Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: Talking Texans and the Playoff Picture

Episode Date: November 29, 2017

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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 alright. What's going on? Not too much. Terry did a great job last night flying solo. I appreciate that. But we'll be back tonight with both of us and talking about the Titans and the playoff picture and those types of things. those types of things. I would say the biggest, I guess, conversation piece from today concerning the Titans was the Ringer piece on Marcus Mariota and his struggles. And it was written by Danny Kelly, who used to be a part of SB Nation. He used to write for Field Goals, but now he writes for the Ringer.

And, you know, the Ringer, they're high on Marcus Mariota. They had a story earlier in the season about Marcus Mariota and his leadership traits and all that kind of stuff. So they're fans of him over there. So you talk about, I guess, how surprising it is that he has struggled the way that he has this year. But they kind of go through and make some interesting points about what the Titans' offense is doing and what they're not doing to set Mariota up for some ways that he,

that he's been successful so far in the season and how they're not taking advantage of that as much as they have, as much as they could be. And we've talked a lot about the running game. And again, and this is something that Terry has harped on from day one is that, you know, this offense is going to go as a run game goes. And so for Mariota to be good, he needs the run game to be good. And, you know, there's some pieces of that in this article as well. But I thought the thing that stood out to me the most was how good Mariota has

been when the Titans have utilized play action. And they haven't been doing it as much as maybe they should be on 24.4% of their pass plays. There's 11 in the league, so I mean obviously top half. But the article says that Deshaun Watson was using play action fakes on 30% of his passing plays. And just the numbers, Mark Mariota has been so much better at a play action than he has just the standard passing game.

So just some interesting stuff in there and some things that hopefully Terry Rubisky has noticed. Now he hasn't made a lot of adjustments to take advantage of this kind of stuff, but it's some stuff that you would hope that the Titans, obviously not having to read the Ringer article, but would be tracking themselves and would take advantage of the ways that Marcus Mariota has been successful. Yeah, and for me, all this is back up my initial thoughts. I've been saying this offense goes as the run game goes. Well, you look at this article and it praises Mariota with his success running play action. Well, if the run game isn't working, your play action game is probably not going to be working either.

So, again, this team is built to run the football. It's built to wear teams down, and it's just not happening right now. It is interesting to go through some of the clips that Danny posted to see him work in the pocket, to see it all come together for him. And then on the next throw, he's flat-footed and just missing badly. So there are some mechanical breakdowns for Mariota, which is just odd because really last year I thought he was pretty mechanically sound and made some big strides.

But this year you're seeing a lot of flat-footed throws, just not stepping into throws. And, you know, you've speculated on this a little bit. Is he confident in that leg that he hurt? It would certainly appear, you know, with the drop-off from last year to this year, that that could be a legitimate option. You know, when there's stuff around his feet, the throws miss high because he's not stepping into throws.

So I think there might be something to that, after all. It seems like that would be a mental thing, though, and I'm not really sure how you go about correcting it yeah malarkey he kind of i guess poo-pooed the idea in his press conference the other day that mario has lingering effects from from the injury last year i think there's something to that because like you said he has been mechanically sound sound in his first two years in the league. And you've seen regression in that this year. And I just don't really know what other reason there would be for that.

So we'll see. And I think with time, as he gets more comfortable in time passes from the injury, I think he'll get away from that kind of stuff. And I think we'll see him being more solid going through his mechanics and that kind of stuff. And I think he'll correct that as the season goes along. And, you know, again, we think this team is poised to be a playoff team with the fact that, you know, right now they're obviously leading the AFC South.

But even if they drop into the wild card picture, if the Jaguars do end up winning the division, the Titans have a game lead on the Bills and the Ravens who would have that final wildcard spot behind whoever doesn't win the AFC South. With these next three games, Titans have coming up, games they'll be favored in, games we think they should win. That gives him some time to work on these things and continue to try to get them right. And so I think that he'll progress in that as the season goes along.

But like we said, I mean, I just hope that some of these things the Titans realize and that they're willing to tailor some of this stuff to what's working for Marriott at this point. Because, I mean, I get you have an offensive philosophy. You have a system you want to run and all that's great. But at the end of the day, if your quarterback's not playing well, you're not going to win football games against teams that are similar skill level to what you are. And right now the Titans have the advantage of playing against teams that are not as good as them.

But when you get into those last two games against the Rams and the Jaguars, and then when you get into the playoffs, you're going to need to scheme ways for your quarterback to be in a positive situation. And so hopefully that's something the Titans will be trying to figure out a way to do. Yeah, I agree. The thing that most concerns me,

and we talked about this early in the season, it's kind of cooled off, we haven't mentioned it since, was just the fact that there was a time where we thought they needed to unleash Mariota and kind of just go spread and let him work like an Aaron Rodgers would. Like you see the Packers just kind of throw away their run game at times. And they've done that in spots.

And like this post says, the numbers when he gets in those situations are just terrible. So it's really interesting. It's kind of disheartening, honestly, to see him not succeed there. And, again, he's working with new receivers, rookie receivers. He's been banged up, so it's hard to totally, you know, poo-poo all of it. But, still, that was a big thing coming into this year. That was a spot where we thought this team could really start to lean on Mariota to win in football games, and it just hasn't happened this year.

Yeah, and, you know, there are some people that are just out on Mariota altogether. I think that's ridiculous. He's obviously struggling right now. There's no way really to sugarcoat that. But I think to say that he's not the answer or whatever is just ridiculous and go back and look at the throw he made to Delaney we talked about that a little bit

on Sunday night but there are very few guys in the world that can make that throw and so you still see flashes of that kind of stuff throughout a game and you know part of I was reading something earlier about

the skill players that he has and how they're at a little bit of a disadvantage still there with those guys. Hopefully, as Corey Davis comes along, then he'll have some bigger windows thrown to him for that kind of stuff. Something we haven't seen with the guys that he's had so far.

I think we'll see him progress as the year goes along and fix some of this stuff. And, again, you know, the interception on the ball he threw to Harry Douglas was just a bad throw. It wasn't necessarily a bad decision. If he does it in front of Harry Douglas, it's probably a completion. The second pick, you know, where Taewon Taylor fell down,

again, I think that if Taylor doesn't fall down, I don't know if it's a completion, but I don't think it's an interception. So the conversation is a little bit different if he throws just one pick in that game instead of two. Anyway, just something to keep an eye on. Fantasy Football fans, listen up. It's not too late to join the 500,000 people that have already downloaded the draft this season.

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And I've set up a draft on draft for Titans fans. If you want to jump in, it's a $3 draft, four players. Like I said, snake draft, 30 seconds per pick. It's really quick. You pick one quarterback, two running backs, two between Titans and receivers. I'll tweet up the link to that. Follow me at jmworstmcm. I'll tweet out the link to that, and so you can join that. It's really cool.

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That's an 8% increase from last week. The Jaguars are still at 95.6%. They're down 3% from last week. But I still don't really understand the discrepancy between the Titans and the Jaguars' odds of making the playoffs. I mean, when you look at their running schedule, both of us have really soft schedules left. The Jaguars still have to play the Seahawks.

The Titans have the Rams, and then obviously they play each other in Week 17. But it's interesting to me that there's about a 30% difference in the Jaguars' odds of making the playoffs versus the Titans. Yeah, and we say that these next three games are gimmies to the Titans. Most people would have lumped that indie game into the gimme category. But again, we saw the Titans struggle. So I don't know. The Jaguars seem to kind of play that same brand of just kind of squeaking by people.

I'd feel a lot more comfortable with all this playoff talk if the Titans were going out and winning games handily. They're just not right now. We've mentioned the picks. We've mentioned the mistakes. We've mentioned the dropped touchdowns. Just sloppy, sloppy play, really, for the past three, four weeks. So I'm not really worried about them losing this week.

But going to Arizona, to San Francisco, San Francisco is going to start Jimmy Garoppolo, as we kind of thought they would. Those aren't gimmies to me. I think they'll probably go down to the wire. And, you know, any win in the NFL is good, but I just, again again i've said this all along i don't have a lot of confidence in this team if they do make the playoffs and i'm

not saying that that the playoffs are a lock at this point they are in good shape however yeah and like you said i mean i i think odds are they they probably drop one of those two west coast games between the cardinals and the 49ers. They're going to be favored in both of them. I think they absolutely could win both of them, but it's a tough trip and all that stuff. Like you said, the 49ers might get a spark from starting Garoppolo.

We'll see how all that plays out. I still think that, and again, having a game lead on those other two teams, the Rams and the Bills, they each have their struggles um the titans if it comes down to you know the the ravens and the titans have the same record obviously the titans would get in but with the win over the ravens so i still really like their odds um of getting in the playoffs just with how weak the afc south or the afc in general is at this point so but yeah I mean I think we it's

really easy to say they should win the next three and again they will be favored in all three but I mean I think and I think they could win all three but it's by no means a gimme and like you said especially with the fact that they haven't been able to go in and just put people away if you let teams hang around like they have eventually you're you going to let one slip away. You're not going to win all the games like that. But anyway, all that starts this week with the game against the Texans. So coming up, we'll talk a little bit about the Texans and how we think the Titans match up with them. So the Texans come to Nashville on Sunday.

Short week for the texans they played and lost the ravens on monday night football i know we've talked a lot about um where the texans are at this point and obviously it's a completely different team than we saw when the when they hung 50 on the titans you know back six weeks ago or whatever it was um deshaun watson's obviously out for the year. In that game, the Texas defense still had J.J. Wadden with the Merciless. Those guys are both out for the year at this point. They've been struggling against passing games.

Not as much Monday night against Joe Flacco and the Ravens, but we saw what Joe Flacco is right now, and he's not a guy that's going to put up humors against anybody. So, Terry, where is it that you think the Titans will have the biggest advantage in this game against the Texans? As I said last night, it's that secondary. They've hit skids the past couple months. I really think this passing game will have a chance to kind of get right.

There's just not a lot to scare you. There's not a lot of pass rush outside of clowny uh clown is a big deal don't get me wrong but outside of him there's just not much there uh banged up no jj watt uh no whitney merciless so uh that defense is ailing that offense is not very good uh i really am and just not sure how they keep pace with the Titans. But as we've seen, the Titans find a way to kind of let teams hang around and have to put them away late. So this is a spot I really, really like the Titans here. At home against Tom Savage, against a bad defense,

it's a completely different team than they saw the first time around. So I'm pretty confident about this week. Yeah, absolutely. And like you said, Clowney's obviously a really good player. But when you just have to worry about Clowney versus having to worry about Watt, Clowney, and Merciless, it's kind of a different ballgame. So like you said, I feel good about the Titans' chance here, especially with the game being at home.

And if the Titans can win that game, you're looking at a, you know, to this point, a 4-1 record in the division, which is just completely unheard of for this team. And I think that's a big step. I know the division's down, but as we've spent, you know, a lot of time talking about, there have been a lot of years where the Jaguars were down, the Colts were down, and the Titans are going to be either one of them.

They've been able to pull out two wins against the Colts this year, one win against the Jaguars, and they played. If they can get to Texas here, you have to like the AFC South record at that point. That's a step in the right direction, and like you said, kind of a get-right spot for this passing game. So hopefully that's what we'll see. Hopefully we can see the Titans come out, have a fast start, get Marcus Mariotti going, get the running game going a little bit.

It'll be interesting to see how the carries are divided up between Murray and Henry. We've talked a lot about that. There's been a lot today on Twitter about the difference between Mario and Henry and their efficiency and all that kind of stuff. And Henry obviously has all the better numbers as far as analytics and that kind of stuff is concerned. This coaching staff has shown a whatever. They really like getting the ball to DeMarco Murray.

They want to keep him involved, but at this point, I think it might be time to give Henry the lion's share and just see what he can do if you get him in a rhythm. It'll be interesting to see if they do that this week. I kind of don't think they will, but I think it'll be the smart thing for them to do. But the biggest focus is obviously going to be on the passing game and

can Marcus Mariota take advantage of the corners that are struggling for the Texans because that's the biggest thing that we need to see going forward is him getting in a rhythm, him playing well. Because if he plays well, this team is completely different than what it's been so far. And, like, I mean, again, I keep saying that, you know, Terry's been spot on from the beginning talking about the run game needs to get going. And they need to be able to have teams back fearing the Titans' ground attack

so that they can set some things up. But I think it might be a good idea, and again, we've beaten this horse, but for the Titans one time to come out, spread it out, establish a passing game early, get that in the team's mind, and then go to the run game, and then you have them off balance at that point. So maybe that's what we'll see on Sunday. I kind of hope that it is, but I kind of don't think it will be. So anyway, we'll get more specific into the Texas matchup tomorrow night. We'll have at least a Wednesday practice report from both teams.

So we'll see injury-wise. Obviously the biggest thing for the Titans we'll be watching is Rashard Matthews, if he's able to practice or not, whether they can get him back. I think he is a big part of the struggles they had on Sunday. I think if you have him out there, if you have Matthews and Corey Davis as you're wanting to instead of Davis and Decker, I think that makes a pretty significant difference. Anything else, Terry, we need to hit before we get out tonight? I believe that covers it for tonight.

All right, sounds great. And like I said, check out Draft. It really is cool. Follow me on Twitter at jmworthmcm, and I'll tweet out that link again, and you can check that out. Follow Terry on Twitter at TLambertFB. He's still following the Tennessee Vols coaching search, minute-by-minute updates.

Yeah, so that's a lot of fun. So if you're into that, you can check that out. A lot of fun there. So for Terry, this is Jimmy saying thanks for listening to Locked on Titans, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.