Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: Vrabel quotes after win over Patriots, Snap counts, Early look at Indy

Episode Date: November 13, 2018

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edition of Locked on Titans. I'm your host, 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 Vrabel press conference today, so we'll get into a little bit of what he said. And then last night we talked about snap counts. Curious about that, so we'll dig into those a little bit. And then look forward to the Colts a little bit, talk about the line and kind of what our early expectations are for that game. Before we do that, remind you to be right for me at CityMiracles.com. We're covering the Titans for SB Nation.

You can follow us on Twitter. I'm at jmorrismcm. Terry's at TLambertFB. You can get the podcast wherever you get podcasts. Just search out Locked on Titans, and you'll find us there. All right, so like I said, we're recording this Monday night, so Mike, very well at our press conference today. Gave an injury update or injury updates on a few players.

Jack Conklin, who missed this game against Patriots because of a concussion. In the protocol, he's set to practice Wednesday, it sounds like, and if everything goes well with that, then he'll go through those final steps in the protocol and should be good to go this weekend. Taewon Taylor, who was, I think he was limited at the end of last week's practice. Vrabel said today that he had a chance to get back out there and practice on Wednesday. So we'll be keeping an eye on that.

Hopefully he'll be able to go. They're going to need their weapons kind of at full strength for this game. Other news, Derek Morgan, Vrabel said he could have played this week, but they held him out one more week. So it sounds like he'll be ready. And then David Flewellen, the only update we got there was that he did not tear an ACL, but he will be out this week. So I don't have any idea.

I mean, it looked like a hamstring to me, like where he was grabbing when it happened, but obviously we know how much information Vrabel gives out, so we're not going to probably know what it is unless they end up putting him on IR. The Titans have a chance to be as healthy as they've been all year heading into those games if all that stuff kind of breaks right. Yeah, so you go to Dallas. You win a primetime Monday night game in front of the nation.

You come back. You beat the Patriots. Today you're getting, this week you're getting all your players back and you're fully healthy. I mean, the time is now for the Titans. It's time to go distance yourself to try and go catch these Texans to try and go win that division. The stars seem to be aligning here.

It just kind of makes you wonder what's going to go wrong because things are just really, really going well right now. So the only thing of note, like you said, with Flewellen, maybe they bring up Daylon Dawkins if it's serious there with Flewellen. Obviously got to bring somebody up, but I guess Dawkins would be the answer there. Yeah, he's been the guy. He's been here, obviously, since the beginning and was on the active roster for a couple of weeks earlier in the season.

So, yeah, that would make really the most sense. Other things that Mike Vrabel talked about today, said that Adorey Jackson was the player of the game. And we talked about how, you know, they shadowed Josh Gordon with Adoree Jackson was the player of the game. And we talked about how they shadowed Josh Gordon with Adoree Jackson. I mean, you know, Braybel said it today, but you've seen a bunch of numbers that talked about it on different places, Twitter and PFF and all that stuff throughout the day. And I don't think they've done that before with him.

I don't think they've done that with anybody. But, you know, it almost seemed like the Patriots weren't really ready for it. We talked all week about how we expected them to go after Malcolm Butler and specifically with Josh Gordon. The Titans obviously didn't give them the chance to find out what Josh Gordon could do to Malcolm Butler.

I wonder if that didn't throw the Patriots for a little bit of a loop. They didn't have a game plan to get Gordon matched up on Butler and do something, because I would assume, and we'll talk about snap counts here in a little bit, but Butler was out there. Logan Ryan was on Julian Eldman for most of the day.

We know Adorey was on Josh Gordon, so that leaves you to believe that Chris Hogan was matched up with Malcolm Butler for most of the day, and I don't know that he was targeted more than once. Yeah, they don't target Chris Hogan in general. So a smart move of the Titans to shadow the opponent's most dynamic receiver with your most dynamic corner. So you have to play Malcolm Butler. I think Vrabel has stuck to that.

If he has to play, just don't match him up on the best receiver. So that really helped. We talked all week. Malcolm Butler's going to see 14 targets or something crazy like that, and it was logical. That's what should have happened. But at least it gives you comfort knowing that he can kind of shut down Chris Hogan. So baby steps there.

He played a ton of snaps. I don't have a snap count in front of me, but he played a ton of snaps. Really didn't stand out one way or the other. Somebody asked me during the game if he was even playing. I really didn't know. So that's what you want to see. Just kind of righted the ship just a little bit there. Now we just need the consistency to come through.

Yeah, and, you know, Red Bull said of Adore, he played like a number one corner yesterday. I think he's a dynamic player who can play multiple coverages and multiple techniques. So, you know, again, we talked about how it's amazing how quickly he's become that guy because there was a point where we thought special teams would be the way that he would contribute first and um you know it turned out that he's been such a good corner so i mean that's just really been a little bit of a bonus and again you know you hope

he was the first round pick i think like 18 overall something like that you hope he was the first-round pick, I think like 18 overall, something like that. You hope that guy develops into a number one. We just didn't know it would happen this soon. So that's obviously, you know, when guys are ahead of schedule, that's a good thing. Derrick Henry was another guy that Vrabel specifically mentioned in the press conference today. Talked about how he ran hard, and we talked about that last night a little bit, how, you know maybe

this is now his role kind of the late game hammer so to speak and again you know we talked about how he hasn't necessarily been a hammer type back but he ran like that yesterday and you know maybe when you see a david full ellen getting carries not necessarily ahead of you i mean derrick derrick henry got the ball before full ellen did in the game, but when Flewellen is getting carries as early as he was in the game, it's pretty clear that they moved on from Derek Henry because I think they probably planned on using all three of them, but your role

has been vastly diminished. You better take advantage of the opportunities that you get when you're out there, and at least yesterday he ran differently. He ran like a guy who was trying to keep his job. Yeah, it was notable that they played him on the goal line. He did well.

He converted two touchdowns. Had one snap out of the wildcat down there, I think inside the 10-yard line. So it was good to see. Really, for me, though, it's that offensive line. If they're moving people, the Derrick Henry problem is going to solve itself. He can run through a hole. Just flip on the Alabama tape, and he'll prove that to you real quick. So good to see him get significant run.

He had significantly better numbers than Deion Lewis, breaking a couple of 10- and 12-yard runs there. So, yeah, good to see. Vrabel talked about Mariota and didn't just say Marcus was getting healthy either. He kind of said it was a sum of all parts. He said the protection was better. He said the receivers were running better routes. That's

something we should probably talk about. For as much as we have harped on the Titans needing a receiver. This group came through. They've come through over the last two weeks. I don't know what happened over that bye week, but it seems like things are getting better in that room. Cameron Batson, he's kind of a running joke on this show, but he's legitimately doing some things. He played a ton of snaps as a legitimate number three, kind of a deep threat type guy.

So between this group of kind of misfits, you know, Darius Jennings, Cam Batson, Tasha Sharp, along with Corey Davis, they're all kind of coming on. And that's really not something I expected to say. Yeah, and like you said, if they can just run their routes and catch the ball when they're open you know that's really all you need for you from them but that's something they hadn't done uh like you said before the buy so hopefully that has taken care of itself and again we're not asking any of these guys to turn into antonio brown it's just when you've got the opportunity to make a what should be a pretty easy

play make that play and then you know you move on uh to your point of the offensive line uh to turn into Antonio Brown. It's just when you've got the opportunity to make what should be a pretty easy play, make that play, and then you move on. To your point of the offensive line, you pointed this out to me before the show started, pro football focus, their all-week team or whatever, Taylor LeJuan and Ben Jones both on that team, and specifically mentioned further run blocking in that. Did well in pass protection too, but also run blocking was mentioned in that. So, yeah, I mean, that group, we think they're talented, you know, and they've got some good, some expensive parts in there.

And so hopefully they're finally kind of rounding into form. And like you said, when you're seeing the stats, like the Deion Lewis stat, that whoever it was, NFL stats and info, or ESPN, like the Dion Lewis stat that whoever it was, an NFL stats info, or ESPN throughout last week about how Dion Lewis led the league in yards gained after first contact or least yards run before first contact, whatever it was, that's obviously a reflection of the offensive line, not on the back himself. And so if those guys can get better.

And again, I just think it's just everybody in the offense coming together. And the guys on midday 180 had Ned Orlovsky on today. And he was the guy that told us from the beginning this was going to take time. It was going to take six, eight weeks to enter the regular season. And I think we all kind of got a little bit impatient. Marcus wasn't healthy, all that kind of stuff. But it just seems like all of these things, the receivers doing the right things, the offensive line blocking better,

Marcus knowing where to go with the ball, looking confident. We talked about that last night. It seems like all of this is kind of coming together now, and you're starting to see what this offense can be. Yeah, it's exciting. Orwaski told us. He said by about week six. It took a little longer than that.

Some injuries kind of slowed that progress. But we're here. It's starting to click. I think you're starting to see them open things up a little bit for Marcus now that he's healthy, seeing more RPO looks. You saw that little flick pass to John Usamez last week, the shovel pass, and you're starting to see some creative things. So that's,

that's going to be good. I think Corey Davis has had a strong showing over the last two weeks. And I think that's as important as anything. He's got to start winning these one-on-one matchups. That's two pretty good corners that he had decent days against. He had a really good day against Gilmore on Sunday, had a decent day against Byron Jones. So that, I mean, look, that's really exciting. Still need a little bit more help, I think.

But if you can get any contributions from Johnnie Smith, guys like that, Marcus Mariota is starting to prove that maybe he can elevate this offense after all. Yeah, I think that's the thing, the point you make there about getting a little bit more help. Obviously, that's not going to happen this year, but you just start to get really excited about what it could be down the road when they have a couple more pieces. So, you know, that's in the future, but they're playing really well right now and hopefully a couple performances these last two weeks that they can build off of.

All right, coming up, we're going to talk a little bit about the snap count numbers from the game on Sunday. Okay, so the guy that we were all curious about, Malcolm Butler, he played on 51 of 66 defensive snaps. He was out there. Similar deal as before. Early in the year, you had Adoree and Malcolm Butler playing on the outside, Logan Ryan playing in the year you had a dory and in malcolm butler playing on you know on the outside logan ryan playing in the slot so a dory and malcolm were playing in base they've obviously

flipped that now to where a dory and logan ryan are your main quarterbacks a dory played 64 of 66 and logan ryan played 61 of 66 but they weren't trying to hide Malcolm Butler he was out there he held up I saw that today uh you know two targets he gave up two catches for 11 yards under the two times he was targeted so I mean obviously not you know great that you're giving up 100 percent of uh catches on the times that you're targeted but it was a step in the right direction and again we talked about you know they would be looking for him and he was able to hold up there. Nothing else too interesting on the defensive side of the ball. Jayon Brown continues to play a lot of the snaps. I mean, you know, your inside linebackers, Woodyard played 58,

Jayon played 53, and Rashawn Evans played 36. So, you know, I'm not sure where we're supposed to come down on this when your first-round pick is only playing 36 of 66 and you've got two guys playing ahead of him. But really, I think it just speaks to how well Woodyard and Jayon Brown have been playing. Yeah, that was the one thing that stood out to me. Evans played over half of the defensive snaps there.

Woodyard played 88 and Brown played 80. So they played some with all three on the field together. With as good as Woodard and Brown, with as good as they're playing, that's going to open up some things for Rashawn Evans. Just being kind of that Swiss Army knife, doing some things, maybe perhaps off the edge with Derek Morgan still, you know, trying to recover from this injury. You had Correa and Finch playing just over 30 snaps too.

But we talked about that a lot. That's what he did at Alabama. He'd come down on those passing downs and give you some speed off the edge. So I haven't watched this game back just yet, but interested to see. Maybe Michael will point that out on the All-22. I kind of want to see how they use the three of them together on the field at the same time. Yeah, because it's a little bit of patchwork on the edge right now,

like you said, with Derek Morgan being out. Harold Landry played 39 snaps. But, you know, you kind of want a rotation of those guys. You want to keep them as fresh as you possibly can. But they're missing some pieces on that side right now with Arakpo, 44 snaps, Landry, 39, like I said, then Correa at 23, Finch at 22. So you've got some serviceable pieces that are kind of rotating in and out there. That's another spot that I think they'll definitely be looking to upgrade in the

offseason because you've got Derek Morgan and Brian Arakpo who are on the final years of their deal. If they bring them back, which I don't think there's any way they bring both of them back. Maybe you bring one of them back. But they are obviously not guys that are affecting the passing game

like they did earlier in their careers. And so you're going to have to get some more help as far as that's concerned. And like I said, Correa and Finch have been good at times, but they're not really game changers. You need another guy that has a chance to be a game changer out there. Then we look at the opposite side of the ball. You know, Johnny Smith played 60 snaps, 60 of 65.

He's coming on. That's obviously a really good thing. And, you know, we think he has the ability. Now it's just the fact of him doing the right things and being in the right spot and all that type of stuff. He's got touchdowns the last two games, like you mentioned earlier. Maybe that's starting to come on a little bit. Tajay Sharp, even though he didn't show up very much, played 54 snaps.

He ran the second most wide receiver snaps behind Corey Davis at 59. Your boy Cam Batson played 36, running as the slot guy. And look, he's made two pretty big catches in two games. So, anyway, just good to see him out there and, you know, them being able to do that. And I think the more significant thing is he played four more snaps than Luke Stalker. So they were in three wide a lot in this game.

And they at least trust Batson to be out there. Hey, it's a really good thing they signed Justin Fowler. You know, they've used him so much. That was still bizarre. He's been an actor for the first two games there. And they've used Stalker in the exact same role and put Jonu back

in his traditional tight end one spot. I don't know. That's weird. Anyways, where was I? Tasha Sharp. He's had a weird three games. In London, he caught everything on third down. It seemed like Marcus could only find him. He got all the targets.

He got all the catches. Since then, he's played just about all the snaps and done just about nothing with it. So that's a little strange to me. Like you said, Cam Batson playing over 50% of the snaps. Yeah, I mean, Corey Davis was the passing game. To me, he was the one consistent thing. I'm not sure why Corey Davis and Tajay Sharp can't seem to put a game together together.

You know what I mean? So, you know, that's something to watch. But whatever they're doing is working, and I'm not really going to argue with it right now. Yeah, hey, Anthony Fergster out there for two snaps, had the one big catch, so that was good. Keep the mic happy, right? And listen, you can't knock Jocelyn Fowler.

I mean, since they signed him, the offense is averaging like 30 points a game so i mean that's you know something maybe there's something to that yeah but it's just hilarious like you said that i mean the fact that he wasn't active in dallas was a little bit surprising because they signed him during the bye week right so i mean he was here for two weeks basically um before that game so that was a little bit surprising whatever new guy but i thought for sure he'd be active on Sunday. And after he wasn't, I don't really know what the point was in bringing him in. But, I mean, it doesn't really matter. He's a fullback, you know, whatever.

So I don't know. But, like I said, the offense is starting to roll. And if they can get these pieces back, I mean, as well as Cam Bassett has played with his opportunities, we still think Taewon Taylor is a better player than him. So if you've got Taewon out there instead, should make the offense a little bit better. And, you know, so listen, a lot of things to be excited about, a lot of guys that have finally kind of started to step up,

and so hopefully they can continue that. All right, coming up we'll talk a little bit about the Colts line and just, like I said, a few of our preliminary thoughts on that game. Colts line and just, like I said, a few of our preliminary thoughts on that game. All right. So the, you said the line opened at three, right? Titans plus three. It's been bet down to Titans plus two. We were kind of talking, I don't know if we talked about this on air last night. We were talking about it before the game started and that's kind of what, where we thought it would be with the game being up there. I think the Titans would be a favorite here if these two were switched. Listen, the Colts, their offense has been clicking lately.

I saw today that they haven't given up a sack in three games. Andrew Luck has gotten into a rhythm. They've got a lot of good things going down there. They've got Frank Reich as good things going down there. They've got Frank Reich as their head coach, who was the offensive coordinator with the Eagles last year, so a team that's willing to adapt and do all the things, like the new breed of NFL coaches.

So they've got a lot of good things going on there. Their defense has been better at times, but I feel like the Titans can put up points here. And I think, I mean, I have more confidence in this game now, even though I did probably a week or two ago, because I really feel like the Titans' defense can hold up here. And the biggest question mark really for me was how legitimately good is this Titans' defense. And I think with the performance they put up on Sunday, you've got to believe in them, and you've got to believe that they're going to at least hold opposing teams down

if the offense can continue to click like it has been. I don't know. I feel pretty good about this game, which is a scary thing because we know just kind of the horrors that we've had against the Colts in the last decade. Yeah, you've got two hot offenses, and you've got one really hot defense and one not so hot. So the Colts have given up

34, 37, 38, 42 to the Jets, 28 to the Raiders, let's see, 26 to the Jaguars and Blake Whirl. So I'm not scared of that defense. I know they've made some strides. They've been inconsistent. They've kind of been up and down.

They've had their moments, but with the way this offense is going, you've got to have some sortides. They've been inconsistent. They've kind of been up and down. They've had their moments. But with the way this offense is going, you've got to have some sort of confidence in the Titans there. With the way this defense is going, you've got a ton of confidence. You know, they always say defense travels. So I'm way too confident probably in the Titans getting this done, even though they've never beaten Andrew up. So I was a little surprised at this line.

I told you yesterday I thought it would be Titans by one or maybe two, so it was flipped. So I really, really like the Titans in this spot. I just hope they don't revert to their old ways. You know, they kind of have a tendency of doing that. When things start going well, the bottom falls out again. So let's just hope they can start stringing some of these things together. Yeah, and, you know, they got the two wins against the Colts last year. No, they were Kobe reset games, not Andrew Luck games.

But that hopefully kind of, you know, took the monkey off the back, so to speak. This is a new coaching staff and all that kind of stuff. But I just can't help but think of going all the way back to the year that Matt Hasselbeck was the starter. That was the year the Colts won one game and they beat the Titans. I think that game was in Indianapolis

and if the Titans win that game, they go to the playoffs that year and they miss the playoffs by one game, losing to a 1-15 team. And then there was the game, I think, two or't remember if it was two or three years ago at this point, where the Colts came here, and they were missing like five or six starters. And it was just one of those games where there was no way the Titans were going to lose or something to put them into the curse.

And they lost, of course. And, you know, that was kind of what we saw. That may have been Wisenhut. I can't remember exactly what year that was. But it was just one of those things where it just seemed like if the titans were going to have a flat performance it was going to come against the colts now again hopefully they kind of got rid of that last year but i still just in the back of my mind i just still have those those fears a little bit yeah i mean the one thing that's gonna gonna beat the tit is Andrew Luck. He's back to being Andrew Luck.

Really good top six or seven quarterback in this league, putting up some big numbers. Marlon Mack has emerged. I have no idea why they didn't use him last year. They were too busy giving Frank Gore all those carries. But that offense is a lot better, obviously, with Luck running the show over Brissette. So transcendent quarterback play, that can beat any team in the league.

So you can't chalk it up as a win. I mean, the Colts are favored for a reason here, playing at home with a hot offense, like we said. But again, that defense, that Titans defense, I think they've done enough for us to have a ton of confidence in going forward. Yeah, absolutely. And if they can hold the Patriots at 10, you're not all that afraid of what the Colts are going to be able to do. Although, like you said, they're playing better than Andrew Luck. It seems to be back to his old ways. But I still have a lot of confidence. I don't know how to feel about that because I didn't have a lot of confidence

about the game last week, and the Titans got in a roll. So, I don't know. We'll see how that goes. But anyway, that'll do it for tonight. Check out MusicCityMiracles.com. We'll have a lot more stuff going up in this. Terry referenced the film breakdown that Michael will do in the next couple of days. Those are always really good.

Learn a lot in those. So, be on the lookout for that. Like I said, you can follow us on Twitter. I'm at jmorrismcm. Terry's at tlambertfb. Podcast account is at LockedOnTitans, so you can follow us there. And you can find us wherever you get your podcasts. Just search out LockedOnTitans. So for Terry,

this is Jimmy saying thanks for listening, and we will talk to you again tomorrow.