Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Therapy Monday - Game Review, Titan Up/Titan Down & Rowland's Rant

Episode Date: October 7, 2019

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Welcome to the Locked on Titans podcast. I'm your host Tyler Rowland and Titans fans. It was a rough, rough Sunday. The Titans lose to the Buffalo Bills 14-7. The offense is pretty disappointing and it was pretty hard to watch. Not only do the Titans lose, but a lot of times when they lose, it's not even fun football. It's a lot of mental mistakes, a lot of self-inflicted wounds, and it can definitely wear on your soul. So we are going to have a little cathartic Monday here in Roland's Review in our first segment, and I'll just cover my key takeaways from the game and tell you guys kind of how I'm feeling about things going forward. In our second segment, of course, we're going to do tighten up and tighten down.

It was pretty easy to find tighten downs this week, but it was also pretty easy to find the tighten ups if you uh watch the game there were some positives there and in our last segment i'm just going to give you guys a quick roland's rant on the state of the franchise and kind of the state of the feeling of the fan base here and see if we can kind of have a therapeutic moment and just talk things out and get our feelings out in the air get some things off our chest so look forward to having a kind of a counseling session with myself and with you guys today. We'll get into it all. Let's get it.

Your Tennessee Titans lead story is clearly the offense's inability to get going in the game against the Bills on Sunday. 1-3 in the red zone, continue to struggle mightily on third down going 4-14. At some point, I know that we can blame the players, but clearly they aren't being put in a position to succeed either. And with Mike Vrabel's decisions in game being so questionable and so off every week, it's hard for the offense to be put in a good position while they're not performing as well. The passing offense is non-existent, essentially, week to week. The Titans have to get up early and be put in perfect situations to succeed. 183 yards for Marcus Mariota, and I'm not even blaming Marcus

I thought he was one of the better players on the field for the Titans at some points during the game it felt like he was carrying the offense and the only person out there making a making any kind of plays or doing anything to try to win or having any success Roger Saffold got abused a lot of the game and his post-game press conference, he said, you know, this team's been inconsistent for a long time, kind of deflected the blame when he was one of the high-priced free agents who was brought in here to help the offense. And he's just not had a great year, not been very successful.

He doesn't have a lot of talent around him during the times that he's been playing either. So I understand that. But one big play to Johnnie Smith, and it was a screen for 50 plus yards. Other than that, the longest passing play was for 23 to Corey Davis. There's no downfield shots, and this Bills defense is really good. They're an excellent defense. They held the Patriots to 16 points last week, but the Titans have to do better than seven points. The offense has to match the defense's level at At some point, it's been multiple years, year, year after year of this same thing. So at some point, the Titans have to find answers

on offense. They gave up five sacks. Like I said, the offensive line didn't play well. The run game was inconsistent. Derrick Henry had 78 yards and a touchdown, but the Titans weren't able to run the ball consistently. They were under four yards per carry, 3.8 yards per carry. That's just not good enough. That's not going to get the job done. 4.7 yards per play. That's also not going to get the job done. Mike Vrabel's decision to kick a field goal with Cairo Santos when he had already missed

three on fourth and four. What is going on with the decision that he made against Atlanta to not kick the field goal there and go for it? And then flip to this week, Mike Vrabel's in-game decision-making has to be his worst coaching attribute. I think that he's a solid coach. I'm not here to be one of the fire Mike Vrabel folks that you'll probably see. He's made some very questionable calls this year, and we're going to go over some of that later this week or later in the show,

probably later in the show. It's just some things that you can't ignore about his in-game decision-making that we have to shed some light on and talk about at some point. So I think the defense played well enough to win, as always, held the Bills to 14 points. They averaged 147 yards on the ground coming into this game. The Titans held them to 109 and a lot of that was chunk runs in the fourth quarter when the game pretty much fell out of hand. The Titans got four sacks on defense. Kevin Byard, best safety in the league.

Love that guy. Fun watching him at least. Another interception for him and a huge play to help the offense out. Logan Ryan had some comments. Nobody in that locker room wants to have the conversation and throw anybody else under the bus, but at some point, somebody has to say this offense has to do something. They have to do better. Seven points against the Jags, 17 against the Colts. The Titans got lucky with that blowout in Cleveland, and the Browns shot themselves in the foot over and over again and they were able to get some easy plays. So this offense to me is just clearly the issue. Rashawn Evans was great. The defense played well. As I said again, it's very frustrating to watch the defense play at such a high level and I know some people expect more from the defense and I just don't know what

you could expect other than perfection and they can't be perfect every week. And that's a credit to Mike Vrabel. I think that he's a good defensive coach. And clearly the Titans defense is ready week in and week out to do what they need to do to win. But this offense, and it's been for more than just this John Robinson and Marcus era, it's been longer than that. The offensive mentality of this ball club is just not evolving into the modern

game. It's still stuck when the Titans were having success with Steve McNair and Eddie George. The mentality is still the same. I'm not quite certain what the Titans do to change that or how they go about having a culture change that moves away from that. Not certain how that's going to go, but they're two and three. They're last in the division. They put themselves in a tough place, but it's still early. It's week five. The Titans have some home games coming up,

and although everyone is pretty dejected right now, the Titans can still turn this thing around if they find a way to execute on offense, and hopefully Arthur Smith and Mike Vrabel learn from their in-game decision-making mistakes. So that's going to do it for Roland's review. We're going to get into some tighten up and tighten down. At least there are some positives we can talk about there, and we'll do that right after this.

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So on this Therapy Monday, Titans fans, I'm going to do tighten up first so that we can stay positive and talk about the good things that did come out of Sunday's game. There are a few. They're all going to be on defense. Shocker. Anyways, we're going to start with the shark, Rashawn Evans. He was smelling blood in the water all Sunday.

I thought that the physicality that he showed, when he hits people, you really feel it. And you can tell it's one of those, ooh, moments where the sidelines are going, the crowd gets hype. And that is exactly what a first round linebacker is supposed to bring. And that's why he was drafted. John Robinson's been on record saying, you know, we need a few more dogs. Well, Rashawn Evans is a dog and he will hit you in the mouth

and having somebody like that on the defense is really important because I don't think anybody else on the Titans defense, maybe Kenny Vaccaro, brings that kind of element. So he serves his purpose and I thought in his second year so far and in this game especially,

he did exactly what he was drafted for. Like I said, eight tackles, one tackle for loss. He's a linebacker if he's not getting interceptions and things like sacks. It's not going to show up a lot on the stat sheet, but anybody who watched that game could really feel Rashawn Evans out there. Of course, the mayor of Murfreesboro, the best safety in the league, 31 Savage, Kevin Byard, another interception, two pass deflections. He had a big stop on third down against the Bills tight end running a slant

over the middle on a pass breakup. Five tackles. He just continues to be, in my opinion, the best player on the team. I know some people still want to say it's Jarrell Casey. In my opinion, it's been Kevin Byard for at least last year and definitely this year. He's the best player on the team and definitely John Robinson's best draft pick of all time. And third, I want to shout out this guy. Maybe I'm biased as a Titan up because I said he was a key factor to the game, but I thought he did exactly what the Titans needed him to do. For most of the game, the Titans were able to limit the Bills rushing game.

And I thought that was really important and gave the defense a really good head start to stop that offense since they did end up having Josh Allen, who I thought was not going to play. And that's Daquan Jones. He had three tackles. He had one sack. I thought he was disruptive in the run game and able to really hold up in his gap on the front.

So I just want to shout out Daquan again. I feel like he's had a really good year in the role that they're asking him to play. So we'll go to our Titan downs, and I have to start with Mike Vrabel, and I'll throw Arthur Smith in there because Mike Vrabel hired Arthur Smith. The Titans offense is not scheming up anything other than those A.J. Brown digs. We're still running those screens. Some of them were able to have success today late in the game, but I just don't see this offense being called in the correct way. There were no shots taken downfield, and I know that this Bills defense is good, but at some point you have to soften them up and take a few shots downfield.

They were stacking the box. They knew that the Titans were not going to threaten them deep, and it just makes it really hard to play offense, and at some point it's not all on the players they definitely share their blame but I am just shocked at how this offense really hasn't grown or gotten any better and the consistency that they showed us and they pointed at hey we're hiring Arthur Smith to keep things consistent he knows the guys better than anybody else he's been around well I don't see any positives from that. I don't see the play on the field or the play calling reflecting that. And Mike Vrabel's in-game decision-making continues to blow my mind.

I don't understand what last week he goes for it. This week he doesn't. After Cairo Santos missed three kicks, I just don't understand what's going on. He has way too much trust in the players, unfortunately. I've said that about his decision with the Dory Jackson on punt returning. I said that about the way he calls defense, and he put Reggie Gilbert in coverage a few times today, and he gave up a touchdown.

I just don't understand some of the in-game decision-making that Mike Vrabel has on a week-to-week basis. My second tighten down is this year's free agent signings. Roger Saffold got abused for two sacks in the first half and was terrible most of the game. Adam Humphreys had a drop. He fumbled on a punt return. Now, that wasn't completely his fault, and I thought it should have been called a penalty. I don't like to get into the officiating. The Titans actually won the penalty battle, so I'm not going to come up here and blame the refs, even though they had a bad game, because the Titans offense shot themselves in the foot with penalties and other things that

they were actually responsible for. So I'm not going to blame the refs for this game. And then my final Titan down, Cairo Santos. They're not going to cut him. Mike Vrabel said in his press conference that he had faith in him, which points back to what I just said about having too much trust in his players. At some point, he has to be a coach and not a player. He's got to transfer over, and he has too much of a player's mindset and wants to keep his guys confident and all that, and he does it at the detriment of the team.

And Santos felt the effects of that. There's no way that he should have been out there kicking that last field goal, maybe even the second-to-last field goal. At some point, the guy doesn't have it. It's not his day. He's a backup kicker who was signed because suck-ups hurt anyways. We can't expect Cairo Santos to make four field goals in a game to save us because the offense is so bad. At some point, Cairo Santos struggles around the coaches for putting him in those positions when he clearly didn't have it, and the offense of not being able to muster any points on their own and relying on a backup kicker that

was signed in free agency before the year a lot of this is not on Santos but he still has to make his easy kicks and he clearly wasn't good enough either they're not going to get rid of him I know everybody wants him cut but they're not going to do it once again too much trust in the player he's had some good kicks this year they're not going to bail on him so early. So that's going to do it for Tighten Up and Tighten Down. I'm going to get into our third segment of Roland's Rants. Before we do, remember, you can make a memory that lasts a lifetime if you let the Vivid Seats app help you get to your favorite live event.

Enter promo code KICKOFF at checkout to receive a discount of up to a hundred dollars roland's rants so i just wanted to take a couple of minutes and talk to you guys about the state of the franchise and the fan base's feelings right now and see if we can just get some things off our chest. I don't understand why this team is so up and down and so inconsistent. And it's part of the reason a lot of fans get mad and say, you know, people complain during losses. Like if you think back to 2017 and even last year. And the reason for that is because even when the Titans lose, you look at the Browns game, they had a lot of penalties. We hit a lot of weird big plays and run after catch and screens. If you look at the other two losses to the division opponents,

seven points, 17 points. You look at the win against Atlanta. We got up on Atlanta really early and were able to just run the ball in the second half was super concerning. And everybody's like, oh, well, you know, they were ahead, you know, they ran the ball. But the Titans offense was bad in the second half. Even in the wins, it looks so hard at some points that when the losses happen, it's like, yeah, that's why we were worried. That's why I was worried about the passing offense, even in the victories, even when it looks okay. I don't understand why that is, though. It seems like ever since Eddie George and Steve McNair, this Titans offense has not evolved regardless of the coaches or the staff or the scheme or the players. It's like an infectious virus in the team that they cannot have a good offense. And it doesn't matter how good the defense or special teams is. If the defense and special teams is really bad, we get the end of the Rustin-Webster years. We get, you

know, the things that led to LeJuan and Marcus, the 2 and 14, 3 and 13, 4 and 12. You get those if the defense and the special teams are bad. The defense and special teams are good, but the offense is still so bad that the Titans can only go 9 and 7 and can't get out of that. And if we don't get some lucky bounces and some things to go our way, we might end up 7 and 9. I don't think this team is bad. The defense is way too good for the team to be bad. And I don't know what the answer is. I guess if I did, then I would call Miss Amy myself right now and tell her how to fix it so that we could all enjoy fun football. That's really all I want. Now, I know that every team can't win a Super Bowl. There's only one champion every year, but I just want to have fun while I watch this team play football. And when the offense

is so bad year after year after year after coach after scheme after general manager it just makes it very difficult to have fun watching this team play even if the defense is so good and I enjoy it even when things are good it's like I'm looking over my shoulder I'm nervous I don't believe it I don't trust it and you see that in the fan base in the stands it was a Bill's home game today. Make no mistake. I wasn't there, so I can't blame a fan who didn't go. I didn't buy a ticket. I didn't go.

I watched the game from home. So I'm not going to be the guy to be like, if you didn't go to the game, you're not a good. Not everyone can go to games all the time. That's just a reality. So I'm not going to question someone's fanhood because they can't make it to every game. But it's clear that the Titans fan base doesn't trust the team to consistently perform. A lot of those Bills fans are there because Titans season ticket holders are selling their tickets because they're worried they're going to go to the game and the Titans are going to do what they did

and it's just going to be a disappointment. And if you do that enough times over enough years, eventually the fan base is just kind of through with that and through giving their money to that experience. Why not turn it into a money-making opportunity? Now, I personally would not do that. I can't blame someone for how they spend their money and use their money or anything like that. But I'm just making the obvious point that something in the fan base is rotten.

And it's something in the organization too. And until they have a good offense and a fun football team to watch again, I don't see that changing. The Titans need some sort of spark in this organization. It's going to need to be a player. The Titans are going to need a true, definite superstar player just to change the feel of the team. That's what's going to be needed. I don't know who that guy is or how you get him. It's so rare. It's probably a quarterback.

But who knows when the next Pat Mahomes or Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady shows up. You can't wait for that, so you've got to just continuously do what you've got to do. But at some point, the Titans are going to need some kind of stud quarterback like that that's a national superstar to just change the way the fans feel about the organization. That's the only answer I can muster up. It could be the wrong answer. You guys let me know what you think. Tell me at Tic Tac Titans. Let's just talk about what we do to go forward here because I'm just here to tell you I don't have the answer, but I'm also here to make the observation that something in the fan base and in the organization is broken. It's an inconsistency on the field, inconsistency in the loyalty to the team, and it's all understandable.

I see it all. I understand why people feel the way they do. Even the players are commenting on it in the locker room today. Taylor LeJuan was very forward about how the fans should be mad and how the Titans cannot be inconsistent like this. And while Roger Saffold is deflecting blame from himself by saying this team's been inconsistent for a long time, he's not wrong. That's probably why he said it, because he knows he's not wrong. And I don't have the answer as to why that is.

John Robinson is an average GM. At best, we say J-Rob the Goat because he brought us out of that less than mediocrity, just the bottom of the NFL. He did bring us out of that because the roster is solid. It's average. It's good. But some of the signings, Klein, Sylvester Williams, Saffold and Humphreys, Malcolm Butler has been solid, but he's definitely had his downtimes. Deion Lewis is just a waste of a free agent signing. Eric Decker wasn't able to perform. Some of the draft picks have been good.

Kevin Byard, Jayon Brown, Rashawn, Harold Landry. I think Corey Davis is a good draft pick. I just think he's in a bad situation. Jack Conklin was all pro as a rookie, so we give him there. But a lot of draft picks were just nothing and have done nothing. So John Robinson at this point has enough good and enough bad to say he's probably just average, but I don't think he's a real problem. Vrabel's had some good and some bad. He's just got to improve his end game decision making. The offensive players I don't think are terrible either. It's

just hard to have an answer at this point in time of why the Titans just can't be consistent. At some point, it's just a mental thing. It's a virus. It's some voodoo on the franchise. I couldn't tell you exactly where it's all coming from, but it's clear that the Titans offense hasn't evolved from the Steve McNair, Eddie George days. And until this team is fun to watch again, I don't know if they're going to win back the fans on a week-to-week basis. So that's going to do it for Roland's Rants. I hope that, like I said, this was cathartic for you. A little therapy Monday. We can just get something off our chest and kind of shout at the sky for a minute. But that's going to do it for today's show. Tomorrow is going to be a Tic Tac Titans Tuesday. I'm going to try to find some positives, but also bring you the realities

of why the Titans struggled out on the field against the Bills. We are going to get into all of that. Probably have some Titans talk as well so we can hear what Mike Vrabel had to say the day after the game. Look forward to going over it with you guys. Again, I am your host, Tyler Rowland, and this was Locked on Titans.