Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: Eagles line released, AFC South talk

Episode Date: September 25, 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 tonight? Doing pretty good. What's up, man? Not too much. We had a Mike Reddell press conference today, so we'll talk a little bit about that. We'll talk about the line for the Eagles games, the earliest we've had a line in the last couple of weeks. I guess Vegas is under the assumption that Marcus is going to start this week. I think that's probably a pretty smart assumption. And then we'll play a little bit about the division and the schedule, kind of how it eases up a little bit for the Titans. Before we get into all that, I remind you that we're at

formusicandmiracles.com, so you can check us out there. A lot of stuff going up over there. You can follow us on Twitter. I'm at jmorsmcm. Terry's at tlembertfb. Podcast account is at LockedOnTitans. And you can search LockedOnTitans wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe. That way you get to the

newest episodes as soon as they are available. Alright, so Mike, very well at the press conference today. Not a whole lot of newsworthy items coming out of there. I think the most relevant discussion was about the quarterback position with Blaine Gabbert being in the concussion protocol.

We don't know how long that's going to be, but it seems more and more these days that if a guy gets a concussion, he misses the next game. That's not always the case. Everybody's different, all those types of things. But we saw with Taylor LeJuan the last couple of weeks. It misses the game, ready to go pretty much early the next week. So I would assume that the Titans will probably be without Blaine Gabbert

and Adoree Jackson, for that matter, in this game on Sunday. So if that is the case, if Gabbert is going to be out, then the Titans obviously have to add somebody at quarterback. Now they have Logan Woodside on the practice squad, but when Braver was asked today in a press conference if they would just bring him up, he said, well, he'll be in the conversation. So it wasn't exactly a ring endorsement. So I think they'll kind of look around and see what's available out there.

There's a couple of names that make some sense. You've got Tom Savage, who was with the Texans last year, but he was trying out, I think, with the 49ers either today or tomorrow, so could be in the mix with Jimmy Garoppolo carrying his ACL out there. You've got a guy like Matt McGloin, who's been with the Texans and has familiarity with Vrabel, with Pat O'Hara. So kind of some names there, but I think they probably don't promote Woodside. I think they probably end up signing a veteran.

Yeah, I don't know how you rely on a guy like Logan Woodside who you just signed, what, two, three weeks ago to the practice squad. Yeah. A guy that put up huge numbers at Toledo. But outside of that, no experience. So I don't think you give that route. I think Variable said he was in the conversation, but I'd be surprised. I think you'll see a T.J. Yates or something like that,

something along those lines, like you saw last year with Brandon Whedon, just somebody to give Tennessee a Band-Aid there and get them through to next week. But I think you're pretty confident in Marcus Mariota at this point being better than anything Blaine Gabbert could ever offer you, even at 50%. That guy was just a warrior out there, really used his legs, and gave you some positives despite being banged up. So I would expect a move, but, you know, don't get attached.

Right. And I wonder, is Woodside a better prospect than Luke Falk? I don't know. I didn't watch Logan Woodside. I watched Luke Falk, and I firmly believed he was terrible up until the day that I drafted him, and he proved me right. So I would say yes yes just by default you know it's just interesting because had they i i just i wonder if the conversation would be different if it were luke falk we were talking about instead

of what's i had the dolphins not claim falk if he was on the practice squad i wonder if they would be willing to just go ahead and promote him um instead i guess this doesn't really matter but just you know being a guy that was here throughout camp for the offseason the install and all that kind of stuff um you would think they would have made more more more of a comfort level with him than they did with woodside yeah i mean i think at the end of the day you see somebody that at least somebody on this staff is familiar with mcgoyne yates you know the guys that we mentioned. I don't know if there's any kind of journeyman guys out there that have ties to LeFleur,

but I think that's what you'll see. And that's what makes the most sense in this situation for a few reasons. Number one, you're hoping and praying that the guy doesn't have to play. So it shouldn't really matter. Two, you want a guy that if they do have to play, they have at least some familiarity with the offense, with the verbiage, and that kind of stuff. So I think that's the route that they ultimately end up going,

and I don't know what, again, if it's just two weeks or if it's just a week, if it's just one game that Gabbert's out, then I really do think a or if it's just a week, if it's just one game that Gabbard's out, then I really do think a guy's just here for a week and then they cut him loose after that. So, like you said, the biggest thing here is we saw what Marcus is capable of. And from my understanding with this injury, he's not going to go backwards with it at this point. He's only going to get better. And to me, it sounds like he is what he is. And then all of a sudden, it's going to go backwards with it at this point. He's only going to get better, and to me it sounds like he is what he is, and then all of a sudden it's going to be 100%.

So hopefully we get to that point, maybe some point this week, but at least in the next couple of weeks. But like you said, I think that whatever percentage Marcus is at right now, whether it's 60%, 70%, it's definitely better than what Gabbert was going to offer, and it's definitely going to be better than what Gabbert was going to offer. It's definitely going to be better than anybody they're going to bring in. That's just something to keep an eye on and we'll have a transaction I would

expect at some point tomorrow. Obviously, we'll talk about that the next time we do a show. Again, hopefully it doesn't matter and it's just a guy that's here for a week to keep the seat warm for Blaine Gabbert to be the backup when he gets back. All right, so coming up, we're going to talk a little bit about the line

for this game against the Eagles. Before we do that, I'm going to tell you about MyBookie. We've kind of changed the deal here. They have this new thing. They've got so many people that are signing up and joining to be new bettors on their site. They've decided that if you're willing to wait until after 7 p.m. Eastern time to make your deposit, that they'll give you an additional $25 free play on deposits over $100.

So you deposit $100, you get that $25. They also will match your deposit dollar for dollar. So you deposit $100, you've got $225 in your account to play with. So check that out. The promo code for that is LOCKEDON25. So LOCKEDON25, when you sign up, put that in. You get all that extra money. We talked about MyBookie.

A couple of the key points here. Number one, if you win, you get paid. You don't have to do the runaround and all that kind of stuff. They're going to give you your money. Number two, mobile site, just as good as the desktop or the laptop, whatever you can do on a computer site. So you don't have to download an app, and their site on your phone that you're using most of the time anyway

is going to be just as easy to use as it would be if you're sitting in front of a computer. So again, wait until after 7 p.m. Eastern to make your first deposit. Use the promo code LOCKEDON25. You're going to get your deposit, max dollar for dollar, and $25 on top of that. So M-Y-B-O-O-K-I-E, of that so my bookie you play you win you get paid so uh speaking of my bookie the line is up at my bookie and it's titans plus three and a half we were talking earlier we usually do a post Museum Miracles at some point early in the week about the line for the game, and we haven't been able to do that post.

The first line for the Jaguars game didn't come out until Friday, right? Well, yeah, it didn't come out everywhere. I think people were still scared of it. The Jacksonville line was like 10 points, which was just crazy. It was wild. Considering how well the titans have played the jaguars over the years but uh so yeah easy money if you could go get that one yeah so um but this one again i think everybody including the people that set these lines in vegas or wherever uh are

assuming that that marcus is going to play so times plus three and a half and you know i mean you're generally going to get a point or two for being at home. So the Titans, if this game were on a neutral field, I guess they're assuming that the Eagles are close to a touchdown better than the Titans. And I think that's fair. The Eagles are the reigning Super Bowl champions. They've got their starting quarterback back now. Now they're still pretty banged up,

and we'll talk a little bit more about that as the week goes along. But I'm a little bit surprised that it's only three and a half, especially when you consider how big that line was last week. And maybe it's the difference between Mario and Gabbard. I mean, I don't know. Obviously, this one's at at home for the Titans, whereas last week was on the road. But I really thought the line would be closer to 5 or 6.

Well, I think the reason you're seeing that right now is considering what the Colts did to the Eagles up there in Philadelphia. You know, at home it was a four-point game. The Eagles found a way to win that one. Still not very impressive. It's just the second game for Wentz. And like you said, Eagles are still pretty banged up. We don't know about Alshon Jeffery.

There's a chance that J.J. and Darren Sproles might be back. So, like the Titans, there's a lot of question marks there. And, you know, Vegas is probably just kind of reacting to what the Titans are doing. You know, just finding a way to win. You know, big dogs last week, apparently, and then the Houston Texans were favored as well. So Vegas taking a beating on the Titans right now, probably trying to overcorrect a little bit.

Were the Titans, were they the favorites against the Dolphins, like one point or something? They opened as small favorites, like two-point favorites. But by the time kickoff rolled around, the line had flipped all the way to the Dolphins being favored by a point. Gotcha. Okay, so I'm just kind of trying to keep track of where these things end up and how the Titans play out there.

But, yeah, like you said, the Colts and Eagles game was interesting. Now, the weather was rough in that one. So I think you've got to factor that in. And we can kind of transition this into the talk of what's going on in the division. I saw the Jaguars this week, the Titans and Jaguars, both at 2-1. Titans opened 2-0 in the division. We talked about that last night. I can't remember the last time that

that's happened. So they've got themselves in really good position as far as that's concerned. The Colts are kind of interesting. Their defense has been playing well. We talked all offseason and early in this season about how we thought their defense would be terrible because they

just don't really have any talent on that side of the ball. But they've kind of been playing over their heads, at least it seems like, early on. But you're three weeks in now, and they've played pretty well. So maybe their defense is a little bit better than we thought. But their offense, you know, Andrew Luck's back. And, I mean, I think even within the state that he's in, he's a better option than Jacoby Brissett.

They're better with him back there. But you saw at the end of the game against the Eagles on Sunday, when they needed the Hail Mary, they took Luck out and put Brissett in because of the arm strength thing. So I think that their offense, at least right now, is still somewhat limited based on how Andrew Luck can throw. And I think that if you looked at the Colts and thought they had a chance to be good this year,

thought they had a chance to be a contender this year, it was going to have to be with a high-powered offense that outscored people because their defense wasn't going to be good. Maybe that's not necessarily the case, but I think at this point, I don't know, their offense is just a lot more limited than we thought it would be. I think the Titans are pretty clearly better than the Colts at this point. know their office is is just a lot more limited than than we thought it would be and i i mean i i think the times are pretty clearly better than the colts at this point yeah the colts are doing

it just clearly with with defense because there's nothing in that backfield you know you're seeing uh the wilkins back there you're seeing uh the hinds back there a couple of rookies uh so that's interesting you know ty hilton isilton is one of the NFL's premier deep threats. I saw a stat today that his average depth of target is down from 12 all the way down to 8. So that should tell you how badly Andrew Luck is struggling to push the ball down the field. So I don't know if Andrew Luck is quite right there. You know, that offensive line has been a problem for years. But I really didn't see the Colts being any good on defense.

I didn't like their draft at all. But clearly they've hit on something early on. We'll see if that can last. But right now I think it comes down to the Titans and Jaguars. I'm not buying that the Colts can put 16 games together. I think the Titans and Jags are built for the long haul. But as we saw on Sunday, the Jaguars are just going to be hanging by a thread just waiting to see which Blake Bortles shows up.

As a Titans fan, I'll be on the other side of that equation every day of the week because I don't want to be relying on Blake Bortles, but that's the situation that Jacksonville is in. Unfortunately for the Titans, we think they've got a pretty good quarterback when he's healthy. Now he's got to stay healthy, and all the pieces have to come together. But I think by midseason, there's a pretty good chance you're going to see the Titans kind of put a stranglehold on this division.

Yeah, and the Texans, obviously their team, the division, that we haven't touched on yet, they're 0-3. Their offensive line is a disaster. Deshaun Watson doesn't look the same as he did last year when he torched the league, and we knew that he

couldn't keep up that pace. I mean, he's not Patrick Mahomes, right? But, you know, you've got a guy who's a very talented guy. I think he's just feeling his way back from an ACL, that kind of stuff. But, you know, if their offensive line doesn't play any better than it has, they're going to have trouble winning games. They're going to have trouble keeping him healthy. And we saw him running around and all that stuff.

And obviously he has the ability to do that. But I just don't know with the line that they have there, their defense is going to have to be really good. And they're better on defense than they were last year. Their pass rush, they got those guys back, but their secondary is still really bad. And we were talking before we jumped on here about how last year we just kind of assumed that their secondary was so bad because they couldn't get after the passer

this year they got those those guys back and they they still can't cover anybody so i really think that you know they're they're going to kind of be out of it they may be looking for a new coach you know after the season's over so like you said i think it's going to come down to a two horse race with the titans and again if mariotta could stay healthy i think that you have to come down to a two-horse race with the Titans. And again, if Mariota can stay healthy, I think that you have to give the edge to the Titans because of the quarterback play. The Jaguars' defense is better than the Titans' defense. I'm not going to sit here and say that it's not.

But, you know, everything else, I think the Titans, at least on the offensive side of the ball, the Titans have an edge there. And, you know, you'll count on the quarterback that you can count on more so week in and week out when you have two teams that are otherwise pretty even. Yeah, it's just interesting how quickly the NFL changes. You know, everybody's, not Texans and Jaguars, you know, banking on Deshaun Watson coming back and building off what he did in his rookie season. And like, you know, what Dave McGinnis told us, Deshaun's rusty right now.

And he might be getting back into form. He threw for.385 this weekend. But he's going to have to do it with a bad defense. That defense is not very good. They're one of the worst secondaries in the league right now statistically. So I don't know if you can quite count them out as still a scary offense. I don't know if you can count the Colts out. Andrew Luck might figure it out and might get that offense rolling.

But, you know, just on paper to me, I think it's a two-horse race. And, you know, it's just kind of something where we're going to have to see how far Blake Wardle's can carry the Jaguars once again. Yeah, so, again, you again, good luck with that. We talked about that a lot last night and then the last week. All right, coming up, we'll take a look kind of forward in the Titans' schedule past this game and talk about what we think they can do throughout the month of October and into November. Okay, so it's funny.

and into November. Okay, so it's funny. We were, again, talking before we started the show tonight and kind of didn't really know what was down the road for the Titans because we've been so focused on this first stretch right here and how tough it was, especially after the injuries piled up and all that stuff. But obviously, like I said, the Eagles come to town this week. But then after that, you've got a little bit of a lightning.

The Titans go to Buffalo uh the on october 7th so the first first game after the eagles uh the titans go to buffalo then they got the ravens here then they got the london game against the chargers then the bi-weeks and the cowboys so you know that stretch right there i mean i think the chargers are good um you know and they they've had a tough stretch to start out with. They've got a lot of weapons on offense. I don't know if Joey Bosa will be back by the time the Titans play the Chargers, but he makes a huge difference on their defense. Their defense hasn't been very good early going,

but last year was one of the best in the league. But when you look at Bills, Ravens, Chargers, Cowboys, I don't see any reason why the Titans can't go at least 3-1 in that stretch. The Cowboys are not any good. And so, again, even if they don't beat the Eagles on Sunday, which we kind of talked about last night a little bit, we're playing with house money at this point to be 2-1 at this point. If you go 2-2, if you win three of the next four, that gets you to, what, 5-3.

And then, you know, you've still got to really schedule. I mean, you've got the Patriots after the Cowboys, but then you've got Colts, Texans, Jets, Jaguars again. I mean, so really I think the toughest part of this schedule will be done after they play the Eagles. And so if they can just tread water, which is what they've been able to do so far, they at least give themselves a chance. You know, at 1-3, we'd have been looking at, you know, 1-3, 0-4, we've been looking at a huge uphill battle to get back in this. But I think the

Titans have done enough at this point that if they can at least win the games that they should win throughout that stretch, then you're talking about at least getting into December, still having a lot to play for, you know, possibly the division, a wild card, whatever it may be. But you're going to be playing meaningful football in December again. Yeah, and like I was saying, the NFL changes so quickly, it's hard to make these snap judgments, you know, looking four or five weeks down the road.

Just so much changes. You know, you've got injuries, you've got teams that kind of come together. That's why I talk a lot about chemistry. I expect the Titans to kind of figure it out and get better. That can happen elsewhere too. Look at the Bills. Everybody buried the Bills. They were 16-point underdogs,

and they went out and just crushed the Minnesota Vikings. So any given Sunday, we saw that last year, the Browns took the Titans to overtime. We had a lot of those games during that stretch. But certainly it looks like the schedule is set to lighten up here. You know, the Ravens will always be a tough game. I'm just going ahead and counting the Chargers game as a loss because the Titans never beat them.

I don't care where it's being played. But, yeah, Cowboys aren't any good. Colts certainly don't scare me. Then you get the Jets, the Giants, and Redskins. So it gets softer as the season goes, but I'm kind of hesitant to say all the Titans are going to go win all of those games. So we'll see how it goes. But you can't stress what getting to 2-1 means in week three,

considering the injuries, because you definitely didn't want to be digging out of a hole to start week four. Yeah, like you said, and you would just assume, and I mean, obviously things don't actually work this way, but that the Titans would have some injury luck coming back the other way than they've had early now. We talked about how the last couple of years they've been lucky as far as not having guys miss a lot of games. So maybe it's kind of all evening out in that way. But like you said, injuries tell a huge story in all of this.

And, you know, that Bill's Vikings game, that's just one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen. Not the fact that, you know, not that bill is vikings game i still that that's just the most one of the most bizarre things i've ever seen not not the fact that you know not only did the bills win but they controlled the game from start to finish in minnesota and i'm really interested to know uh how many you know you have all these people these big survivor pools um you know and the vikings just seemed like the the freest of all free squares this past week. And then, you know, how many people got eliminated on that pick. So it's just funny.

Like you said, you just never know with the NFL. It changes so much week to week. And even now with injuries, sometimes teams just don't show up. And that's another thing I'm interested to watch for this Titans team. We can go back through game after game after game of the last four or five years. I mean, back, you know, Malarkey, Wisenhunt, Munchak. I mean, we can point to all these different games where the Titans just, for whatever reason, didn't show up. I'm interested to see if they have any of those this year.

I think it's a different culture now. I think Brayboy is a different type coach than any of those guys were. Vrabel is a different type coach than any of those guys were. So I'm a little bit more inclined to say that we won't have a game where they just kind of sleepwalk through it. But we've seen so many of those from the Titans over the years, and you see them every week from teams in the NFL. So I guess on one hand I'd be a little bit surprised if we didn't see it. But I feel like Vrabel's a guy that can at least do a lot

to keep his team from falling into that kind of trap. Yeah, it goes back to what we were saying. We still don't know the staff. We've seen them win two almost impossible games through what we think is game planning. We haven't seen them as a favorite. We haven't seen

them in a situation where they're huge favorites yet. We haven't seen Matt LaFleur's offense yet. So just interested to see, you know, it seems like Vrabel's kind of taking the approach of us against the world and we aren't supposed to do this and, you know, we won two games we weren't supposed to, just watching the videos in the locker room after the game. So how are things going to go when things swing the other way, when the Titans have some success? Are they going to keep, you know their foot on the gas because with malarkey

it just seemed like they played down to their opponents um it just on the regular uh it was really frustrating to watch you know that the whole mid-season stretch there it just seemed like the titans couldn't put anyone away and they were always in a tight one in the fourth quarter. So I'd really like to see a different mentality from the new staff. And hopefully we'll get that and hopefully the Titans can put those games away. Yeah, absolutely. That Browns game last year is the one I just keep going back to. That's the one that it was just like should have gone in there

and just imposed their will and they weren't able to do it in there and just, you know, impose their will. And they weren't able to do it. So, yeah, it'll be interesting to watch. And like you said, it's just we don't we don't have a body of work with this group. And we think we know some things, but it just we know how much things change from week to week. So anyway, so we'll be here through all that to talk it through. We'll be back tomorrow. Probably have some

type of deal with the Eagles guys. Haven't set that up just yet, but typically on Wednesdays we have the show where we do kind of a crossover thing getting some information on the team that we're playing this week. So, look out for that and then we'll get more into the Titans heavy preview with

the show on Thursday. So, in the meantime, check out musicandmiracles.com. We'll have a ton of stuff about the Jaguars game, kind of wrapping all that up, and then leading into the Eagles game. We'll have all that stuff there. Follow us on Twitter. I'm at jmorphsmcm. There's at TLimbertFB.

And, again, search out the podcast, Locked on Titans, iTunes, Stitcher, wherever you get your podcasts, you can find us there. For Terry, this is Jimmy saying thanks for listening to Locked on Titans, and we'll talk to you again tomorrow.