Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: Mularkey's job is safe; Early Patriots Talk

Episode Date: January 8, 2018

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Well, welcome in to another edition of Locked on Titans. I'm Jimmy Morris, joined as always by Terry Lambert. Terry, how are you? Doing good. Good to still be talking some football here. Yeah, absolutely. Anything that extends the football season longer is good with me. It's been so many years for the Titans where you've only gotten 16 games to talk about. And then, you know, a couple years in the last, what, 14 where you've gotten more than 16 games to talk about, but never 18. So that's where we are at this point. Obviously the Titans are facing a huge challenge. We'll get a little bit more into that, especially as the week goes along.

But the Titans have got a playoff win. We're still riding high off of that, so that's good. Before we get started, a few things. Terry and I write for musiccitymir.com covering the titans for sb nation so check us out there follow us on twitter i'm at jay morris mcm terry is at t lambert fb subscribe to the podcast on itunes or wherever else you get your podcast locked on titan so just search that there subscribe and you'll get all the new episodes as soon as they are available all right so the big news since we talked on Saturday night is obviously the fact that Amy Adams'

strunk the Titans controlling owner came out and made a statement about Mike Malarkey as the coach of the team. You know, it was – we'll talk a few things about this. Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk saying the statement was vague and that he doesn't necessarily think it means that Mike Malarkey will leave the team in 2018. I don't believe that to be the case. I think the fact that she came out and said anything is an indication that he will be back. Here's the statement real quick for me, Adam Strunk. Our monster all season has been to take things week by week and not get ahead of ourselves,

and obviously it served us well. I regret that outside rumors gained a lot of their own. No one has been a bigger supporter of Mike Malarkey than I have over the last two plus seasons. Mike and John, John Robinson, Titans GM, have changed the culture of our team and organization, and I am so happy we have been able to bring success on the field

to our fans, winning 19 games over the last two seasons, including our first playoff win in 14 years. Just to eliminate any distresses moving forward, Mike Malarkey is our head coach and will be our head coach moving forward. We still have work to be done, including this week, but I am looking forward to the journey. So, again, to me, the fact that you came out and said anything after not commenting for the last couple of weeks,

to me that says that he'll be back. Terry, do you think anything differently based on that? I agree. It was interesting the way she worded it, saying week by week. That kind of points to, hey, we were kind of seeing how things were going to end up here. We were not going to make a call until we saw some progress on the field. And you saw that on Saturday. So just another layer in this really just completely bizarre Titans season.

You know, 9-7 playoffs, you now get a playoff win, and we're talking about the head coach being fired. You know, I think there's some merit to it. I think a lot of people saw through the record. A lot of people understand that the Titans caught some teams in some really bad spots. AFC South was banged up. AFC as a whole was just down. The Titans weren't winning pretty.

The offense is bad. But still, the Titans are in this situation. So it's a really strange spot. So I think this organization was prepared to move on. They were prepared to see through what was happening in front of them. And I applaud them for that. But at the same time, this team has now responded. They clearly love playing for the guy.

We saw some results on Saturday night. So I just don't think you can do anything at this point. And honestly, Malarkey deserves another shot for showing up and responding in the midst of some drama. His team showed up and got a playoff win. Yeah, and I said on Twitter after the game Saturday night, that win gives Mike Malarkey at least another year. Now, I still think Terry Hrabisky should be out.

We were talking a little bit before we jumped on here. The concern, obviously, is that now they won a playoff game, regardless of what happens in New England, that they just keep everything the same for next year. That can't be the case. And we've gone through episode after episode after episode of the issues with his offense there were issues with the offensive saturday night even in the win when they scored a

bunch of points so um you know i i think the fact that you know mike malarkey when asked after the game saturday night basically had said he had been giving no assurance he had been given no assurance that he would be back next year if they didn't win you know either jaguars game week 17 the chiefs game this past week that to me says that the organization is looking at making changes that to me says that john robinson amy adam struck whoever they weren't happy with the the way things played out on the field regardless of the of the wins and losses this year that to me says that we will get a change in the offense for next year i i don't think there's any way terry rubisky's back with this team i mean i guess maybe if a titan's going to win the super bowl you can't fire him at that point but if you remember 99 uh the titans went

to the super bowl and jeff fisher fired les stekkel titan's office coordinator that year after that so regardless of how deep the run goes here i I think that, you know, you don't fire the head coach, obviously, in that situation. But I think that we still could see a change in the offensive coordinator. Now, we've talked about how just firing Terry Hrabisky and then keeping everything else the same, letting Mike Malarkey pick a guy that wants to come in and do what they're doing,

probably wouldn't look that much different than what Terry Hrabisky is doing. So I think there'll be some conversations had with malarkey after the season about again this is just all speculation on my point on my part you will you'll find the new guy you'll give him more control you'll do some different things on offense i think that's the way that they will they will approach mike malarkey after the season now if he's not willing to do that then i guess we have a different conversation um but i would i would think that he that he would be and again just real quick on malarkey i still i still don't think he's the guy that is going to take this franchise to the next level um unless he's willing to make those adjustments but i do think that you cannot say

enough about the job that he has done the way that he's changed this culture the turnaround this team has made in just two years um to be you know arguably a better team last year uh you know obviously until until marcus gets hurt obviously they were a better offense no doubt um the defense was struggling but you know i think we all felt better about this team at the end of the regular season last year than we did the end of the regular season last year than we did at the end of the regular season this year. But they are a competitive team. They are a group that goes out there and competes the full game every week. There's no giving up on that sideline. And we went through a lot of years here where we saw teams that either gave up

or didn't give their all for the whole game, whatever it might be. We saw a lot of that here over the years. These guys love playing for Malarkey. They play hard for him. He has developed it into a winning culture. So, I mean, all of that is worth something. It's not enough. It's not enough if he wants to keep Terry Hrabisky

and not change the offense next year. That's not okay. But I think that you do give him the benefit of the doubt at this point and see if you can approach him and say, okay, we need to make these tweaks here, but we still like you as the head guy going forward. Yeah, and we said a few weeks ago if we could keep Malarkey on and if he could hand off control of the offense to somebody else and kind of merge some ideas, that would probably be the best way to go.

And I still feel that way. So when you talk about moving on from Mike Malarkey, there's just not a lot out there that gets me excited. You look around the landscape, you know, Josh McDaniels is the name that Rap Sheep kept pumping. There's no guarantee with him. We've seen the Patriots assistants flop. We've seen him flop already once.

You would hope he kind of learned from his mistakes that he made, but there's no guarantee of that. At this point, it's kind of silly to keep talking about it, but like you said, the players respond to malarkey. They seem to play hard for him. The frustrating

thing is just kind of playing down to opponents. It seems like the Titans show up for big games. For whatever reason, they always show up for the big ones. You've seen the Jacksonville Jaguars twice. You've seen the Seahawks game. You saw them show up against the Rams. You can kind of throw the Pittsburgh game out.

Too many mistakes there. But you've also seen games. You've seen them struggle with a bad Colts team twice. You saw them struggle with Tom Savage. Even going back to last year, Matt Barkley probably should have beat them in Chicago. So that's where the frustration comes in. If this team could look like it's supposed to look, if they could go beat a team by two touchdowns that they're supposed to beat, I think the optics of this whole situation would be totally different and people would be on board.

It's just scraping by, and that's frustrating to watch. But again, that's a conversation for another day because the Titans are in the playoffs. Yeah, absolutely. And so we'll keep an eye on this as it goes forward. Like you said, just quickly on Josh McDaniels. I mean, I don't doubt at all that had they lost either of these two past games that he would have been the guy. You look at the ties to John Robinson from New England and all that kind of stuff.

So I think he would have been the guy. I think he deserves another chance, and we don't know what he will do with a second chance. We've seen guys learn a lot from the the mistakes they made the first time and be different as head coaches the second time and we've seen guys go ahead and do the same thing you know a lot jeff fisher and get fired again for the same sort of same issue so who knows josh mcdaniels will be a head coach next year um so we'll we'll see where that is but um you know i i don't you said, there's no guarantee with him.

There's no guarantee with anybody that you're going to hire. So anyway, that's kind of where we are on all that. Coming up, we'll talk a little bit about news and notes around the team on the field and just talk about the Patriots just a little bit. it okay so we are recording this early on monday um to not conflict with the having to record during the the championship game tonight um that mike larky hasn't had his press conference yet to the best of my knowledge there was nobody uh injured in the game that wasn't able to finish the game um if there was i can't think of the top of my head the guy that we'll be monitoring this week like every other week is demarco murray um you know

the tight the tights have refused to rule him out early in these weeks for whatever reason we joked last week about how ridiculous the thing is you're getting any kind of schematic advantage by the team being afraid that demarco murray is going to be out there but well you know whatever we. We'll see. I think he's still a long shot to play. I think this offense is better with Derrick Henry being the feature back. I think that DeMarco Murray could still play a role in this offense if he were healthy enough to go.

But I would want it to mainly just be on third downs. But we've seen that if DeMarco Murray can walk, that they will give him carries. So I'm just a little bit concerned that if he is active and able to play, that they go back to, you know, whether he's making the feature back or giving him 20% of the carry, either way it's too much. And I'm concerned that they would do that if he's able to play.

Can we just stop with this DeMarco crap? If this staff can't see that this team is better with Derrick Henry in the backfield, then, yeah, they probably do deserve to be fired. I just can't stand to sit here and watch them give DeMarco Murray the ball on second and ten because you know they will. Yeah, absolutely. They've done it all year. So the juice in Derrick Henry's legs makes this offense look different.

It gives them a big play factor. DeMarco Murray's just broken down. And, you know, it happens. It's who he is right now. It doesn't help the fact that he's hurt. So I'm sure they're going to play this up, and I'm sure they're going to rule him out on Friday. And honestly, that's probably for the best.

It's been Henry's show. I think he got all but two snaps the other night. So he's doing a little bit of everything, and you're seeing the talk of him not being able to contribute in the passing game. That was crap. He's been great in the passing game. He's great when he gets the ball at speed and he's in space. We've seen that his one weakness is pass protection, and that's very real.

And Marcus about died last night because Henry didn't pick up the linebacker coming up the middle. So that's one spot that I'm sure Henry's going to get talked to about. But overall, you'll take that one bad play for the the 20 good ones that he had yeah you're right henry play on 68 of 70 offensive snaps yeah and the the thing that i like the most about derrick henry is that you know he didn't run well against the jaguars um now match up and all that stuff i mean we we know that's real and the fact that the titans were able to get a whole lot more push up front against the chiefs than they were against the Jaguars,

I mean, you would have expected that. But Derrick Henry ran a little bit differently in that game on Saturday. And he was willing to admit that he didn't like what he did and make changes. And so that's what you want to see from a guy. And I think as long as he's continuing to have those real evaluations about his play, I think you'll see him continue to improve. And so that's what you want to see. And, yeah, I mean, there's no question that he's the better back at this point.

Last year, people were clamoring for more Derrick Henry throughout the year. It was dumb because DeMarco Murray was running really well. This year, it's been a thing. It hadn't just been those Alabama fans that just wanted to see Derrick Henry. It hadn't been that this year. They needed to get him on the field. It's unfortunate that it took you know demarco murray having an injury for us to see it but i would just it would be

really frustrating to see them go a different way now and again i i won't be convinced that they wouldn't give demarco carries on second and ten until he's healthy and they don't do it so you know it is so from from that standpoint it's probably better if he is ruled out. We're talking a little bit about the Patriots before we got going here, and we'll kind of wrap up with this today, and then we'll get a lot more into previewing them over the next couple of days. But as far as the run game goes, it's not that much of a different matchup than what we saw against the Chiefs.

There's going to be space there, and the Titans should be able to move the ball on the ground. They probably are not going to have the same type of success that they did against the Chiefs. You're not going to see that very many times. But they're going to have those opportunities. The key is going to be doing it early enough in the game so that you're able to stay in your offense. Again, before we came on here, at 21-3 with the whole second half to go, you to stay in your offense. Because we talked, again, before we came on here, I mean, at 21-3 with the whole second half to go, you can still run your offense.

You can still run the ball. You don't have to necessarily be exclusively in, hurry up, or anything like that. At 28-3 in the second half, or even 28-10, if the Chiefs would have scored points, then it becomes a different issue. You don't want to get to that point against the Patriots. You want to be able to have your full offensive arsenal available

to you. And so the key there is going to be staying ahead of the chain, staying close in the score to be able to do it. One thing that they pointed out on the broadcast that I didn't realize, they said the Titans went 3-0 in their first series. They haven't gotten a first down on their first

series of the game in like a month. And that's just like, you know, I mean, if you – and there was talk about this earlier in the year. I mean, you script the first like 10, 15, 20 plays, whatever it is, of a game. So that to me is an indictment of your offensive coaches right there. If you haven't on your first drive, you haven't even gotten a first down. I'm not talking about points. I'm talking about a first down in a month.

That's an issue, and that's something they're going to have to correct this week because, again, I just don't see it. If the Patriots get out to a 21-3 lead, I don't think we see a 22-21 comeback. So the Titans are going to have to figure out a way to keep themselves from digging into a hole like they did last week. And, you know, they haven't done that all year. That's been one of the themes of this team. They've been horrible in the first quarter.

Like you said, they can't spot them 14 points or the ball game's going to be over because Tom Brady is not going to disappear in the second half. But it's like you were saying, the Patriots have been bad against the run. Their front seven is not very good.

A bunch of new guys that you probably haven't heard of in that front seven. So I think Derrick Henry's going to have his space. But at the same time, Patriots are notorious for taking away the team's greatest threat. Right now that is Derrick Henry. So

wouldn't surprise me at all to see Chung coming down in the box filling that eight-man box out. So I think the early key for me is going to be Marcus Mariota completing some passes down the field because I think he's going to have some opportunities to do that. And we've seen for several weeks in a row him take shots to Corey Davis, Richard Matthews, whoever it may be, and just be a little high,

just be three, four yards over their head. So he's going to have to rein that in. and just be a little high, just be three, four yards over their head. So he's going to have to rein that in. And I think if he can complete a couple of those, it's going to change the dynamic of this game. But, you know, again, like you were saying, make no mistake about it, Patriots' weakness is their defense here. And, you know, I think the Titans have found something here with this no huddle, running from shotgun stuff.

There's just a lot of dynamics to that. Mariota can run. You saw the read option utilized. You saw Henry just go right up the middle. So I think the Titans have some stuff working offensively. It's just the consistency. And, again, you can't turn the ball over in the red zone like they did last week. You've got to finish drives with six points and not three. So for the Titans to win this game,

they're going to have to do a lot of things that they haven't been doing lately. Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, we'll get down, we'll get into breaking down the individual matchups more over the next few days because it's going to be, you know, there's going to be a lot. And, again, the defense is going to have to show up. You know, the Patriots obviously have offensive weapons. Their offense has been struggling a little bit the last few weeks, but it looks like they're going to be healthy, get all those running backs back for this game. So they're able to do so much more when you have all those guys.

Like I said, we'll get a whole lot more into that as the week goes along. So we'll be back tomorrow with another episode between now and then you can check us out museummiracles.com uh we'll have plenty of up-to-date information whenever mike malarkey has his weekly press conference uh we'll have news and notes from that if there's anything of interest so we'll keep an eye on that and start breaking down this game anything else terry before we head out today uh go georg. There you go. Anyway, we'll see.

I don't know. It's going to be an interesting game tonight. I'm an Alabama fan. Terry's a Tennessee fan, so it's fun. I'm not sure how he decides who's going to root for him. There you go. Anyway, so we'll see. Hopefully we can get a little bit from Jalen Hurts and get another one. It should be a fun game to watch.

We'll maybe talk a little bit about that tomorrow as well. Like I said, check us out at museummiracles.com. Check us out on Twitter. I am at jmorrismcm. Terry is at tlambertfb. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Locked on Titans, and we will talk to you tomorrow.