Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: Recapping the Steelers debacle.

Episode Date: November 17, 2017

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Welcome in to another edition of Locked on Titans. I'm Jimmy Morris, joined as always by Terry Lambert. I'm not going to bother asking Terry how he is tonight because we both just got done watching the Titans get just all around embarrassed on Thursday Night Football. 40-17 loss to the Steelers. We were joking before the show started. I mean, the one positive is I think the Titans came out of there healthy. I don't think anybody. I know Byard left the game for a little bit with a shoulder, but he was back in there. It looked like everybody else finished the game healthy. So that's about the only positive takeaway from the game tonight.

The first half was okay. You know, the Titans looked like they were in it. A couple of mistakes. Mario threw, the Titans looked like they were in it. A couple of mistakes. Mario threw, what, two picks in the past. But on both those drives, short field for the Steelers, the defense held. Pittsburgh only got field goals off of those two turnovers. So, I mean, you felt pretty good about where the Titans were at halftime.

Come out, first play of the second half, hit the big touchdown pass for Sharp Matthews. You're like, this could be a game, and then it just all unraveled from there. Titans defense had no answers for the Steelers' offense second half. Offense just couldn't get anything going. Mario turned the ball over a couple more times, and you're not going to be able to get it done against pretty much anybody, but especially a team like the Steelers in prime time

when your quarterback throws four picks. Yeah, they did exactly what we said they couldn't do, which is go up there and get blown out. It's a weird game, and I know it went off the rails. But, you know, the mistakes did them in tonight. They were in that game until late in the third quarter. And, you know, it got in the hand, sure. But still, you know, you take away the second Mario to pick.

You take away the dropped Delaney touchdown. You take away the blocked field goal. I mean, a number of things just went wrong for the Titans. And, you know, they have for weeks. The Titans have been free, but still finding ways to win against bad teams. And I think we kind of hit on that all week. These were bad teams that the Titans were beating. And maybe the good news is the Titans have bad teams on their schedule left.

You know, this is a spot to go out and show a national audience that you were for real, and they totally flopped. Yeah, and I think, I mean, unfortunately, it kind of feels like they kind of showed who they are. They're a team that can beat bad teams, doesn't do it convincingly, and we talked about how that was an issue. beat bad teams, doesn't do it convincingly, and we talked about how that was an issue. And then when they get against these teams that are the premier teams in the league, they struggle.

They're just not on that level yet. And, I mean, my gosh. I don't understand why commentators can't say Mark Mariota's name. That doesn't matter. Like somebody was getting on me on Twitter for complaining about it. That's fine. The funny thing is, Tariq was right from the beginning of the game, but then in the second half, I think Chris Collinsworth put him off.

They weren't calling him Mariota, but Collinsworth kept calling him Marioto. I can't even remember how Tariq was saying it, but it was like he was emphasizing the T. Mario Top. I mean, totally unnecessary. It was just ridiculous. But anyway, you know, they just kind of proved. Anyway, sorry, where I was starting with that was Collinsburg said something in the second half about how, you know, the difference in these two teams.

You see a veteran team in the Steelers that is used to this prime time spot and they know how to play any types of games they come out they make plays and they have to make them times are a young team just trying to get to that level um you know haven't played together for as long as a lot of the guys in the sealers have and so just not quite ready for prime time yet and And, you know, I think that if we were honest with ourselves heading into this game, we kind of had a feeling that it could go this way. I really thought it would be a game, and it was, you know, until about halfway through the third quarter. But the Titans are just not quite there yet.

They're not quite there yet talent-wise. The Titans are just not quite there yet. They're not quite there yet talent-wise. And for whatever reason, the game is just gross. Again, there are times where they make big plays. I mean, you saw the play they got to Rashard Matthews. Delaney dropped the touchdown, like you said. I mean, it was a good play, a good throw, all that stuff.

So there are times where it just looks like guys aren't on the same page, whether it's the receiver runs the wrong route or Mario throws it, or whatever it may be. You know, the second pick, the one that Mario threw to Corey Davis, I mean, I don't know if we'll ever get a true answer on that. I think Malarkey will probably tell the truth. Marcus will say it's his fault. And Malarkey will probably give a good indication of who it's actually on.

And I think we agree it's probably a miscommunication. But even like there was another one that was almost picked that he threw at Taewon Taylor, but Taylor kept going and Mario threw it. It just seems like, for whatever reason, the passing game, Mario is receiving it. They're just not gelling. Yeah, I spin that this struggle of the offense is totally 100% a result of not being able to run the football consistently. If you go back to last year, all of the Titans' big plays in the passing game stemmed off of play action, stemmed off of working downfield.

It worked because the safeties got sucked in and Mariota went over the top. Teams just aren't afraid of the Titans' run game right now. And rightfully so. They just can't consistently get a push. DeMarco Murray looks

washed up again. It's just kind of inconsistent out of him. It's really inconsistent out of Derrick Henry. You'll see Henry kind of bounce a run out and pick up a gain of 15 and throw three stiff arms and create. And then the next play you'll see him trip up over his own feet in the backfield. So it's an inconsistent effort from him and Murray and really the offensive line.

And I think it's just setting this offense back. And, you know, I feel like we've been searching for answers all season long. I just don't know if they're there. I don't know what has changed. And I don't know if it's just the league having tape and another gear to kind of take in this offense. But, man, not a lot has changed personnel-wise up front, and the Titans just aren't winning like they did last year.

Yeah, and like you said in your talk about this, there's no explosion in the run game, and I agree with you 100% on Henry. He just – some of his runs just look weird, and I don't really know how to explain it, but like you said, when he gets outside and delivers those stiff arms, he looks great. But then sometimes he looks like he's not running behind his pads.

He doesn't – like there are times where you think he's going to lower his shoulder and run over somebody, and he doesn't, and they trip him. It's just weird. Like, I don't know. I'm not sold on it. I read at one point on Twitter that, you know, Derrick Henry's the better back tonight, and everybody's like, oh, he's the better back every night, blah, blah, blah.

And, you know, whatever. Like, that may be the case. I mean, DeMarco Murray doesn't look the same this year. I think he's been hurt. I think all the carries throughout his career are starting to take a toll on him. But it's not like Henry has just been so much better that there's no doubt that they should hand it over to him. Because, like, the one run tonight where he bounced it outside, got, you know, 15 yards or whatever. Like you were saying, stiff arm out of the ground.

Yeah, sure, that looks great. But then there are other runs where he just looks lost. So I don't know. I don't know that the answer to the running back question is even on this roster right now. Not saying we should cut everybody, but everybody jumps too. But I think they need a different type of guy in there and we've talked about a lot but the offense is just not it's just not clicking right now um and even in the wins it hasn't been clicking i've seen them put together i mean their best offensive games were what weeks two and three

i guess the jaguars and the seahawks i mean mean, it really hasn't been good since then. Yeah, I'd say so. I feel like we're just kind of beating our heads against the wall. I don't know what else to say at this point. The same issues pop up. They were just kind of magnified tonight because, you know, of the score and the Titans ran into a good football team. You know, defensively, I thought they played pretty well until

the fourth quarter where I thought they got worn down. When the offense is going three and out and turning the ball over and not helping you out at all, the score is going to pile up. I don't really put this on the defense tonight. I think

you said it on Twitter, they kind of stood on their head tonight and kept the Titans in this game. The pass rush came alive out of nowhere. You know, they were rushing four and getting home. I don't know if that was a product of Ben holding the ball for too long, but it was working. Arakpo was great. You know, Jarrell Casey made some plays. Carl Kluge made a bunch of plays

uh so the pass rush if you're looking for a positive that was the the big one for me uh i thought kevin byard played great i thought adory jackson played pretty good um you know the problem stemmed from for me defensively with les with LaShawn Sims and Logan Ryan. When they had got their opportunities on Antonio Brown, he just ate them up. And Antonio Brown, it's just a matter of time. He's going to get his. So, you know, what do you think about the defense? It's kind of a weird spot.

They gave up 40 points, but I came away feeling okay about them. points, but I came away feeling okay about them. Yeah, you know, in the second half, they kind of went back to what they'd done the first drive and, you know, spreading it out and running more quick-hitting stuff. And like you said, I mean, you feel okay about Byard. I mean, you feel good about Byard. You feel good about Adora Jackson long-term. And he was nice.

I mean, I thought he held up pretty well. Logan Ryan is fine. You know, he's good enough, right? But when you're running Bryce McCain and LaShawn Sims out there, with guys like Martavius and Brian Ewing with all his struggles this year, I mean, he's still got all the talent in the world. And, you know, Juju Smith-Schuster. I mean, those guys, the students have a lot of weapons.

and Juju Smith-Schuster. I mean, those guys, the students have a lot of weapons, and the Titans struggle once you get into anything at the top two corners. And so, I mean, we saw time and time again, you know, Bryce McCain chasing Antonio Brown. LaShawn Sims, you know, like you said, I mean, that's obviously. And granted, I mean, any team's second, third, fourth corner on Antonio – both teams' first corner on Antonio Brown is a huge mismatch in favor of the Steelers.

So, you know, it's tough. Like I do think the pass rush was as good tonight as it's been. I showed up, especially in the first half. So, I mean, so that was good to see. They were able to pressure Ben, and, you know know it was really when he went to the quick hitting stuff that they just didn't they couldn't do anything about it um and so you know i mean the defense to me is they're ahead of the offense right now and again like you said it's kind of weird to say when they gave when they just they just gave up 40 points but um they were like you said, it's kind of weird to say when they just gave up 40 points.

But, like you said, they only filled the whole game. I thought Jayon Brown looked pretty good. I mean, I think he did a pretty good job there. So, I mean, you know, obviously the final score kind of tells the story. And, you know, you give it the points you gave up. So, I mean, you can't discount that. But, I don't know. Like I said, as a unit right now,

I feel better about the defense than the offense. Yeah, and again, no defense is going to withstand four picks. It's just not going to happen. Yeah. So you've got to put – to go back to Mariota, the Davis play I think is on Davis. The third pick, I thought he was late coming across the middle, and I thought he was just pressing.

Fourth pick was awful. He was behind. You know, you just saw some uncharacteristic stuff out of Mariota. I mean, I know he's had his downs this year, don't get me wrong. But to throw four picks, I think it's more of a product of the Titans getting down and him feeling like he needed to go make a play. But, again, you can't make things worse. But people on Twitter saying that he's a bust, that he's Jake Locker,

just calm down. This was a hard spot for the Titans. Everybody agreed. I don't think a lot of us realists expected a Titans win tonight. Granted, yeah, he crapped the bed. There's no getting around it. But this guy is not falling. This team is still 6-4.

Very much in play for a playoff spot. There's no getting around the fact that the offense is broken, but I think as we've said all along, you know, it's kind of hard to put all this on him when we feel like the offense as a whole is broken. So it's a really weird spot, and I probably sound like I'm getting excuses for him, but you know, that's how I honestly feel. This run game just isn't working, and I feel like the offense just doesn't go without it. Yeah, I've got a few more thoughts on Mariota and on the offensive line as well. So we'll get to that here in just a sec. So yeah, as far as Mariota is concerned right so you look at this one of two ways

the students defense is very very good i mean we talked about that all we talked about you know top five dboa against the run and the pass i mean you know they they've been really good this year um we thought that you know the times might be able to take advantage of joe hayden being out i mean cody Cody's sensible about getting a pick. It just makes me want to throw up in my mouth. I mean, he was so bad when he was here. But, you know, so on one hand, you expect your quarterback to struggle against a defense that is that good.

On the other hand, you want your franchise quarterback to be able to come out in a game like that and take it over and you know put the team on his back even against a really good team and go out there and play really well and you know carry the team and obviously Mario didn't do that tonight so there's you know I mean I so I kind of go back and forth on how I feel about it and like you said it was something I said on the the sense of ball pick I said something on twitter something along the lines of you know bad throw by mario there but i feel like davis could have worked his way back to the ball and then somebody's like oh you'll never blame mario i said it was a bad throw like that's how that's

what i led with so um you know it's not i'm not constantly trying to make excuses for him and i think you just need to step back and look at the whole picture. And I think that it was obviously a really – you know, a very disappointing game. And like you said, you want to see in prime time against, you know, one of the better teams in the league, all that stuff. You want to see him rise to that occasion. He didn't do that tonight. But, you know, the better days are ahead for him and for this offense.

I feel like more time with Corey Davis, get them all on the same page. You know, hopefully that can come to fruition. And, again, schedule eases up. You know, and we talked last night about how you shouldn't just jump ship if this game went poorly. Now, we talked about how we wanted to see them can stay in the game and not get blown out which they ended up doing but the schedule you know i really think they're going to win the next four and then we're going to be sitting at you know you know 10

and 10 and 4 right we'll be at 10 and 4 at that point with with the rams and the jaguars coming to nashville um so you know i mean i think that's going to be a pretty good spot. I really do feel like it's not being ridiculous even after this person said that. I still – I don't understand what's going on with this offensive line. There's still an opening hole for the running game. We talked about the struggles the running backs have, and that's true. But there's still not a lot of holes there.

We did see a few times tonight, I felt like, where DeMarco Murray missed some holes. That was the thing with the Skycam too, being the main view. It kind of makes me motion sick, because I'm older or whatever. From that standpoint, I don't like it. I do like it

on running, because you can see the holes, whether they're there or not. And then throws over the middle are obviously good because, you know, you have that view. But anything to the outside, I don't really care for it on that. But the line just, they're not right now. And, you know, they were the strength of this team last year,

and that's what this team is supposed to be built around. And they're just really, really not getting it done right now. No, and they haven't strength of this team last year, and that's what this team is supposed to be built around, and they're really, really not getting it done right now. No, and they haven't since preseason, and people told us, ah, it's pretty since keeping it vanilla. It never got any better, and here we sit, what is it, week 11, and the same issues are still there. So added to that, we now have questions on whether or not demarco murray has anything left or not derrick henry's any good

uh so yeah there's a there's just a lot of problems there um going back to that sky cam it was kind of interesting to watch uh demarco murray i felt like there was uh a lot of unnecessary cutbacks uh and again that's a that's an angle that you don't get to see uh so you don't see the blocks develop in front you don't see the holes open up but several times i was kind of like scratch what are you seeing why are you why are you cutting back like that so uh from that perspective it was really cool i love seeing uh mario to kind of get through his uh get through his read and watch the windows open up that was cool uh but at times you know i i thought the the camera kind of got behind and like you were saying it made you motion sick well

they had to pan so quick because they kept getting behind on the play. So I think it's a pretty cool development. I'm not sure it's going to work as a full-time, but on passing downs especially, that was the cool part for me. Yeah, sure. So I think that they'll probably continue to do kind of a hybrid of what they did tonight. They'll use it a little bit more than they have in the past, but maybe not exclusively just yet,

but it is cool, especially in certain situations. So anyway, to sum all this up, basically the Titans are I think they're on the cusp of being a good team, but they're just not quite there yet.

There's too many sloppy things that go on throughout the course of the game that just keeps them from taking that next step. You know, and the Delaney Walker, I mean, you know, now that the final score is 40-17, it doesn't feel as big as it did at the time. You know, it did end up getting a football drive, but you leave those points on the field. But stuff like that. This team right now is still playing with small margins of error, and so you can't afford to have drops like that.

You can afford it last week, right? I mean, we had the Richard Matthews drop last week against the Bengals. We're still able to win that game. That's a completely different scenario because that's a bad team. When you get in these games against these good teams, you can't have that kind of stuff. And so until the Titans can clean that type of stuff up, they're not going to be ready to be one of the teams that's mentioned as a legitimate Super Bowl contender.

I think they're a legitimate playoff contender. I still think they've got to win the AFC South. Nothing changed on that tonight, and we said that it wouldn't, regardless of how this happened. But we hoped that they would go out there and show that they were ready to take that step. And what a lot of national media people thought they were going to be at the beginning of the year, a lot of people were talking about

one of the top five, ten teams in the league, whatever. And tonight they show that they're just not there yet. Yeah, we saw the mistakes week in, week out. We had the a win is a win is a win crowd tell us that it didn't matter. It just mattered about the win column. Well, it clearly matters. We've seen this brewing for weeks. We've seen the mistakes.

We've seen the Titans make things unnecessarily hard on themselves. They did it and they ran into a good team. And that's what's going to happen in the playoffs. So unfortunately, I've kind of felt this for several weeks now. I do think the Titans are going to make the playoffs. But I don't think they'll do anything with that. I think it's just going to be kind of a stepping stone season.

Certainly, you hope that Mariota can develop a little more and eliminate some of these mistakes. First and foremost, the run game has to get fixed. As far as all of you, I don't see the Titans going,

being able to knock off the Steelers in January. They're certainly not going to go knock off the Patriots. So probably one year away, if not two for me. Yeah, and so much of it depends on Moriota. I mean, you know, if he can tighten up his play a little bit, I guess no pun intended there, then you feel better about where they are. I mean, if he doesn't turn the ball over four times in this game, it's a game, right?

And the defense is not on the field as much in the first half. They're not as tired in the second half. So, I mean, all that stuff, it all plays in. So, I mean, I don't know that they're – I don't think they're as bad as the final score ended up being tonight, but I think we saw that there's still a lot of room there for improvement. The good news is now they get 10 days. You know, it's almost like another kind of mini-bye week that they have now

coming off of this game to get ready for the stretch. You talked about how, you know, they didn't have anybody in the injury report this week, so they're healthy. They've got some of those things going for them. Then hopefully they can take advantage of what they have in front of them for the next few weeks. It's going to be tough because we're going to have to live with this. While the time off is nice,

we're also going to have to live with this game for while the time off is nice, we're also going to have to live with this game for longer than we would if it was just Sunday to Sunday. So that is going to be tough, but we need to kind of keep perspective that this is not the end of the season. It's not time to be looking at draft order and mock drafts just yet. There's still a lot of football to be played. There's still a lot of meaningful football to be played. And if they do what they should do, then we're going to be played there's still a lot of meaningful football to be played and if they do what they should do then you know we're going to be looking at those last two games of the season

as somehow you know some way looking at you know they're for they're for a playoff break or they're for the division um or or wild card whatever it may be because you know i i don't the jaguars are not going to go away i i still don't think they're that good, but they do keep winning. Their defense is unbelievable. They're not going to go away, but I still think that the Titans could pretty easily be a 10-win team. Yeah, that's right. I'll totally agree with that.

I won't even rule out 11 at this point. It was just one of those burn-the burn the tape type nights where nothing went right uh so yeah the sky is probably falling right now uh there's nothing that we can say to make you feel any better about it uh but and look at the big picture here so um like jimmy said last night you know it wouldn't be a surprise if the browns went and knocked off the jaguars so we can watch that on sunday and kind of hope for that to to pull back even with the jaguars but it looks like they're going to be central for now of the division with this loss so uh but you know again good news really really easy schedule coming up yeah that'd be really awesome. If the Jaguars could go to Cleveland,

that would make all this feel just a little bit better. But, yeah, so, I mean, you know, it's not time to give up on this team by any means. All right, is that pretty much it for tonight? Yeah, that'll do it. We'll be back on Monday morning. Yeah, so we'll hit back. Regular schedule again next week.

Monday morning we'll recap what went on in the AFC South over the weekend and kind of how everything in the playoff picture. We'll be looking at that more as things go here. So for Terry, this is Jimmy saying thanks for listening, and we'll get on Monday.