Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: Dodd cut, Day one from Titans camp

Episode Date: July 26, 2018

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Welcome in to another edition of Locked on Titans. I'm Jimmy Morris, joined as always by Terry Lambert. Terry, how are you today? Doing well. Camp's in the air. Camp has opened, so it's a good time. Optimism around the country for a lot of NFL teams right now. It'll be interesting to see how many of us are still optimistic in two months, three months, whatever it is, when the season starts to play itself out.

But we feel pretty good about the Titans' chances and camp open today. Everybody's excited, so that's a good thing. All right, before we get rolling today, we will remind you, Terry and I write for MutantCityMiracles.com. We cover the Tennessee Titans for SB Nation. Check us out there. We have a bunch of cool stuff going up there. Our guy Mike was at practice today.

He's going to have a training camp report coming up very soon. If you've read any of his stuff, you know it's going to be really good. So be sure you check that out. You can follow us on Twitter. I'm at jmorrismcm. Terry's at tlambertfb. And our podcast account at LockedOnTitans. You can also subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your

podcasts so that you get the latest episodes as soon as they are available. Before we get rolling on the things that have happened since we last talked, we're going to tell you about a brand new sponsor for the podcast, and that's NordicTrack. Sometimes it's hard to find time to get to the gym. If you're like me, you've got a lot of stuff going on. I've got four kids. I've got a full-time job.

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And, you know, something we thought about, we knew it was going to happen. We talked about that last episode. But just kind of an interesting thing around the circumstances you know they had their uh i guess introductory press conference to training camp on wednesday and before mike vrabel got up there john robinson got up there and basically i got up there and said look you know the kevin dodd pick that's on me that was my bad i've got to do a better job scouting players and you know you you very seldomly hear general managers say things like that. And look, I think John Robinson

had a pretty easy out here if he wanted to say Kevin Dodd, everything was going well, he hurt his foot, he was never able to come back from that. I think he could have said that. It wouldn't have sounded ridiculous. People would have accepted it. But he kind of just stepped up there and took the blame for the whole thing.

Yeah, it was fun to hear him admit a mistake. That's not exactly what I thought he was going to say. You talk about Dodd and how they were kind of projecting him to transition from the 4-3 end to the 3-4 linebacker, and maybe they just got it wrong. Maybe there was some input from the previous coaching staff. It doesn't matter at this point because john robinson put it on himself and it's probably the right thing to do stand-up guy thing to do so uh not at all expected but uh hats off to the organization because this was becoming a big distraction it was all the media wanted to talk about and was all the fans wanted to talk about and it was all the fans wanted to talk about. And it was just crazy because the dude was not good and he was not going to make the team. So

no point in letting things linger. You're not going to get anything for him. You're not going to get a seventh round pick for him. Cut him, move on. That's what they did. And I'm so happy they did it. Yeah. And kudos to this group too, because the thing we're going to talk about, just Zach Ted of the lawn being here as well. you had two things that were kind of off the field things that could have been a distraction at the beginning of training camp you don't want that this is a it's a very positive vibe around the city right now with the new coaching staff and training camp opening up and all that stuff so like you're saying you want to eliminate as much of those um as much of those distractions as you can and And so they did that moving on from Dodd.

I wonder, too, if they just knew they needed another pass rusher. And I think maybe they talked themselves into Kevin Dodd a little bit because you go back and watch his last game in college, obviously against Alabama, and he was wrecking that game. And, again, the Titans just had a desperate need at that position, and he was there. And I think maybe they wanted him to be able to make that transition more so than he was ever going to be able to do it. There we go.

Yeah, I remember that Alabama game, and that right tackle was atrocious. You know this. Yeah, absolutely. I think he got three sacks in the national title game, and it just really vaulted him from a guy that was talked about in the mid-rounds, had some nice production in his senior year, up into that high second round. So, yeah, the overall production wasn't there. The red flags were there.

He wasn't the supreme athlete. So it was just a really bad pick all around. But, you know, you just wonder what happens if he doesn't have that foot issue. What happens if he comes in healthy? Because that foot thing seemed to linger for a long time. So you saw that flash. His one highlight was that sack against the Lions, which looked pretty good. So I just wonder if he was healthy, if that would have changed things.

But I don't think we'll ever know because he just seems like he's done. Yeah, and that's the thing. I wonder if he's going to resurface anywhere. You would think it would absolutely be with a 4-3 team if he does. But, yeah, I don't know. People that know more about these guys and this team than we do, you've heard them question his desire to play football. And that's fine, whatever.

But if he doesn't have that, it's not like he's going to go somewhere, even if it's a better positional fit for him, and be able to play. I remember him taking down Jake Coker in that national championship game. If you can get Jake Coker on the ground, you've got to give that guy some money because he was very elusive. But anyway, Ted LeJuan, the other thing, he came to camp

leads you to believe that they had positive discussions about his contract a couple nights before the camp started. LeJuan talked after camp today and said he wasn't sure where they are. You know, they're talking.

He's going to let his agent handle all that. But he, you know, had a responsibility to be there, and he was there. So good to see him in camp. Now, he didn't work with the ones today, they said, because he missed minicamp. They were holding him out to make sure he was ready. So, you know, kind of some cat and mouse stuff going on there. Had a little run in from what i understand with the with the position coach uh so new staff new guys getting to fill that out

but the the biggest thing here is that he's in camp from day one we don't have to worry about the scenario we talked about last week of you know who's going to be out there dennis kelly's going to be on one side you're going to have some other guy you've never heard of on the other side. We worry about Marcus Mariota even going into one preseason game like that. Luan's in camp. We have to worry about all that stuff. That's a positive thing. It just seems a little hostile

with how he talked to reporters after and they said, when will you be in the team drills? He said, I guess when a contract is done. You don't get the sense that everything is peachy right now and then if you you go back and you look at at this the situation with the position coach uh there's a little uh well some some words exchanged there uh maybe we'll get a little bit more on that later uh but still it just seemed a little

hostile uh he he doesn't he's there but i don't know if he he's all that thrilled to be there right now but uh it's a good thing that he's there uh slowly get him back into shape get him where where he needs to be and then get some uh some teamwork because as we talked about a couple days ago on the last podcast, you can't go out there with two backup tackles and expect Marcus Mariota to feel comfortable. You can't go out there and expect to get some chemistry on the line with two backup tackles. So he needs to be there. This deal needs to get done.

He needs to get in some teamwork quickly. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, good to see it. We don't know about Conklin. We don't know when he'll be back. I haven't really got any updates on that. The other thing that's weird starting off camp is the fact that Rashard Matthews is still not practicing.

They didn't put him on PUP. So that would lead you to believe that he's close, but he's been limited or out throughout the whole offseason program, wasn't on the field today. Mike Vrabel said he's close, but he's been limited or out throughout the whole offseason program, wasn't on the field today. Mike Vrabel said he'll be ready when he's ready after practice, so that's a lot of help there. We don't know what the injury is. Nobody's ever said that.

So that's something to keep an eye on. The Titans really need him out there. We talked about how thin they are at receiver. So hopefully that thing will resolve itself shortly. As for practice today, there's a few things taking away from what I saw on Twitter. And like I said, Mike's going to have a write-up for us on UC Miracles. It's like Malcolm Butler had a good day, was getting after the football, had an interception, jumped around on Corey Davis and saw a video.

He picked it off and wrestled the ball away from Davis. It was a Blaine Garrett throw, but punted the ball and yelled something about this is not OTAs or whatever. But, I mean, again, Vrabel was asked about that after practice, and he said, look, we want competitive guys out here. We want guys that no matter what they're doing, whether they're playing cards or playing a board game or playing football, they're going to be competitive. They're going to get after it like that.

So, you know, you can't have enough of those types of guys out there. So, I mean, I think from the ways, and Mike said this as part of his quick takeaways, the secondary looks like it's going to be as legit as we've been kind of hoping it would be all offseason. Yeah, and I think that's a theme that's going to stick through all camp. I think the secondary is going to be ahead of the receivers. They're more talented. They're more experienced.

And they might just beat up on this receiving core, which, again, missing Rashard Matthews, who's apparently been hurt since June. But it's not a big deal, according to Vrabel. So I think that's something that you're going to continue to see. And look, you should be excited about this secondary. For the first time in a long time, the Titans have one of the best secondaries in the NFL. So I think the Titans have a chance to be a top 10 defense in this league.

And I think they're going to be led by this secondary. So a lot of versatility there. You see reports that Adore Jackson had a really good day. Same for Malcolm Butler. So that's really exciting news. Yeah, absolutely. And it's just they've invested a lot there, obviously. You know, two big free agent contracts the last two years,

a first-round pick in Adore Jackson. So, yeah, you hope that they will be, and it sounds like they lived up to that today so obviously early and all that stuff we'll see how it all plays out but i'm excited um to see what this crew brings the table not not a whole lot else huge that came out of practice today and terry you can say if you notice anything else but something cory davis made a couple of good plays so you know we think he's going to be a stud good to see him establishing himself early in this camp he did it last year too you know before he suffered the injury so i mean i still think the sky's the

limit for that guy anything else terry that you saw that we need to note no not really we didn't get uh the titans restricted video access so we didn't get the the amount of highlights that we're used to but uh you did hear that davis caught a. I think it was on a dory that was very similar to the touchdown he caught against the Patriots in the postseason there. So, positive first day for Davis. Yeah, absolutely. So, we'll keep an eye

on those things, and I'll be back on the practice field Friday morning at 9.50. I think they're at 9.50 for like the first week or so of practices, and you can go out there and see those at St. Thomas Sports Park. All right, coming over to the break, we're going to talk a little bit about some things going on around the division. We haven't touched on that much, but with camps opening up all over the place,

you've got some significant guys coming back from injury in the division. So we'll hit on that for a little bit in just a sec. Okay, so, I mean, obviously the biggest storyline in the AFC South for some time now has been Andrew Luck and his shoulder, and if he's going to throw, if he's not going to throw. Well, there's video today of him warming up at Colts camp, throwing the football. So he's going to be back.

And, you know, that's a really, really significant thing because that team is not very good. I mean, I think they won four games last year without him him and they're probably in a similar situation without him again this year you get him out there and they're going to be at least competitive a lot more games and their defense is still not going to be very good i don't think but he's going to give them a chance to win a lot more games and again it's going to make this division just a little bit more competitive overall and remember the titans have never beaten Andrew Luck. So that's just kind of crazy to think about.

But I think this defense is so much better than it was when he was playing. You're talking about going from Jason McCourty and Parrish Cox and Bryce McCain to now Malcolm Butler, Logan Ryan, and Adore Jackson. And Kevin Byard's in that mix, too. So it's, I don't know. I'm interested to see where he's at. I don't think we can assume he's going to return back to the Andrew Luck that he was a couple years ago, at least right off the bat. So interested to see him in preseason.

I want to see him grip it and rip it and see if he's comfortable back there because it's been a long time since that guy's played football. Yeah, and so that's what's going to be interesting to watch and how much he plays in the preseason, how confident they are in that shoulder. So that'll be something that's interesting to watch. And then in Houston, you've got both Deshaun Watson and J.J. Watt coming back from pretty significant injuries.

Watt missed most of the season. Deshaun Watson had that stretch where he tore the NFL up, but then he tore the ACL, so he missed a bunch of time. It sounds like both of those guys are full goes at the beginning of camp. Again, you're talking about a team that if they have the quarterback, if they have the guy who's been the defensive player of the year in the past, it makes them just a much different team, a much different team than what we saw last year. And, obviously, you saw the difference in the Texans' offense. Of course, Tom Savage, I think, threw for like 350 against us the second time. But you saw what Deshaun Watson was able to do to the Titans and other teams.

But they're just a different team with those two guys on the field. Now, I think it's kind of ridiculous to expect Deshaun Watson to continue the pace that we saw from him in his stretch last year. Because we know, number one, if he did that, he'd be like the greatest quarterback ever pretty easily for a season. But two, the NFL, they make adjustments to two guys. And we saw the same thing with Vince Young. And not that those two guys are the same, but when you've got a guy that's athletic like that and can make plays, you figure out what makes him a little bit more uncomfortable

and you tend to do those things. Tim stopped letting Vince Young run right. He couldn't run left. And then he was in a lot of trouble. I don't know what it is for Deshaun Watson, what the thing is. But the NFL is going to make adjustments and then you know he's going to have to make the adjustments in counter to those um to to continue to be successful that's something obviously that was not able to do um but i mean every team in this division if everybody is healthy every team

in this division has a legitimate shot to win the division every team at this really has a pretty legitimate shot to to make some noise in the playoffs again if everybody's healthy uh it's gonna be it's gonna be really fun because you can't rule out the colts you know if andrew comes back and plays like he did two years ago they're gonna be right in the mix too so yeah i think what you said on watson is spot on you want to see how the knee is, obviously. We don't know if that will affect his confidence at all. You want to see if they keep him mobile and kind of do the same stuff. But like you were saying, you keep doing the same stuff, the NFL is going to figure you out really, really quickly, just like they did with Robert Griffin and even Colin Gabernick.

So interested to see that. Interested to see the Texans' offense. Can it just keep that pace that it started last year? You know, Will Fuller and DeAndre Hopkins, that's a really nice duo there. So if they're healthy, I think they're going to be in it to the end. And, you know, the Jaguars, not much news out of Jacksonville, but you know what they're going to be. They're going to play really good defense, and they're going to run the football,

and they're going to play really inefficient offense, and it's all going to work probably once again because that defense is so good. So a really fascinating division, maybe the best in football top to bottom already. Yeah, and that's funny because, you funny because last year it was the laughing stock, and really for the last couple of years because you've had at least a couple of teams that have been really, really bad. But unless you have injuries like you did last year, I don't see any of these teams being really, really bad.

I think you could see them be able to go in and win anywhere on any given week. you know then be able to go in and win anywhere on any given week um so i mean i think the cults probably are behind at least roster wise everybody else at this point but when you've got andrew luck you know you got the quarterback things can happen so it like you said it's gonna be fun to watch week in and week out and it's just going to be a different a different mindset a different vibe with this division within the within the division but really from a national perspective as well as all this stuff comes together. So not necessarily a good thing for the Titans, but it'll make it more interesting. All right, I think that is pretty much all we've got to hit on today. We'll be back tomorrow probably with kind of a post-practice deal again.

You can follow us on Twitter again, at jmorrismcm, at TLambertFB. We've got updates with all that stuff going on there as well, and on the site, mcmiracles.com. So there's a ton to check out. Again, subscribe to the podcast. We're getting into, you know, it's football season mode, so we'll have a lot more stuff coming up and coming out. So you can get all that stuff as soon as it's available.

For Terry, this is Jimmy saying thanks for listening to Locked on Titans, and we'll talk to you again later.