Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Locked on Titans: Wrapping up the Steelers debacle

Episode Date: November 20, 2017

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Welcome in to Locked on Titans. I'm Jimmy Morris, joined as always by Terry Lambert. Terry, what's going on tonight? Not a whole lot. How you doing, man? Pretty good. Pretty good. It's weird, a Sunday without the Titans playing, but that's what we had. So, tonight we're going to kind of rehash the Titans vs. Steelers game. You know, we did a show Thursday, Thursday night, or Friday, you know, kind of breaking down that game. We did a show Thursday, Thursday night and Friday, kind of breaking down that game. We were real fresh off the game there, a lot of frustration and that kind of stuff. Now we've had a few days to sit back and think about it. We'll kind of break that down a little bit more

and then we'll look at what happened with the AFC South teams that did play on Sunday and then we'll talk a little bit about the playoff picture. Before we do all that, we're going to talk about MyBookie. We've talked a lot about MyBookie and how cool of a site it is. Check it out, mybookie.ag. And again, their really cool thing is their mobile site. You can do all this from your phone. You just jump on there.

You can bet on lines before the game. You can bet on lines during the game, prop bets, any of that kind of stuff you want to do. Again, that's mybookie.ag, and if you use the promo code LOCKEDON, you get up to 100% deposit bonus. So check that out, mybookie.ag. Alright, so Titans obviously went to Pittsburgh and in the end got embarrassed. You know, for the first half plus about 10 minutes of the second half, maybe not quite that long, five minutes of the second half,

it was actually a pretty competitive game. It looked like it was going to go back and forth. The Titans just couldn't keep pace in the second half, couldn't do anything on offense, obviously turned the ball over way too much. And the defense, once the Steelers kind of adjusted and went to their quick-hitting passing game, the Titans didn't have a lot of answers for that.

So, you know, once we step back and kind of look at Mariota's performance, and I wrote on our site, musicseedmiracles.com, on Friday, that Marcus Mariota has to be better, and I do stand by that. I think if the Titans are going to be a competitive team this year and in the future, you know, Mariota has got to be more consistent with his play. He's got to be a guy that can, you know, raise the level of everybody else around him like you see franchise quarterbacks do. And he hasn't done that to this point. Now, I know that, you know, there were some things that the receivers didn't do correctly on at least three of his four picks.

The first pick was just a bad overthrow. But it's still my opinion that if the Titans are going to take that next step to be a legitimate AFC champion contender, Super Bowl contender, that they've got to get better and more consistent play out of Mariota. There's no doubt about it. You've seen the flashes. You've seen him really put together a really good year last year. It's just not working this year.

I'd stand by the fact that I think that the running game is the issue here. I think the offense is based off the run game, and when it doesn't work, nothing works. But then again, like I was telling you before we went on, how different is the perception of Mariota? How is it different if he hits those three touchdowns, the drop from Delaney, the fumble by Davis, and then the drop from Rashard Matthews?

There's three touchdowns that make his stats look a little better. Tennessee blows out the Bengals. They, you know, who knows what happens in Pittsburgh if Delaney gets that touchdown. The Titans were hanging in blow for blow until that point. So to me that kind of seemed like the tipping point. It's not all on him, but certainly plenty of it is uh it's a it's a team thing the receivers aren't very good uh and i know that that sucks to hear after you know investing

so much in in the position and being so excited about it they're just not there yet you know cory davis is still a rookie and that that was his, I believe, his fifth game. So those miscommunications, those wrong routes ran, it's going to happen. So I think it's important to keep your head especially about Mariota. Now, the staff, you know, we saw plenty of questions about the staff. Should the staff be fired? Should they be on the hot seat? I think it's too early for that. We saw plenty of questions about the staff. Should the staff be fired? Should they be on the hot seat?

I think it's too early for that, but I'm not going to sit here and say that it's wrong to question. We've seen so many mistakes, and at some point, and that's what I wrote on Friday, at some point it's got to fall back on them. I don't know if you agree with that, but that's kind of my takeaway. Yeah, and I think, like you said, there have been issues with mario does the receivers being on the same page and yes um you know you know two of the interceptions were targeted to cory davis and cory davis said

um especially the first one that you know he's got to do a better job of coming back to the football so i mean i mean you know he admitted that and mario took the blame for all four obviously that's what he's gonna do um but you know there was another ball that obviously tay one taylor did something different than what marcus thought he was going to do now i we don't we don't know whose fault it was um but that ball didn't get intercepted but it very easily could have so yeah i mean i wonder if they're doing enough to put these guys in the positions that they need to put them in to succeed if they're doing enough to you know just to kind of tailor the offense to what these guys can do and bring them along like later they had now you know they've they've been glowing uh malarkey especially has been glowing in his reviews of

cory davis and his mental reps, so to speak. But, you know, about him being in the playbook and the offense and all that stuff when he was out injured. So, I mean, I think maybe they expect him to be able to do these things. And then when the lights come on, he hasn't been able to do them yet. But like you said, he's a rookie and he's only, I think it was his fourth game. You know, that stuff's going to come along. Now, we need it to come along more quickly because this is a team that's in a playoff hunt and all that. But I do think that they need to do some things to help these guys along, to make it simpler for them.

And like you said, with a running game, at some point you've got to – I know you can't. This team is built to be the smash-mouth football team, and we all understand that. You're not going to be able to completely shift course during the season because your personnel is built for it. That's what your game plans are built for. But at some point, they've got to figure out something different to do with this offense because there's just too many, they've got too many weapons to be as stagnant as they have been. Yeah. And that's the big thing. Yeah.

This team is built to play bully ball. It's built to run over people and they can't run the football. So that that's a huge, huge problem. And you know, that that's the reason why I sit squarely on the fence with this team. I can certainly see the most negative of Titans fans out there. I totally see their point of view. I see the most positive.

I see their point of view. You know, at the end of the day, this team is 6-4 in a really weak conference. They're probably going to make the playoffs. I'd be shocked if they didn't just because of the schedule alone. But at the same time, you kind of got to ask yourself, all right, well, what happens when you run into Pittsburgh in the playoffs? What happens when you run into New England in the playoffs? I just don't think that's going to go well for Tennessee.

And it's frustrating because you make the playoffs, you want to go further, you want to thank Super Bowl, but I don't think you can right now. So it's a weird spot. The team, I feel good about them making the playoffs. I don't feel good about them going

much further. Yeah, alright, so we'll talk real quickly about my bookie again um like i said you really need to check their site out uh if you're into sports betting which i know a lot of you out there are um so much cool stuff that you can do on their site and it's not just sports book there's all kinds of other stuff that you can do on there as well um but they've got a lot of in-game stuff that you can do, which is cool. You bet on the line at the beginning of the game

and you're getting hammered at halftime. You can try to make a little bit of your money back by betting on a second half line or something like that. They've got all that stuff that you can do. Again, check out the mobile site. If you're like me, you do most of the stuff, especially while you're watching a game on your phone. They've tailored

the mobile website to where it's really easy to use. You don't have to download an app or anything like that. You can just do it straight from your phone. So again, check that out. MyBookie.ag. Use promo code LOCKEDON when you make your deposit, and you'll get up to 100% deposit bonus. Can't beat that.

So be sure and check that out. Alright, coming up, we're going to talk just a couple thoughts on the defense from sewers game and then we will get into what happened on sunday around the fc south so defensively uh just kind of looking back at what happened you know the sewers came out on that first drive and just kind of marched right down the field. And then the Titans were able to kind of hold their own, and, you know, they held the Steelers to a field goal on, I think, both of the first two Mariota interceptions. They were able to hold up.

But in the second half, it looked like the Steelers went back to their just kind of quick drop, short passing game. And, you know, Their receivers were really good, and the Titans just don't have enough corners to match up against a team with that many weapons. I thought it was a little bit... Dick LeBeau, in my opinion, should have backed off the blitzing a little bit as the second half went along there,

because there was enough time for the blitzers to get there, because Roethlisberger was getting rid of the ball so quickly with that short passing game of course the issue there is they don't have anybody that can create a pass rush right now without sending a blitz and that's something that we've talked about and we'll keep talking about probably from now until the draft about now you know that's probably the biggest the biggest need they're going to they're going to have to address in the draft. But, you know, I thought for the majority of the game, the defense was good.

I think they were hurt a little bit just by playing so many snaps because the offense couldn't stay on the field. But, again, you saw the two things show up. One, after you get past Logan Ryan and Dorian Jackson, you've got trouble at corner. You need three good ones in the NFL right now. And two, there's just not – you don't have that edge guy, so to speak, that can create pressure, you know, without having to supplement it with a blitz or something like that.

Yeah, and kind of out of nowhere the pass rush showed up and was pretty good. And, you know, I think some of that was the fact that Ben likes to take his time back there and and really goes through his reads and and kind of tries to create uh so they had a little bit more time to to get after him uh on the on the corner thing I thought Adore was fine uh PFF said he gave up I think 10 10 catches for 97 yards which you know you know, a lot of that. He was playing off the ball, which I thought was odd, giving a lot of cushion to Antonio Brown. And I thought the Steelers, like you said, did a nice job working that short passing game really early on

and then came back to it in the second half. So all in all, you know, considering who you're going up against, that's not a bad day for a rookie corner. So PFF said Logan Ryan gave up, I believe, just four catches. One of those was, of course, to Antonio Brown on his helmet. So what are you going to do about that? But I was encouraged with the defense. I know they gave up 40 points, but, again,

offense put them in a really bad spot. You know, one of these days the Titans are going to put together a good offensive performance and a good defensive performance, and they're going to blow somebody out. They just can't seem to match up both sides right now. Yeah, and that's the day that we're hoping for. And, you know, again, I think that we'll feel, you know, I don't know if we'll feel better about the team over these next four weeks

when they play against bad teams. It's kind of where we were heading into this game. But, you know, again, I think it's going to be easier. Things are going to look easier with the competition that they have coming up. So that's kind of where we'll shift to next. First, quickly, before we do that, we'll talk a little bit about what happened in the AFC South on Sunday. Jacksonville went to Cleveland, won an ugly game.

But again, you know, it's a lot like what happened with the Titans and the Browns. The Browns are pretty good on defense especially against the run um so you know you had a feeling that that game wouldn't be as easy as some people thought it was thought it would be because we know what the jaguar want to do they want to play ball control run the ball kind of hide blake portals um and so when you've got a team that's good against the run you have a little bit more trouble doing that the jaguars got a late touchdown from their defense that put that game away but i mean it was uh you know it was it was very much in doubt throughout the game and you know again i think to me that's maybe i don't know if like validation for what the titans did there because

you know it doesn't matter now since titans got some ugly sealers. You're going to see teams struggle a little bit more with the Browns. Teams that want to run a ball control offense. They're going to struggle a little bit more against the Browns. That's what we saw from the Jaguars on Sunday. The Jags were the Jags. They won an ugly game.

They do it every week. I've said since week one, I don't think this formula is going to work. Well, here they are sitting 7-3, so it's clearly working. They've got an easy schedule. I just think the Jags have a really, really easy path to the playoff, which is just kind of odd to say. But, yeah, that defense is for real.

Blake Bortles doesn't have to do a whole lot. If they can just get any production at all out of their offense, their defense is going to pick up the slack and usually add another touchdown. So, you know, that's what we saw today. You know, credit to you for saying that the Browns could knock off the Jags. They had a chance. Sean Kizer had the ball in the fourth quarter

with a chance to go down and win the football game. But unfortunately for him, he was sacked and he fumbled and the Jags recovered it to make that a 19-7 game. So I just – we were talking a little bit about this before. I just don't see any way the Jags stop winning, which is just not what I was expecting to say at this point in the season. I mean, they go to Arizona this coming week.

Blaine Gabbert revenge game. We were talking a little before we jumped on here about how awesome it would be if he could knock them off. So we'll be cheering really hard for that one. But then after that, they got Colts in Jacksonville, Seahawks in Jacksonville, Texans in Jacksonville, and they end the season at the 49ers and then here in Nashville. So, you know, it's hard to see the Jaguars losing more than, you know,

like two of those games. So you're looking at a team that probably is going to win 11 games, which is just crazy. But, like, I mean, you said it perfectly last week about trying to apply logic to them, which doesn't work. The Colts were off on Sunday. The only other AFC game, AFC South game, sorry, was the Texans against the Cardinals.

The Texans pulled out a win over the Cardinals 31-21. You know, Tom Savage defying all the odds and getting a win there. So, you know, the Texans, obviously, their season's just been, you know, wrecked by injuries. The guys on defense, Deshaun Watson. So, you know, they still got some talented players, obviously, with DeAndre Hopkins and those guys. But, you know, week in and week out,

it's going to be tough for them to win very many games. So that was it. The Colts were off, so like I said, that was it for the AFC South on Sunday. All right, and so next we're going to look at the overall AFC playoff picture and talk about how we think the Titans fit in. All right, so right now your division leaders are the Patriots, the Steelers, the Jaguars, and the Chiefs. The Chiefs who lost to the Giants just inexplicably after the Giants had looked so terrible the last couple weeks. Andy Reid, 16-2 off of a bye. That's just stuff that happens, it seems like, every week in the NFL.

So those are your division leaders. But after that, right now, the Titans would be your 5C. They'd be the first wild card. And then you've got the Bills at 5-5, the Ravens at 5-5, and that's really it. Then you've got a bunch of teams that are sitting at 4-6. So you have to like the Titans' chances. I mean, it's hard to see the Titans losing more than one of their next four. They play in Indianapolis on this coming Sunday,

and then they've got the Texans at Nissan Stadium. Then they go to Arizona and to San Francisco. So, you know, a lot of teams that are well below.500 there, we know about the horror that has been in Indianapolis for the Titans. But, so, I mean, all that to say, the Titans have a game lead on the rest of the, you know, so-called wild card field in the AFC. So even with the loss of Steelers and all that,

you have to feel pretty good about this team's chances to at least make the playoffs. Yeah, it's just so gross in the AFC. Like I've been saying, I'm not sure the Titans are all that good, but they're better than Buffalo, Miami, New York, Cincinnati, Houston, Baltimore. So I think those two wins against baltimore and cincinnati you know we kind of talked about them those are two wild card team types uh so so that was big for the titans to go uh win two games and get those and really take control of their own destiny here so it would be nice to have the Jaguars lose.

I don't think we can count on that, though. Again, it's just so bizarre to think about. But the Titans are in a really good spot, regardless of how they looked on Thursday. And it's funny. I don't think the Chiefs fans are in Kansas City right now wanting to fire Andy Reid or make a change at quarterback right now. So it happens in the NFL.

You know, you're going to have your bad performances. And, you know, we said that last week. The Titans were in a bad spot. We wanted them to come out and look competitive. And for the most part they did for about three quarters. So mistakes piled up, and it happens. You know, Pittsburgh's a really good team. So I think it's really important to keep your head through all this.

Like I said, it's totally fair to question what you're seeing on the field, but let's chill on wanting to change everything because the Titans are right in the thick of this. And I don't – it would be a shock to me if the Titans are right in the thick of this and I don't it would be a shock to me if the Titans fell out of this yeah and honestly you know talking about all that I mean if we're sitting

here in four weeks and they or a month and they split those four games then we can start to look at some of those types of conversations but like you said for now they're in the thick of it and you know just kind of keep rolling along. They got a good shot, so that's what we'll be looking at. All right, so that'll probably do it for tonight.

We'll talk a little bit more about the upcoming games, the Colts, the rest of this week. We'll have a show Tuesday and Wednesday this week, and then we'll be off the rest of the week because it's Thanksgiving. So I hope everybody is looking forward to having a good holiday. Terry, anything else tonight? I think we've got a line on the Titans Colts. Titans opened four-and-a-half-point favorites in Indy next week.

Four-and-a-half-point favorites in Indy. Take that for what it's worth. Yeah, there you go. All right, so we'll have a lot more on the division, on these games and everything. Let me see miracles.com so you can check that out. Follow us on Twitter. I'm at jmorphsmcm. Terry's at tlambertfb.

So for Terry, this is Jimmy saying thanks for listening to Locked on Titans, and we'll talk to you tomorrow.