Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: Dave McGinnis breaks down the loss to the Dolphins, looks ahead to the Texans

Episode Date: September 12, 2018

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome in to another edition of Locked On Titans. I'm Jimmy Morris, joined as always by Terry Lambert. Terry, how are you tonight? Doing good, man. What's going on? Not too much, and we are very excited to have Coach Dave McGinnis on with us tonight. I'm sure you're familiar with Coach McGinnis and his work, but he is the color commentator for Titans Radio. Coach Mack, how are you? Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Jimmy, Terry, I'm doing good. It's great to be on with you guys. Yeah, like I said, we really appreciate having you on. So the first thing that I'd like to know is what it was like on Sunday from your perspective.

I know, you know, obviously seven hours ended up of coverage there. I think y'all were on the radio pretty much the whole time. Have you ever experienced anything like that? And what was it like for y'all in the booth having to cover all that time? Well, let me start with the fact that, you know, for the 31 years that I coached in the league, I've been involved in several lightning delays. I had one in Tampa when I was coaching with the Rams that hit just about the time in the game that this one hit on us down in Miami, you know, right before the half, and then we went in. And so I've never, though, ever been involved in anything where there was this extensive and this long of a lightning delay and two separate lightning delays.

And then clearly, you know, being involved in it on the coaching aspect of it is entirely different than being involved in it in the broadcast booth because of course Mike Keith and that whole Titans Radio crew are so professional and so prepared. Last year when I came with Titans Radio with Mike Keith he gave me a binder and in the binder there was there was about, you know, 20 to 25 different sections. And one of the sections, one of the tabs was weather delay protocol. And it was very delineated, very organized, very laid out,

exactly what we were going to do, who's responsible for what, how we were going to approach it. And, of course, now, you know, and Mike Keith is one of the most organized people I've ever been around in my life, and his level of professionalism in the broadcast business is unparalleled. But he, Rhett Bryan, Brad Willits, Jonathan Hutton, Philip Noel, and then Amy Wells is our sideline reporter who was invaluable during this time i mean everybody just pitched in i mean it was a team and and we never went

off the air i mean we had consistent programming uh you know for eight hours because we were on air clearly an hour before the broadcast then the broadcast and then then the two delays that totaled four hours so we were on the air for eight hours, and we never stopped. But Mike, Keith, and that Titans radio crew, we had a plan, and we stayed right with it, and it was an unusual experience. But the thing that I really took from it, you know, let's not talk about the game yet. You asked me about the experience in the booth.

It just let me know, and again, as I say, I'm very proud to be a part of Titans Radio. I've had opportunities to be other places, you know, after last year, you know, doing this other places. After I went through it, I knew this is where I wanted to be. But the professionalism and the way that Mike Keith, Brad Willis, and that whole crew handled that seven-hour delay was amazing. I mean, it was like clockwork up there.

Of course, it was something none of us had ever been through. And then, of course, Amy Wells, you know, going back and forth and going underneath into the tunnel and going with the team and finding out what was going on. I mean, she was really our eyes and ears as to what was going on as far as how long it was going to be, what the situation was underneath, how long we were getting reports from New York and from the local weather people as to how long the delays would be. So it was, I'd say, it was a pretty, you know, once you got through with it, once we got on the bus and then started to get to the airplane, you really realized how tired you were after doing it, you know, after being on your feet for eight hours. But again, our listeners on the Titans Radio Network are the most important thing to us,

and we wanted to bring them everything that was going on. And I think we did a pretty decent job of it, but I'm just glad to be a small part of it. Ugly day all around for the Titans, but the worst part has to be losing Delaney Walker for the season. I wanted to get your take. How are the Titans going to replace him? Is a guy like Johnnie Smith ready to step into his role,

or are they going to have to take a little bit of a different approach? You're not going to replace him. You're not going to replace Delaney Walker, because you're talking about replacing a veteran Pro Bowl player that is one of the elite tight ends in the league. And, again, he was a vital part of this offense because he fit everywhere. I mean, you know, and, again, Matt LaFleur, you know,

is starting to put this thing together. And I said, you know, this year when I came here because I was very familiar, you know, last year when I came here, because I was very familiar, you know, last year with the Rams. I'm very familiar with the way that offense looked before Matt LaFleur, you know, came in there with Sean McVay. This offense takes time. You know, I've said that, you know, consistently since I've been here, that it's a progression platform that takes time. But some of the pieces that you have, Delaney Walker was a valuable, valuable piece. You're not going to replace him.

Jonu Smith is not going to be Delaney Walker. Jonu Smith needs to be the best Jonu Smith that he can be. And then Matt LaFleur, you know, will need to reconfigure his offense, his schemes, his calls, his game plans around the pieces that he has available. And that is one of the beauties of this offense. I have seen, again, all the years that I've coached in this league against this offense, starting with Mike Shanahan in Denver,

it is something that is very, very malleable, and it's able to be transformed depending on the pieces that you have. But losing, losing. Delaney Walker, that was a huge, huge blow, not only as a performer on the field, but he's a big, big part of the leadership in that locker room. That hurt a lot. All right, coming up we will continue our conversation

with Coach Dave McGinnis. All right, coming up we will continue our conversation with Coach Dave McGinnis. Okay, so looking back at the game on Sunday, the first two possessions, Titans go right down the field, but only end up with three points. As a fan, Karen and I were kind of talking about this before we got started, I'm sitting there thinking, well, it's not the end of the world the world you know the times have been moving the ball whenever they want to so you know they're going to get down there again they're going to have those opportunities again but then you know obviously you see the way that things play out it doesn't end up that way when you're on the sideline and you have those opportunities and

you only come away with three points do you get a sense of that may really come back to haunt us, or are you just kind of in the moment and not really thinking in those terms? No, I think you hit on it. I mean, that's a very fair question both ways. First of all, I very much agreed with the decision to go for it on fourth down. You know, after we had moved down there, I agreed with a call. And it's a little bit of both. I mean, you understand that in this league, once you get into the red zone,

it's so, so important to come away with touchdowns because very seldom do just kicking field goals are going to get you, you know, what you want at the end of the game in the National Football League. Now the way that the game has changed to be an offensive game, you know, as much as the scoring has accelerated in this league because of the rule changes. But at the same time, you're in the moment at the time, and you know that you're moving the ball, and then you progress to the next series. And, of course, clearly after your offensive series,

then you progress to your defense. And the thing that you try to do is get the ball back and get possessions back for your offense so that you can continue to probe what they're doing on defense and try to get back down there again. So I don't think that there's ever a point, I mean, there never was a point when I was on a sideline or even when I was in the booth in that ballgame that I thought,

you know what, this is really going to come back to hurt us. I just was more focused on the next series on defense and then getting the ball back for the offense. It was kind of our first look, our first full dose at the Titans' rushing attack. It was Derrick Henry to start, and I thought he looked okay. And obviously his numbers would have looked a lot better without that kind of phantom holding call on Delaney Walker there. But I want to talk about Deion Lewis.

He looked really good in that second half. The Titans really leaned on him running in between the tackles. That's not something they did in the first half. So what was your thoughts just seeing the first time through the Titans' run game? Well, first of all, you know, I thought early on, you know, that the run game needed to get established a little bit stronger. I think we've got two really good running backs. But, you know, as you said, it didn't get established early on.

And, guys, the run game is the genesis of what this offense is. If any of you watch, you know, the Rams play the Raiders, you know, on Sunday night, you can see that a whole lot of this stuff starts with being able to run the football, being able to get their second level of defense to press the line of scrimmage. That way, this play action and the boots that come off of it and all those TRCs, which I call their transcontinentals, which come from one side of the offense to the other side, you know, open up because your second level of linebaggers and safeties are pressing the line of scrimmage because of the run game.

It all has to work off of that. And so if that's not generating early, well, then clearly they can lay back and take some of those soft spots away inside the numbers and squeeze the hash marks on you. So that's why it's so important to get it going. Now, once Deion Lewis got going, I mean, Deion Lewis, you know, it comes exactly as advertised. You know, I think anybody that's followed the National Football League and has watched his career, watched what he can do,

he's a consummate back in this league, and he really, I mean, he's really a threat any time he's got it in his hands. And he can remove himself from the core of the offense and move out as a receiver. He can run all the route trees. He's very dangerous with the ball in his hand, with the screen game. And then he's a tough, tough, hard-to-bring-down inside runner. And then, again, you pair him with Henry back there.

And, again, we had, you know, that 60-yard touchdown run that was called back for a non-call. That was a bad call, guys. And, again, I'll just say it. I mean, when I was the head coach, I couldn't say anything about the officiating. I know Mike Grable won't come out and say anything about the officiating. That was a terrible call. I mean, that was a horrible call.

I mean, it was not holding. They had a hold of our tight end's face mask. And so, to me, it just, you know, those types of things, you know, in a ball game like that, especially, you know, where you were trading it back and forth, you had two lightning delays of two hours apiece. You had a wet field. I mean, you know, scoring was going to be at a premium in that ballgame.

That's why those explosive plays that both teams gave up were so big, and that's why the turnovers were so big. But that Phantom holding call, again, I mean, I couldn't bitch about it when I was a head coach. I can bitch about it now, and I am. There you go. All right, coming up, we will wrap up our conversation with Coach McGinnis. All right, so obviously, you know, the hit on Marcus Mariota.

First of all, I would like your opinion on that. I mean, I know Vrabel basically said, I think, on Monday that, you know, you could tell he didn't like it. And, you know, he said that he was going to go tell Dean Pease if that's legal, then we need to be doing that as well. So your opinion on that. And then secondly, what do you see for Marcus Mariota in this game? I mean, obviously his performance was affected once he got to the point where he couldn't

steal the football. But before that, kind of what did you think of his performance in this one? Well, let's start with Marcus' performance. Before he got hit, and I got some very good thoughts on that hit because I've been involved in that conversation with the league office when I was coaching, so I can tell you exactly what this deal is. Okay, first of all, let's talk about Marcus first. Marcus was inconsistent.

I thought he had some very good throws early and was very spot on with what he was doing. He checked us out of a couple of bad plays, put us into some good plays. Tyjuan Taylor, that was a perfect throw to him on that takeoff. That ball needs to be caught. The throwback that he threw, you know, in the three-tied end set that got us down to the five-yard line, I mean, that was a big, big play. But then he had some bad throws before he had his injury.

You know, he was inconsistent. His timing was off. And so I would say that his performance was uneven. It was inconsistent. And that's the one thing that you have to have in this offense is a consistent performance from the quarterback because as i have said again starting back when we started training camp and people started asking me and i've been on record as saying this because i've watched this this offense for a lot of years i've seen the genesis of it

i know what it is here this is a perfect perfect offense that suits his skill set, but he needs to be, again, timing and delivery off of the quarterback and accuracy and being able to hit people in stride and throw them open. It's extremely, extremely important, and you need to be consistent in that area. And I think Marcus would be the first person to tell you that. Now, you want to talk about the hit? Okay, look, here's the deal. This all started out, you know, when I was still coaching defense, when we were at the Rams, we were playing Colin Kaepernick at San Fon in college,

where you bring your outside, you bring whoever your leverage, your outside people are if they're going to run an option on you. You take away, you know, somebody's responsible for the quarterback. And so what we said to the league office and what spread throughout the league, we weren't the only ones, is that if this quarterback is going to be a running threat at the mesh, when he meshes with the running back and we can't tell whether he's going to give it or he's going to pull it and run with it, we've got to be able to treat him as a runner and hit him.

Okay? And that's what the league agreed with. That is the way that it's always been. And so what started happening when that started going on, and again, I mean, you hate it. You know, William Hayes went low low on him and that's not illegal either because i mean as long as he's in that in that position as to where you can't determine and again william probably could determine but he's still going to hit the quarterback and if the quarterback is a threat or you is a perceived threat as a runner then he gives up all protection

as a quarterback and that's just that's what the rule is. All right, looking forward to this week. We've got Deshaun Watson coming to town. Know all too well about him, what he did to the Titans last year in Houston. Number one, what does he bring to the table? What does that offense bring to the table? Number two, how is Dean Pease going to try and stop it? Well, first of all, there's two different offenses.

I've watched the tape several times of their opener against New England, and there's two different offenses that they're running there. They're running some of the two-back, some of the counter stuff, and some of the option stuff that he ran in college, and then they're running the spread. I mean, they're spreading out and letting him dictate and letting him be able to pick and choose his time.

He was rusty in the opener. I mean, he really was. I think he would be the first to say, Coach Bill O'Brien will be the first to tell you that. I mean, he wasn't on target. He was rusty in the opener in the opener uh you know he was he was he was very uneven you know just like marcus was in in the beginning we all know how dangerous that he is we know how dangerous the receivers are that he has uh lamar miller had a very good game running the football. This is a multiple offense that we're going to have to be very spot on

and very point on to be able to play. It always puts pressure on your defense when a mobile quarterback comes into the picture, and not only on the scheduled play, guys, but on the unscheduled plays. I spent years there in the NFC West defending Russell Wilson. And Russell Wilson, you weren't concerned about the plays that they called in the huddle and they diagrammed when they came out. What you were concerned about was when that play broke down and then Russell Wilson started being Russell Wilson.

You know, and moving around and trying to get him captured, trying to plaster receivers down the field. Then it becomes the free-for-all. That's what happens when you have a mobile quarterback. That's what we are facing this week. So basically you're facing three offenses. You're facing the one that uses multiple looks and multiple pulling elements in the backfield.

You're also looking at a spread look. And then you have to defend the unscheduled plays that Watson's going to make when the initial call breaks down. So you said you've already watched some of the Texans. I know last year, obviously, J.J. Watt and Wendy Merciless went down, and teams were able to take advantage of the Texans' secondary, which I think is probably not all that strong, but obviously you can make up for that when you have that pass rush.

Did you see that on tape? I mean, are they able to cover for those guys better now that they've got Watt and Merciless back? Yeah, they've got Watt and Merciless back. And, again, they were a little slow starting off, too. They cranked it up in the second half up front a little bit. I'll tell you, in addition, they make. Now, they lost Kevin Johnson. They lost him to concussion protocol, so we won't see him, you know, this week,

you know, their corner. But who they do have is Tyron Matthew back there now. You know, they got him from Arizona, and he makes a difference. You know, this guy is pretty much of a Swiss Army knife back there in the secondary. I mean, they can use him romeo cronnell can use him a lot of places uh you know and again that's the same way he was at lsu coming out that's why the arizona cardinals drafted him when they drafted him even with the issues he had coming out of lsu because this guy's a valuable valuable piece back there in your

secondary and especially in today's nfl where you see so many different personnel groups. You can play him deep. You can bring him down in the box. You can cover with him. And he showed up a lot in this ball game. So, to your point, that front, I would expect for Merciless, Watts, and Clowney to be much better from jump starting against the Titans just because they've got that one week, you know, again, underneath them. Again,

players coming back from injury, it makes a difference. I mean, especially when you get into a full-speed NFL game, but when they have all those elements cranking, they can be very, very dangerous, guys, as we know, and Tyron Matthews in that secondary adds an element to there that they did not have last year. Just piggybacking off of that, Titans are really banged up at tackle. I don't know the statuses of Conklin or LeJuan. That's a really bad defensive front to be banged up against, and then you've got the Mariota injury on top of that.

What are some things Matt LaFleur is going to have to do to kind of take that pass rush out of the equation? Well, I mean, you know, first of all, let's talk about what Panfield and Kelly did in that ballgame. Robert Quinn and Cameron Wake are two of the better outside pass rushers in a 4-3 in the National Football League. They had zero sacks. Zero sacks.

Those two guys filled in and really did a really, really good job. And now what Matt LaFleur is going to have to do, there are ways that you can negate. The first way you negate a big rush is you run the football. The second way you negate a big rush is you run the football enough and play action enough and and you keep your chains moving and don't get behind the change so that your screen game becomes a surprise element rather than a catch-up element and there's a big difference to a defensive team when you're having

to be in a conflict down playing screens or you're in a layback uh type of defense where you know the screen's coming and it's the only thing that they have at their disposal. So to your question, I would say, first of all, those two tackles filled in very admirably. I thought they did a great job against the pass rush because they had no sacks. I mean, and they were by themselves quite a bit. And when Taylor LeJuan went down, I mean, you know,

Pam Field was in there over there against Robert Quinn. I was with Robert Quinn, you know, when he had 40 sacks in three years. I know what kind of edge rusher that guy is personally. And so they did a great job. But, again, Matt LaFleur now, and that's what you have to do. He will have to work his game plan, and the whole unit will have to be, again, if you stay ahead of the chain staying ahead of the chain and putting a great pass rushing team into more conflict downs than into sure passing

downs you may give yourself a better chance to control the rush and then control the ball well coach we appreciate you so much taking the time to join us here. I'm sure y'all will have plenty of coverage leading up to the game. Y'all do the hour before the game, right? That's when y'all start your coverage on the radio. All right, sounds good. So you can hear Coach Mack. He'll be doing various other media stuff.

Does a lot of stuff on 104.5 The Zones. You can catch him there. And then, as always, in the booth with Mike Keefe on the radio call. But, Coach, we appreciate you taking the time to join us tonight. Guys, it's my pleasure. You guys of the zones. You can catch him there. And then, as always, in the booth with Mike Keefe on the radio call. Because we appreciate you taking time to join us tonight. Guys, it's my pleasure. You guys are the best. You do good work. See you guys.

Thank you, sir. All right, so that was Coach Dave McGinnis. Like we said, he is the Titans color commentator with Mike Keefe. So we appreciate you listening to this episode of Locked on Titans. We'll have another episode tonight doing a little bit more of an in-depth preview of the game against the Texans. So for Coach Mack and for Terry, this is Jimmy. Thanks for listening and we will talk to you again tomorrow.