Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - The Streak Ends....Rowland's Review, Titan Up/ Titan Down & Titans Talk

Episode Date: September 20, 2019

The Titans winning streak over the Jaguars is over after 999 days. We do a Rowland's Review of the game, Titan Up/Titan Down & hear Head Coach Mike Vrabel give his thoughts in Titans TalkFollow Tyler @TicTacTitansSubscribe Now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Locked on Titans podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Rowland, and Titans fans, it is a pretty rough day in Titan land. I've seen some pretty depressed takes on the internet. A lot of the fan base is currently divided on how much blame to give to each person and who's to blame for what i'll try to parse out my opinion of who's to blame and why the game went the way that it did and why the season feels the way that it currently feels in our first segment with a little bit of roland's review in our second segment as is customary after games i will do a tighten up and tighten down.

Surprisingly, I did have a couple of tighten ups, although the performance was rough. In our third segment, I'm going to give you guys another edition of Titans Talk. I feel like it's important to hear our coaches' responses to these kind of situations. So, I'll give you a little bit from Mike Rabel's presser. Also, possibly a little clip of John Robinson as well from a segment he did with Mike Keith today. So at this point in time, we just need to hear from the leaders of this organization and figure out what their answers are for why these things are happening and what they're going to do going forward. So I'm going to get into all of that today with you guys. I know it's a rough one, but it's only week three and the season will go on.

So let's get it. First things first, Roland's review. So, I just want to generally look at the game and give my overarching thoughts on the offense and the defense and the special teams. As typical, I'm going to hit on some individual people as we discuss it, but I'll go in more detail on those individual people in our second segment, Tighten Up and Tighten Down. But for now, I just have to generally say that the offense is not consistent or good enough. We can point out things that the defense did wrong. Special teams, we can point out an obvious mistake to start the game

that set the team back. But it's my opinion that giving up 13 to the Browns, giving up 19 to the Colts, I will say take away that pseudo beginning touchdown that wasn't on the defense at all. Take away that 7 points and

essentially the Titans defense only gave up 13 points. If we're just going to take it for what it's worth, let's say 20, 13, 19, 20. We should be winning these ball games with our defense putting up an effort like this. It's 2019.

Mike Keith has talked about this a lot preseason. The average points per game of last season's playoff teams is somewhere in the mid-20s. The Titans cannot consistently win ballgames scoring the amount of points that they do. So the Titans essentially averaged 18 points a game last year. And in the modern NFL, it's just not going to work. The big issue that I see from this team, and this is the biggest issue over everything else,

is for this team to win ballgames consistently and consistently have a chance to make the playoffs, every aspect of the team has to be perfect, except the quarterback. The blocking has to be perfect. We have to have great weapons around Marcus. The defense has to play out of their mind and be a top-five defense, top-five scoring defense, get turnovers.

The special teams have to be great. The coaches have to always make good calls and always put them in the right situations. Literally for this team to be what we want it to be, everyone has to be perfect so that they don't get pulled down by Marcus. I'm not going to do comparisons and compare other quarterbacks and other teams, but quite frankly, there are worse offensive lines out there on better teams with quarterbacks who play better with a worse offensive line.

It's everywhere. I don't know what else to say. Six for 16 in the first half. The offense didn't go anywhere. It opened up in the second half. Do you know why it opened up? Because the Jags were up 14 to nothing, 17 to nothing. And they're saying, okay, we're going to rush four guys and just drop

back in coverage. And I mean, we know that you're going to be passing. So our pass rush has the advantage of knowing that you're going to be passing. So their get off on the snap can be that much quicker. I mean, the Jags were getting pressure with four guys rushing and six blocking for the Titans, five blocking for the Titans, seven blocking for the Titans, and they're getting pressure with four. So that's obviously bad on the offensive line, but the Jags were able to pile up the sacks in the second half and do what they needed to do because they knew that we were going to pass.

Likewise, the Titans were able to rack up some passing yards and actually get a little bit of traction in the passing game, but that's only because the Jags were dropping back into coverage and giving us anything we wanted underneath. They knew as long as they didn't give up big plays, we were not going to be able to come back in that game because our offense just doesn't have it. Whether it's the blocking, the weapons, Marcus, the coaches, all that we know for certain is that this offense is not getting it done, this nucleus of players. I'm not saying we should go to Tannehill or we should do something, we should cut a guy, we should make changes in the lineup and do all that. I'm not certain that any of that is going to fix the

problem with this group. So like I said, it's only week three. There's plenty of time to turn it around, but all I know is that first half of the game where the Titans offense was completely unable to do anything is what made this game an impossible game to win. The defense, in my opinion, other than the back-breaking run, notice the defense is giving up back-breaking runs at the end of games where they've seen the offense literally do nothing, and in their mind, they know they have to be perfect to give Marcus a chance to put points up on the board, and unfortunately, in the NFL in 2019, things are not always going to be perfect, and you're going to need your quarterback to raise the level of everyone around them. Now, maybe I'm being too hard on Marcus. Obviously, like I said, there's

all these other places of blame to put, but at some point in time, we need someone who's going to lift the talent of the team, not have to be lifted. The next big thing I want to hit on, because obviously everyone's going to look at the Titans getting sacked, the nine sacks. Tough to do anything with that, but like I said, the ineptitude of the offense in the first half put the offense in a position to where the Jags knew they were passing in the second half and could pin their ears back and rush more aggressively.

So in my opinion, the ineptitude of the offense in the first half is what caused the sack massacre in the second half. So one other thing that I wanted to hit on, because we could just sit here and crush the offense the entire time. The next big thing I wanted to hit on is the Titans' inability to get pressure with four people. As I just said, the Jaguars were able to get pressure with just four rushers, which means

their pass coverage and the amount of people backing coverage is going to give them an advantage more times than not. If you drop seven people back into coverage in the NFL, there's a good chance you're going to be able to come up with a stop. Getting pressure with just four down linemen is the key to stopping anyone in the NFL. Eventually, you will have to do it. And once again, the Titans have shown in two back-to-back weeks, they just can't do it. Gardner Minshew had all the time in the world.

He didn't get sacked. He's not a stud, dynamic, top five, elite quarterback or anything like that. The guy played a decent game. He's a solid guy for a rookie. But let's all be real. Gardner Minshew is not a superstar quarterback. He threw for 200 yards. Made some really good, accurate throws when he needed to.

Essentially, he played the game that we need Marcus to play. So I'm not going to hate on him, but the Titans just absolutely get no pressure with their four guys. And eventually, if you have to blitz and you have to send more than four, you're going to get exposed in coverage against better teams. It's just a reality of the NFL. And until the Titans are able to block four guys with five guys and rush four guys

against five guys and be successful in those two different scenarios, this team cannot take a step forward. That's just the reality. Now you're going to need talent on the lines to do that. Hopefully somebody like Jeffrey Simmons, who was brought in here to be a disruptor, they use that word so many times

when discussing what this team needs, disruptors. So Jeffrey Simmons hopefully can help us, but he's a rookie. He's off in ACL. He might not be back for another four or six weeks. We can't count on him to save this team, just like we can't count on Taylor LeJuan to all of a sudden show up and save this ball club. One offensive lineman, no matter how talented,

is not going to save this Titans team from what's going on right now. So there's a lot of soul-searching that needs to be done, and luckily enough, these problems are happening to the Titans early in the season with a chance to rebound. Let's hope that they do that. If this Titans offense doesn't come out on fire against Atlanta, and they put up another sub-20 point production afternoon, then some serious questions have to be asked, and some job security will have to be questioned at

that point. If Arthur Smith is unable to produce a 20 point game three weeks in a row, then maybe he deserves a lot more blame than people are giving. And if Marcus is unable to lead the offense to any kind of success, and he's missing wide then maybe he deserves a lot more blame than people are giving. And if Marcus is unable to lead the offense to any kind of success and he's missing wide open layup throws, then we are going to have to start looking at changes. Although I think that's not what's best for the team long term in terms of keeping Marcus around and keeping Arthur Smith in continuity.

At some point, the production on the field has to matter more than keeping guys happy long term. The Titans have to go win ballgames, and they're going to have to make changes eventually if we see the same thing over and over again. Hopefully, they'll come out next week and show us something that we haven't seen. Before we jump into tighten up and tighten down,

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just get them out of the way so we can finish the segment on a positive note with some of the guys who I was still impressed with and happy to see them get going. So we will start at the top, quite frankly. Mike Vrabel, what is he doing going for it on fourth and six? I'll play some of his explanation in our third segment so you guys can get an idea of what his answers are to some of the questions I have, but I just don't understand how you can trust this offense. So at that point in the game, this offense had done relatively nothing. One good drive is what we were in the middle of at the time. How in the world could you watch this passing offense for the last two years, three years. Heck, the last two games. Heck, the first half. How could you watch that passing offense

and think in your head, hey, we're going to convert a fourth and six. It's just insanity, quite frankly, that he would have confidence in his team at some point. This is something that I brought up on Twitter. Follow me at TicTacTitans. Maybe Mike Vrabel is too much of a player. Maybe he's too much of a player's guy, player's coach.

We're going to get into the next person because this is a good segue. But first and foremost, I just want to complete this thought going for it was insane there take the points hope that your defense can keep pushing hope that the offense can have a more successful drive you absolutely cannot trust the Titans passing offense there to convert a fourth and six and call me a Monday morning quarterback whatever you want to call me but while I was watching the game, I'm saying out loud, this is insane. We cannot trust this team to convert a fourth and six. We can barely convert a third and six on the season.

So that just really sticks with me, and I have no idea what Mike Vrabel could have been thinking at that moment in time. It's perplexing, quite frankly. The hiring of Arthur Smith, while it makes all the sense in the world in terms of continuity and familiarity, at this point in time has to be questioned. Like I said, if the Titans come out against Atlanta and aren't able to put up 20 points in a ballgame,

regardless of the excuses, the situations, the penalties, whatever, if the Titans aren't able to do that, then Arthur Smith has to be questioned at some point. Mike Vrabel was unable to hire his offensive coordinator of choice, who was Ryan Day, who's the head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes right now, and was the offensive coordinator at the time. He was unable to lure him out. After that, he got Matt LaFleur.

We saw the tension there between Vrabel and LaFleur. A lot of stories have come out since. Clearly, they didn't get along. Now he picks Arthur Smith, a guy he probably gets along with, but is Arthur Smith really a talented enough offensive mind to be able to produce with this sort of limited offensive weaponry? I mean, the wide receivers are okay. The running back's good.

The line is obviously average at best when healthy, and the whole starting team is there. Marcus is clearly average at best. Some and the whole starting team is there. Marcus is clearly average at best. Some days he's worse. So Arthur Smith may be a good coach, but that doesn't make him a good play caller, a good play designer. So at this point, we have to start questioning some of those decisions that Mike Vrabel has made in terms of his hires

and in terms of his game time decisions. Last week he made a few crucial mistakes letting the clock run down. There's been a lot of very clear coaching mistakes. It doesn't take a lot to identify those as big errors that are hurting this team. And he's responsible as well no matter what kind of play is out on the field. Mike Vrabel was obviously struggling in his second year as a head coach. Mike Vrabel was obviously struggling in his second year as a head coach. Another example of his decision-making being questionable is using Adoree Jackson as a punt returner. Okay, he's dynamic, he's athletic, he has the chance to flip the field and help the

team and make a big play, but he is way more of a negative as a punt returner than he is a positive. Adoree botches that first punt, which gives the Jaguars a seven-point advantage. By the time the Fairweather Southern Florida fans show up in their seats, their team's already up seven to nothing. So that's a decision on Mike Vrabel. Adoree Jackson has shown nothing

to warrant getting the trust that Mike Vrabel has put in him to return punts. Preseason, last season, this season, Adoree Jackson is not a good punt returner. We thought when he was drafted that he would help us on that side of the football, but it is obvious he can't. He cannot help in special teams. He's not trustworthy enough, and the fact that Mike Vrabel trusted him

not only to go out there for the first one and watch what happened, but to put him out there for a second one. Mike Vrabel put Adoree Jackson out for another punt return after watching him blow seven points. After watching his career as a punt returner so far. Like I said, it's mind-boggling that he's, is it, that's what I'm trying to decide. Is Vrabel too much of a player and too much of a player's coach to treat his players like a coach should and do the smart thing for the team because he's worried about guys' confidence and he's been a player's coach to treat his players like a coach should and do the smart thing for the team because he's worried about guys confidence and he's been a player so he knows how it goes

is that a problem here or is he just a bad coach I mean I can't figure it out like I said it's early but some of these things are just you can't just gloss over them and say well you know move on to the next week at some we've got to start adequately judging the decisions that he makes. So, another tightened down, Adoree Jackson. He's just absolutely useless as a punt returner, as a returner of any kind. He makes terrible mistakes and gives up huge plays and penalties. He's not a solid tackler. At this point, it's hard to justify him as a first round pick and I do not expect a Dory Jackson to be with this team

past his first rookie contract. I just don't see how this team is going to be able to bring him back. My last Titan down is the most obvious one, Jameel Douglas. A 12.4 rating by PFF and that's not gospel. Pro football focus

isn't gospel, but my lord, when your score is that bad, clearly you had a bad game. Eye test, analytics, film, doesn't matter. Jameel Douglas has just fallen off a cliff. Maybe it was just the Browns, they were so prepared for having so long to prepare for that defensive line that he was able to execute, but it's been clear in the last two games Jamil Douglas just absolutely cannot be a starter in the NFL and you'll hear another clip in our third segment and Titans talk from Vrabel where essentially Nate Davis has to play he's a third round pick and there is no way he's worse than Jamil Douglas Aaron Stinney got to go out and get some snaps because Douglas was so bad. There's no way that our third round pick can be as bad,

even if he didn't get time to prepare in the preseason due to injuries. He cannot be this bad. So we have to try something else, and Vrabel mentioned that in his press conference that I'll play for you guys. The tighten-ups, real fast. Derrick Henry, 44 yards and a touchdown. He had that one drop that probably would have been a huge play. But like I said in the first segment,

you can't expect these guys to be perfect all the time, catch every pass, get open every route, block perfect every time, and then let Marcus skate getting away with some of the stuff that fans let him get away with. You just can't expect everyone else to be perfect and catch every pass and do everything right all the time. And then when Marcus doesn't say, well, you know, there's all these other reasons why

the game didn't come out the way we want. So I thought Derrick Henry played fine. I'm not going to blame him for what happened. He's been running great, way better than he was at the beginning of last season. I don't think we can fault Derrick Henry for anything. He's clearly been our best player on offense, and without him, I shudder to think about where the Titans may be. So tighten up for Derrick Henry, who continues to produce for your fantasy teams as well.

I did tell you, daily fantasy, season long, doesn't matter. Get Derrick Henry. He didn't blow up, but he gave you a touchdown, 44 yards, serviceable day. Next one, Adam Humphreys, another person that I mentioned in my beautiful dark twisted fantasy preview as a great daily fantasy play. I thought at some point in time, Adam Humphreys had to get going. Now I thought that would be because the Titans were having a successful offensive day, finally, but no, it was just because the Titans were down at the end and the Jags were giving up everything underneath so that we didn't make a big play on him. But Humphreys did end up with six catches and 93 yards. And if you played him in daily fantasy,

you'll take that because he was probably your flex. The last one's Brett Kern. He's just the best punter in the league. Continues to flip field position. Continues to put the defense in a manageable situation. As always, impressed with Brett Kern. I know that you might be rolling your eyes that I'm giving a tighten up to a punter, but at the end of the day, we've got to find the positives where we can, and Brett Kern has been a positive all year. Sucks that we saw him punt eight times last night, but he's a dang good punter, and we have to appreciate that.

So that's going to do it for Tighten Up, Tighten Down. We're going to go into our Titans Talk segment. I'm going to play you some clips from some interviews off of TitansOnline.com of Mike Vrabel giving some answers to the questions that we all have. So hope you guys will take that in and I will see you on the other side. Fellas, let's talk about the bedroom. Ever wish you could increase your performance or maybe just need a little confidence boost in bed? Well, listen up. BlueChew.com. That's blue, just like the color. Blue Chew brings you the first

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free when you use our special code LOCKEDON. Just pay $5 for shipping. Again, that's B-L-U-E-C-H-E-W dot com. Promo code LOCKEDON to try it for free. Blue Chew is the better, cheaper, faster choice, and we thank them for sponsoring our podcast. Alright, so that was Tighten Up, Tighten Down. We are going to get into Titans Talk. And I am going to play you some snippets from Mike Vrabel's interview off of titansonline.com giving us some answers from the game I'll give you a little bit from last night's presser and I'll pop back in to let you know we're into today's gonna keep it quick

for you guys just want to make sure you get all the answers that were being given at this moment of time whether you like the answers or not I I can't say for sure, but these are the answers that Mike Vrabel is choosing to give to us about these questionable decisions that we're all noticing. I think penalties contributed to it. I think, you know, give them a lot of credit. They played the same game we did on Sunday. They came back home and, you know, we're ready to go and execute it and coach better. Well, it's not how you want to play this football team. You don't want to play from behind. We talked about that every time we've played them,

that this isn't the team that you want to play from behind and run the football and rush the passer. So, unfortunately, we were playing from behind. I wanted to give them an opportunity to come back and catch it and see if we could get something going. And then at that point in time, I made a switch. You know, we had gotten, that was the furthest we had gotten down there,

and I felt like there was some momentum there that we'd like to try to capitalize on and really, you know, get the touchdown. And I felt like our defense was playing pretty good, so we decided to go for it. I think there's a lot of positives. I think there are some times where it looks like we are functioning as an offense. We're able to move the football. Too many times we get derailed by either poor details, penalties really end up costing us

to play in third and long situations again. We're going to try to again look at the positives and continue to do that and really take this weekend to try to look at things we need to fix. There's a lot of them when you lose in this league. What's going to be your message to the team given what you just said with the weekend coming up? Well, I mean, we've got to get healthy and we've got to get going. We've got to stick together.

It's a long season. We were the ones that put ourselves in this position, and we have to be the ones to get us out. I don't think anybody's going anywhere. We're going to compete and we're going to get better and we're going to improve. We've got to go get ready for another game next week. You guys have done pretty well

for the quarterback the last couple weeks. Tonight, they're not there. Are they doing a particularly good job? Again, I'm going to have to look at the tape. I think that there were times where we forced them to scramble and move around and were able to get off the field on third down.

Some of those 50-50 balls down the field, those are pretty quick throws. But, again, I think I'd have to watch the tape and try to figure out who was able to get some rush and who worked and how the pressures worked. How close are you to looking at Nate Davis as an alternative? We're trying to do everything we can to get Nate ready. or looking at Nate Davis as an alternative? Well, we're trying to do everything we can to get Nate ready.

Unfortunately, I don't think we had enough time to get him there this week. I haven't played on Sunday. I walked through on Monday. I think the schedule is tough. I mean, there's a lot of reps that he missed, and we understand that we're trying to do what we can do to get him ready. So So Nate's going to have to play for us here. Well, I think the accountability and the fundamentals is something that we really have to focus on today, over the weekend, especially on Monday with the extra day of practice. I think that that's what the message is going to be to the team is that we have to take accountability for our choices, our actions,

coaching and playing. And then we have to improve our fundamentals and use Monday as a day to really concentrate on that. There's different ways to help different guys along parts of the offense. And, you know, whether that's a receiver that's being doubled and then you have to try to create some sort of route concept to help him or an interior lineman, you know, you can slide the line. You can move pieces around. You only have 11 guys.

But I think that you have to be able to mix things up and figure out where the matchups are. line. You can move pieces around. You only have 11 guys. But I think that you have to be able to mix things up and figure out where the matchups are in this league and understand who you have to help and how you have to try to go about doing it and still be sound in what play you're trying to run. I think that that's all part of it. know not to get not to run down you know every single sack um but when we put ourselves in a position again to to drop back and throw the football as many times as we had to based on the the how the game was being

played and where we were being down um you know there there's, there's, they're going to blitz you. You know, they blitzed us. They made a decision that they're going to blitz us. They were going to at times take a safety out of the middle of the field and, and, and bring pressure a lot of it. And so I thought there were times where we picked it up. I thought there was times where we, we converted on third down. There was a trust. I mean, all out blitz. We throw the ball before Delaney gets to the sticks. He turns around,

makes a huge play. We get into a check against all-out pressure. Throw it to Corey, decisive route, decisive throw. And they deemed that we didn't line up correctly. But there are times where, you know, guys are, you know, in matchups where we didn't win, and there were times where, you know, we can throw it away. That's how it is every week.

If you take a sack, there's usually one of those few things that are going on. Stay efficient. Again, try to repeat what we did last week. I talked about that the penalties have really been, you know, in last night's game, something that contributed to that, you know, second and 20 is a difficult place to be. You know, we got into some runs, we were able to run the football.

And then for, for whatever reason, penalties or, or, you penalties or a tackle for loss, then you're back in those situations. So that's certainly not where you want to play the football game against a good defensive team is in third and long. I thought there were times where he competed. He competed, took some shots, was able to throw the ball, deliver it, be decisive. And then there were times that there were some plays that we'd all like to have back at every position. But I know he hung in there and competed, scrambled it down to the one, threw some good balls.

And then we'll get him coached up on some things that we'd like to see improve. And then we'll get them coached up on some things that we'd like to see improve. I'm very confident in that we're going to take this weekend to not point any fingers and try to pull the thumb and understand that it starts with me. It starts with our coaching staff, our players, and believing in each other that there's evidence of good football. There's evidence of really good football. And then we just clean up the little things and understand that it's not one person.

It's never going to be about one guy, and it's going to be about the team. But we have great leadership here, guys that have played in a lot of football games and competed and trust in our leadership and trust in the process. Okay, guys, so that is head coach Mike Vrabel once again, courtesy of titansonline.com. That was Titans Talk. In our second segment, we did some Titan Up and Titan Down, and we started off with some Rollins Review. I know that it was a rough game, guys, and I understand that the last two weeks have

been pretty miserable as a Titans fan, but it is still early. The Titans are only 1-2 with plenty of season ahead, haven't even had our starting left tackle return, so there's a lot of optimism that we can still have for this season. I appreciate you guys hanging with me today. Please subscribe if you aren't already on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, wherever you listen to music, or podcast, I guess, if you aren't already on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, wherever you listen to music or podcast, I guess. If you listen to music where you get your podcasts, that's pretty efficient. Good job, listener. If you would, follow me on Twitter at TicTacTitans.

I will be bringing you a show all next week as well. Look forward to talking to you on Monday. My name is Tyler Rowland, and I am your host. This was Locked on Titans Locked on Titans