veon Bell, DeMarcus Lawrence, Andrew Norwell, Drew Brees, Jimmy Garoppolo are the top five. Odds are none of those guys actually hit the market. Sixth is Malcolm Butler, a guy that I think at this

point we all assume is going to hit the market. But malcolm butler um a guy that i think at this point we all assume is going to hit the market uh but anyway we talk more about you know positions than actual guys um you can maybe find your complimentary running back in free agency you've got some guys deon lewis jerry mckinnon um there would be there would be good to fill that role uh now you don't want to break the bank for those guys so kind of see what the market is there. I don't think they'd be opposed to bringing in another cornerback if he's a guy that can shut things down. I know you're not as high on that being a need. And then the biggest need of all is pass rusher.

But like we were talking about before we jumped on here, those guys just don't hit the market. Those guys go free. So you're probably going to have to find that guy in free agency. One other position position just real quick i'll let you elaborate as much as you want but um nose tackle which is another question that we had uh that somebody wanted to talk about tonight i'm trying to figure out see who it was real quick wesley morgan on twitter um you know i asked about nose tackle and i think that should

be a thing the Titans are looking at. You've got Sylvester Williams, but you kind of poo-pooed that signing from the time that it happened and turned out to be not much more than a rotational guy. So there's a couple of guys, Don Terry Poe being one of them that could be on the market. So that could be something they look at in free agency. Yeah, nose tackles are interesting because the NFL is changing. You don't see the big 6'6", 350-pounders anymore that just plug a hole and don't move.

So Sylvester Williams is a guy that can move around. Going back to college, he had a great first step. He was a one-gap penetrator. And they played him at nose so i thought the fit was weird and it turned out to be weird uh and he didn't play a ton of snaps all things considered so um and it's interesting when you kind of marry that to dean peas and in his comments today he said he wanted to build from the inside out and the titans were pretty good on the inside they just don't have that presence in the middle.

So, yeah, it's been something. Nose tackle has been a position that we've talked about for years, and I feel like they've just done absolutely nothing to address it. And it's not really something that you're going to go spend a first-round pick on because you don't need the elite athlete there. You just need the guy with some strength and some size. So those guys can be found on day two, day three, late in free agency. So not a huge deal, not a huge priority, I don't think. But it's something that they definitely need to address.

As for the rest of free agency, you know, everybody wants to sign all the free agents. You know, we'll get to next month and everybody everybody will be mad that John Ross didn't sign. Everybody available. But, you know, it's real easy to get into cap trouble. Like you were saying, you're going to have to pay Mariota. You're going to have to pay Taylor LeJuan. You're going to have to pay Jack Conklin down the line. The list goes on and on.

So if you draft well, you want to use that cap to extend your own guys, and you just kind of want to plug holes with free agents. So before this year, we really didn't see free agency pay off. Obviously, you saw it with the Jaguars, and you saw it with the Giants. But I still don't think that's a way to sustain Seth because at one point, you're going to be in cap hell. I mean, you're going to have some money problems. So I would much rather see them take what john robinson has been doing you know just feeling subtle needs getting

adding a role player here and there you know they got a they got logan ryan who was an impact guy uh but i'd much rather i'm not go crazy in free agency. Yeah, and they're not going to. I mean, John Robinson made it pretty clear that that's not what he wants to do. That's not what the Patriots do. The Patriots do sign free agents. I think a lot of people just write them off as, well, they don't ever sign anybody. But they have a specific need that they find, and if they identify a guy that can fill that, they'll throw money at it. But they're not just out there signing everybody. So, I mean, I think that's what we're going to see here.

And I think we're probably maybe even still one more offseason away from there being a spot to where John Robinson identifies a guy and says, hey, if we go get him, whatever position it ends up being, if we go get him, he puts us over the top. He makes us a Super Bowl contender, so we'll pay him. I think over the top he makes us a super bowl contender so we'll pay him i think when we get to that point when the titans get to that point they'll be willing to do some of that but i just don't think we're there yet and like you said we're not gonna they're not gonna sign four guys on the first day of agency and then all of a sudden things are gonna have this great team so you gotta draft well and you gotta have guys to sign so i mean

that that's kind of that's why they have so much money right now is just because they don't there's not there's not just a bunch of guys waiting in the wings so um that'll be something that that will keep an eye on uh we've got i think one or two more questions that we will hit coming up right after this so there was another question in here about players to watch at the Combine. And we'll do – trust me, we'll have plenty of information on guys at the Combine. We haven't really dove into that yet just because it's still a couple weeks away. The guys that we'll be watching, I think, the most closely will be those edge guys because that's the Titans' biggest need.

That's the one position that I think they could draft, they could come in and make a huge impact for this team. Those guys are always really fun to watch at the Combine because they're these huge guys that run these ridiculous 40 times and can jump really high and all that stuff. and can jump really high and all that stuff. And there's always a guy or two that his stock goes crazy at the combine because he's an athletic freak. But you've got to try to marry that with the tape and everything else. You want to use, I guess, both indicators to how you evaluate a guy like that. Yeah, and like you said, I mean, pass rushers, the combine is their time to shine. So plenty of teams will have thresholds that they want these pass rushers to meet.

They want to see their three-cone. They want to marry that with their 40-yard dash. They want to see how explosive they are in their jumps. So guys like Harold Landry, Marcus Davenport, Arden Key, guys like that, Jeff Holland, Sam Hubbard. That's all going to be a huge week for them at the Combine. And hopefully by then we'll be able to key in a little more on some of the guys that the Titans will be interested in.

John Robinson luckily has made it pretty easy for us in the last couple of years, just really using production as his main metric to go off of. So not a lot to talk about yet on the combine. We're going to dive in fully on this draft stuff here, along with free agent in the coming weeks, though. Yeah, and like you said, I mean, we've gone from, it's funny how these different general managers look at things differently. We had those Jeff Fisher years where – I mean, he wasn't a GM in name, but he was the one calling the shots.

And they were drafting guys like Chris Henry and Paul Williams who had zero production in college but went to the combine, put up really good numbers, and they fell in love with them. And so, again again that's not what you want to see you don't want them to to you know dismiss the tape because because the guy does well at the combine but i think you can use kind of both as an indicator and that's what we've seen from john robinson and so i don't think there's really any reason to expect it to be any different this year um and like you said he it's been pretty easy to find guys that that he would like and i mean you zeroed in on cory davis is the guy that john robinson would fall in love with probably about this time last year um and so you know but it's stuff like that like

you can kind of look at what they've done in the past and that gives you a good indicator of what they're going to do going forward it could be a little bit different this year just with the different coaching staff. They could have some different feelings on players than the last coaching staff would have. But again, I think we'll get a decent idea of anything. You're talking about zone blocking schemes, for instance. If they sign a guard or two in free agency that's different than than what they had last year i mean i think we'll get some some indications there but you know we'll kind of just have to watch it as it goes along and figure out what the what the biggest needs are and then

go from there and i think again i think you know edge rusher is going to be at the top of that list and i don't think that's a spot that they'll be able to fill in free agency. But we'll see any other needs that kind of come about if they cut players or if they sign people. And it's kind of crazy to talk about draft needs before free agency. I know we do it because it's fun to talk about. But, you know, you've got to wait and see who these guys are going to cut, you know, who's going to get re-signed, who are they going to sign, who are they going to add.

So you'll get a much clearer picture probably about a month from now. But, you know, I think, like you were saying, those edge rushers don't hit the market. So I think they're going to be firm in the Titans' need at number one being a pass rusher. Yeah, and that's not to say necessarily that they take one in the first round, but I think that will be their biggest need. But you'd be in a scenario where you're looking at best player of the night kind of stuff. But anyway, like I said, we'll get more into that as we go along. Anything else that we didn't cover tonight?

I think we hit it all. All right, so that'll do it for tonight. We'll be back next week. We're working on getting Dan Orloff on next week. Like I said before, if you've heard any of his stuff, he's really good. Breaks it down really well. We hope to have him on

next week. He's got some insight on LeFleur being in camp with the Rams last year. Keep an eye out for that. We'll kind of let you know when that's going to happen. In the meantime, like I said, muselymiracles.com. We'll have plenty of stuff there. Follow us on Twitter. I'm MattJMorrisMCM. Terry's at

TLambertFB. Follow the podcast site at LockedOnTitans. So for Terry, this is Jimmy saying thanks for listening to LockedOnTitans, and we will talk to you again next week.