Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: New assistants, but no coordinators yet

Episode Date: January 29, 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, what's going on tonight? Not too much. What's going on with you? Not a whole lot. Tonight we're going to talk a little bit about the coaching staff that Mike Vrabel has assembled to this point. And before we do that, we will tell you that we cover the Titans from UCMiracles.com, which is an SB Nation site. We'll tell you that we cover the Titans from UCMiracles.com, which is an SB Nation site. So check us out there. We'll have a lot of stuff there as news breaks on coaches and all that stuff. So keep that site up.

Keep refreshing it. We'll get all the latest information there. Also, please subscribe to the podcast, whether it's on iTunes or Stitcher or Spotify, any of the places you get your podcasts. Subscribe to us there. That way you'll get the latest episodes as soon as they become available. And then one more thing before we get into coaching staff news. The Pro Bowl was this afternoon. Terry and I were both talking about how we didn't watch much of it.

Honestly, I kind of wish they would just make it a skills competition and then call it a weekend. But the game was on, and a good showing for the Titans. The Titans had quite it a weekend but uh the game was on and a good showing for the titans the titans had quite a few guys represented in the game and delaney walker was the offensive mvp of the game uh four catches i think for 29 yards and two touchdowns so you know it's cool that there were quite a few guys there from the titans uh you know there have been years in the past where the titans maybe had a guy or two that was deserving i can think of a couple years where jerell casey probably should have been on the team, but didn't get that recognition because of how bad the team was.

And, you know, for a while, the Titans were kind of really an afterthought on the national scene, especially. So good to have a few guys there playing in the game. And hopefully, you know, that builds up the profile of the team a little bit. And you see this team continue to improve and you'll see more and more guys get to make that that make that trip and again it's not you know nobody really loves the game i don't think at this point but it's still a cool honor still a cool week for those guys to get to go down there and do that yeah like like you said the pro ball doesn't do it for me i didn't even know delaney had won the mvp until he told me a few minutes ago.

It's always cool to see your guys go out and show out with the top talent in the league. Some of it, at least. You see so many guys turning it down these days. It's not as special as it once was. The effort's not really there. Whatever.

It's the only football game on this week, only pro game on this week. So I guess people watch it. So it's plenty of exposure for the team. Good to see. I think the Titans were actually pretty well represented, all things considered. So, yeah, cool to see Delaney get that big prize. I think he won $64,000 in a new car. So a couple touchdowns for Delaney. It's cool to see64,000 in a new car. A couple of touchdowns for Delaney at school too.

Yeah, not a bad weekend. Go down there, hang out in Orlando for a week, get a new car and $64,000. I think any of us would take that. Obviously, good deal for him. Again, I just think it's cool to see a Titans guy win offensive MVP.

I don't know if that's ever happened before. If it has, it's been a long time. So, you know, cool to see that. So anyway, all right, so coming up, we'll talk about the news on the coaching staff, the hires that Mike Vrabel has made to this point, and maybe, you know, an indication that we're getting based on some of the hires that have been made so far okay so like i said the there have been three or four uh coaching hires that have been announced we talked last week about carrie coombs joining the staff from ohio state uh he's officially i

guess been named the defensive back so the defensive backs coach so again we talked before about how he was a guy that they were going to get that and was going to be joining the staff but we didn't know exactly what his role was going to be sounds like he'll be the defensive backs coach which is you know one of his 16 duties that he had listed at ohio state and we talked a little bit about that uh on the podcast last week so if you missed that you can go back and listen to that if you subscribe to the podcast or miss an episode but But anyway, so check that out. But a couple of other hires were announced on Friday night, Friday afternoon, Friday night.

The first, Pat O'Hara, is going to be the quarterback's coach, and Shane Bowen is going to coach the outside linebackers. We talked about Bowen a little bit, like I said, last week as well. He was the guy that was mentioned that you know coached with vrabel with the texans um so no no big surprise there pat o'hara is it's kind of an interesting guy i mean if you go and read through his his bio you know if you you google search him like well like we have to do with a lot of these guys because when we hear their names we don't we're not necessarily familiar with them um but o'Hara is a guy that was an NFL draft pick as a quarterback,

has actually done some consulting on movies like The Waterboy and stuff like that, some stuff you've seen. And that was kind of the headline when it was announced that he was hired, that he's worked with Adam Sandler, Mark Wahlberg, and The Rock. So kind of a guy that has a cool background, spends his time in the Arena League as a player and as a coach, an offensive coordinator and a head coach in the Arena League. So a guy that, you know, has done a lot of different stuff.

According to John McClain, who covers the Texans, you know, for the Houston Chronicle, you know, O'Hara's a guy that's well-respected, and he says he's a guy that will do well for Marcus. So, you know, I mean, I guess it's hard really to comment much on you know what this means but you know Jason Michael was the quarterback's coach before we saw how that worked out so you know I don't know I don't know if we if you have any more insight Terry into what his what his career is or what he's going to be able to do here. But, you know, a name that is kind of, I mean, I guess good to see, but a guy that we don't really know that much about. Yeah, really fascinating guy.

Reading a little deeper, he was actually a player coach in the Arena League. So he played quarterback and coached the team. So that's kind of interesting. Held head coaching jobs in the AFL before jumping to the NFL. And he was an offensive assistant with the Texans. So he's got that one year with Deshaun Watson. And I think that's worth noting because Watson was set in the league on fire before he got hurt.

And it's hard to pinpoint who was the guy that meant the most to Watson there because you got Bill O'Brien uh there you you've obviously got an offensive coordinator there you've got and then you've got O'Hare at coaching the quarterback so it's hard to to credit him totally with it but I'm sure he had a hand in it so that if you're looking for a positive uh to me that that's that's what you need to be looking at and the texans did some really creative things on offense they really transformed everything about their offense um so i'm excited for that but it's kind of odd that they're hiring these assistants before they've got a coordinator in place or you know we we might not know this but they might have a handshake agreement in place they might have a guy in place but it would just seem kind of odd to me for them to already have a quarterbacks coach

and a receivers coach in place with no coordinator. Yeah, and so, I mean, I guess the hope that we have here is that John DeFilippo is the guy that they have the handshake agreement with, the Eagles quarterbacks coach, who is going to be highly sought after. Did the Cardinals, did they hire an offensive coordinator i i was trying to find that before we jumped on i never got there um but you know he anyways speaking of d filippo he was supposedly tied to steve wilks but i feel like that i saw that the cardinals had hired an office hired mike mccoy that's okay yeah that's right so so you Mike McCoy. Yeah, that's right. That concern obviously is gone.

They found their guy out there. To my knowledge, I think you have two offensive coordinator jobs still open. One with the Giants and then one here with the Titans. Pat Shermer is the head coach of the Giants now. Trying to look at this objectively,

unbiasedly, which is obviously hard for us to do being Titans fans, but if you are DeFilippo and you're going to have your choice between, and again, this is all speculation. We don't know if this is the case.

He may have not been offered either of these jobs. He could have been offered both, one or the other. We don't have any idea, but let's just kind of play this game for a minute. If you're DeFilippo,

you've got your choice between going to the Giants or coming to the Titans. In my mind, the Titans' job is much more attractive. One, you've got a much younger quarterback in Marcus Mariota, a guy that is entering the prime of his career, versus working with an Eli Manning who is obviously on the backside of his career. Eli Manning's accomplishments speak for themselves, but he's a guy that probably doesn't have a lot left in this league looks done last year but i mean i think a coaching change could could do him some good up there with schermer as your head coach instead of you know mike brable here um schermer's a guy that

is an offensive guy i'm not sure if he's planning on calling his own plays or not, but you're going to be running his offense. So if you're Dee Flipbo, you've got to go up there and you've got to tailor your system to what Schermer wants to do. If you come here, you're probably going to have a whole lot more input, a whole lot more say, a whole lot more design in the offense. So, again, I think with all those things considered if you're a guy that has your pick of those two jobs the titans job is the more attractive job

but you know we'll just kind of have to wait and see how it all plays out but i mean i think schirmer said something i read a comment from him earlier today that basically you know we we could be waiting on somebody who's still playing right now. So that leads me to believe that they could be in on DiFilippo. I mean, it could be somebody else. But do you agree that objectively the Titans job looks like the better job? I do, but something you have to keep in mind here, Giants hold the number two overall pick. So he could have a hand in taking the best quarterback of the bunch here

and have a hand in developing another guy. So we're both pretty sold on Marcus Mariota. If he's not, he could go to New York and get another shot with another quarterback that they're probably going to draft with Eli Manning likely out the door. So the roster as it stands right now is not close. But, you know, I think we kind of felt the same way about Boettcher, the defensive

coordinator who chose the Giants over the Titans. So, I don't know. But you're right. It was the wording from Shermer that kind of has me concerned about DeFilippo. A guy that's still coaching. You know, who else would it be? You've hired Josh McDaniels in Indy.

Nobody from that Eagles staff has been talked about, at least on the offensive side, except for DeFilippo. Frank Reich's not leaving. So yeah, it would seem like it's down to the Titans and Giants once again for DeFilippo. And that's a little scary. Yeah, and we don't know, in fairness,

if the Titans ever offered Betcher the job. So maybe it's not the fact that somebody's already chosen the Giants over the Titans. Maybe that's not, you know, maybe they talked with him and decided that they wanted to go a different direction. But, yeah, like you said, I mean, just the fact that he said, wait, no, my God, there's not really anybody else. I don't even have any idea who the Patriots quarterback's coach is. But not a name that's been mentioned as far as in the running for these types of jobs. Like you said, Frank Reich, who's the Eagles' offensive coordinator, is not going to leave the Eagles laterally to go to the same position with the Giants.

So, yeah, that'll be something that we'll keep an eye on. But, you know, and then if it's not DiFilippo at this point, I don't know what direction the Titans are going. If they haven't hired somebody already uh i'm maybe a little bit concerned at that point if it's not going to be him but you know we're just kind of to wait and see and again even if it's not him and even if it's somebody that we don't really know anything about or it doesn't come with the name like you know i mean listen nobody knew di filippo's name two two two, a year ago, even like two months ago.

He was not a guy that was on very many people's radar. So we've kind of fallen in love with this guy, but he's been a rising star for the last little bit. So just, again, not cause the panic if they don't get him and if they get a guy that we haven't necessarily heard about. don't get him and if they get a guy that we haven't necessarily heard about um i i i'll tell you this whoever they get he's gonna come in with a better i don't know if resume is the right word but we're gonna feel better about him as a higher than terry rubisky when mike malarkey hired him i mean because that yeah right no it's not a high bar granted but you know we're probably gonna get a guy that is not a thousand years years old and wasn't last an offensive coordinator when Bo Jackson was playing in the NFL. So just keep in mind that whoever they end up hiring,

we should take the approach of let's wait and see how it plays out on the field before we push the panic button. And we talked a little bit about that last week. But the other thing with Vrabel is he doesn't have – he's only been in coaching for just a couple years, and and especially in the NFL so he doesn't have a coaching tree he doesn't have maybe some of the contacts that some of these guys that get hired in other places do um so you know that maybe puts him at a little bit of a disadvantage but it also says that you know he can bring guys in and then hey if it doesn't work out he can you know try to find a

new guy next year. Like you said, we're sold on Marcus. Maybe the rest of the league's not. Maybe there's some concern about him that other people have. But I think that if you see them bring a guy in and you see them be able to at least work on maximizing his talent or put him in some better positions than what he was put in last year, then even if the offensive coordinator they're in next year doesn't necessarily work out or they don't like him or whatever, the job can become more attractive as it goes on

just because you can see we know there's talent on this offense. I think that some people have some concerns about this offense just because of what they saw last year. But again, I still contend that a lot of that was because of the coaching. And you get a different guy in here, I think you're going to see a lot of different stuff from this group. Oh, there's no doubt. It was so scheme-related. You know, when you saw the two receiver patterns, you know,

Marcus would drop back and it's max protection and there's two options to throw to. What's Marcus going to do, you know, if one of those guys don't come open? So that was some of the frustration. We've talked about receivers ending up in the same spot, and Mario has to throw the ball somewhere. He's got to make something happen late in these games, and that's where the mistakes came.

So it's frustrating to sit back and see people kind of pick on Marcus for taking a step back. But I feel like if you watched all the games in this Titans season, you could kind of piece the picture together. Hey, this offensive scheme is really bad. I'm not sure what Marcus is supposed to do here. There's so many mistakes from the receivers, not running the right route. It was just, it turned him into a turnover machine.

So you hope that that doesn't do any long-term damage. I'm still super pumped for Mario to take that next step forward. And the Titans have plenty of weapons. It's not a matter of personnel. I think it's 100% up to coaching. So

we don't really have many names right now. It's kind of odd odd but i think we're just kind of in the waiting game for d filippo at this point yeah and so hopefully that's what ends up happening the only other name the only other thing we've seen in the last couple days is that variable has reached out to dean peace the former defensive coordinator with the Ravens, who retired after the end of the year, but a guy that Vrabel was with in New England and a guy that has been the architect of some really good defenses. So, you know, I think if you end up with DiFilippo and Pease as your coordinators,

you have to be pretty excited. And, you know, I mean, again, he's a guy that they would be kind of pulling out of retirement, much like they did with Dick LeBeau. But he's a younger guy than LeBeau. He's 68, which is funny to talk about him being younger than the former coordinator. But, I mean, I think he's a guy that, you know, I think we should be excited about if that's what ends up happening because he is a guy that's had some really good defenses. And, you know, again, you could do a lot worse than that guy. And, you know, I don't know. We'll see if that's what ends up happening.

But what are your thoughts on Pease? Yeah, this guy with a proven track record. He retired, I think, on New Year's Day. So that's kind of interesting that Vrabel would go back to the well. And you wonder how much a defensive coordinator would do for Vrabel. You wonder how many hands are going to be in the defense from Vrabel. Is he going to take over? Is he going to want to run the defense?

He didn't say he would. He said he would pull rank when he needed to. So that's kind of interesting. But, yeah, Pease, nothing but respect for him. Ran a pretty good show in Baltimore. As they kind of transitioned that defense. That was an interesting time as it's kind of the old Ravens left town and the new Ravens flipped in.

So I thought he did a really, really nice job there. And, you know, that defense fell off a little bit, but they were never all that bad. I think Mike, our buddy Mike that writes for us, put out a stat that he's never had a defense rank under 20th in DVOA for defense. So that's a pretty nice stat. So, yeah, I think Dean Pease comes with a lot of experience, and he would be the ideal guy to hire here at this point.

Yeah, they were third in DVOA in 2017, sixth in 2016. So, yeah, I mean, a guy had has a lot of success in this league and you know maybe a guy that kind of comes in and works as a transition uh you know for a couple years uh while variable is getting his feet wet as a head coach and comes in and does something like that so that'll be be something interesting to watch. But again, if we're having this conversation maybe in two weeks and you end up with DeFilippo and Pease as your coordinators, I think a lot of the panic that has kind of started to creep up as far as this search is concerned, some of that stuff should be alleviated if those are your guys. And again, even if it's not, even if it's two guys that we've never heard of they're the coordinators i'll i'll preach the wait and see approach and because again it's

it's not going to get worse than it was last year like terry said we're we're going to see more than two receivers out in the formation uh we may even see them spread the field a little bit not not quite as many tight formations and that kind of stuff. So, you know, we'll wait and see and all that. But this looks like the road is going down at this point, and so hopefully that can play out, and we'll see what it goes from there. All right, anything else as far as coaching? There's one more. Who was the other coach that was announced?

Rob Moore, the receivers coach. Yeah. He was in Oakland for three years, I believe. And, you know, the first reaction to everybody was, yeah, Amari Cooper's so great. Well, Amari struggled with drops, and I'm not sure there's much a coach can do about that.

So, there's not, I don't have a huge opinion on Rob Moore. It's hard with receivers coaches. But, Rob Moore has reportedly been hired by Vrabel. Yeah, and again, there's a lot of talent in that receiver room, and hopefully he's a guy that can come in and help those guys maximize that stuff.

Because we saw what Corey Davis can do in that playoff game against the Patriots, so hopefully they can build on that. So, yeah, that's the other bit of news that we have. Like said we'll we'll keep you up to date on all this stuff as it breaks and again I would I would expect that we probably won't see an offensive coordinator name anytime soon I think they're waiting on DeFilippo at this point don't know you know how that's setting I don't know if they're the leader or you you know, whatever. Of course, we saw that, you know, the reports one night that for Boettcher, the Titans were the leader. And then the next morning I wake up and he's the defensive coordinator for the Giants. So you never know with that kind of stuff.

But I think that's kind of where we're at at this point. So we'll kind of monitor all that stuff as it breaks and pay attention to that. Again, mewseemiracles.com, Terry and I are right there. So we'll have everything that we know be up to date there. Anything else tonight that we need to hit before we get out? Rob Moore was actually in Jerry Maguire. Yeah, I was just seeing that. So two coaches that have appeared in movies.

So Jerry Maguire and the Waterboy. How about that? Yeah. So if nothing else, man, they got a good movie. So they got that going for them. So anyway, all right. Hopefully, you know, this time next year we're talking about, you know, their accomplishments on the field and not, you know, in the cinema.

But anyway, so anyway, like I said, we'll keep track of this Brable staff as it comes together, and we'll be here for that. We will probably, as this week goes along, start to talk a little bit about draft needs, break down the roster and that kind of stuff because, you know, as the staff gets hired, we'll transition more into that kind of stuff because that will be the stuff that we'll be looking at and the stuff that you'll be caring about as well.

So stay with us there. Like I said, subscribe to the podcast wherever you get podcasts. Locked on Titans is obviously the name of the podcast. Check out the site, musicof get podcasts. Locked on Titans is obviously the name of the podcast. Check out the site, musicofmiracles.com. Terry and I will be back at least a couple more times this week. The schedule will kind of be in flux depending on if news breaks. We'll be back at least two more times this week. So stay tuned for that.

Check out our site. Follow us on Twitter. I'm at jmorrismcm. Terry is at tlambertfb. So thanks for listening to Locked on Titans, and we will talk to you again later this week.