Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Tic Tac Tuesday - Adam Humphries is Alive, Nate Davis to Play & Titans Talk

Episode Date: September 24, 2019

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Welcome to the Locked on Titans podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Rowland. Titans fans, it is Tick Tack Tuesday. And I'm excited to step into the film room with you guys and break down some X's and O's. Before we do that, in our first segment, we're going to talk about the injury report from today's practice. We are going to talk about a little nasty Nate Davis.

Is it time for him to start? We will see. But after that, we are going to jump into Tic Tac Tuesday. I'm going to give you guys something positive coming out of Thursday's brutal loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars, something that we can look for and have optimism about, something that is a positive development. Hopefully, we'll help the Titans turn the season around. In our last segment, we are going to do some more Titans talk.

I'm going to give you guys some snippets from Mike Vrabel's press conference this morning that I think are important to note that Titans fans will be excited to hear. Ready to get into all of it with you guys? Tic Tac Tuesday. Let's get it. Is it time for nasty Nate Davis to start at right guard? I think so. At this moment in time, with Jameel Douglas' performance the last two weeks, and with Kevin Panfield's knee clearly nowhere near healed. He did not practice today.

I'll get to that when we talk about the full injury report. But Kevin Panfield is not going to be back anytime soon. You have to ask yourself an honest question as a Titans fan anyway. Were you excited to have Kevin Panfield starting at right guard on this team? No. The idea all along was that a third round rookie in Nate Davis was going to come along and take that spot. Quite frankly, you don't draft players in the first three rounds in the NFL draft unless you expect them to be a starter for your team. That's a reality in this league, and if it's not a reality and you're primarily trying to rely on undrafted free agents and late round picks, you're going to find yourself upset more than not,

and here we are. So Nate Davis was always going to be the right guard. That was the plan from the start, and usually offensive linemen can transition pretty early on and we might as well get him out there now that gives us the question of why hasn't he been put out there yet and his name really hasn't even been mentioned as a possibility they've been saying they were waiting on pamphil to come back and douglas was going to be the guy it seems like nate davis wasn't even real even realistically thought of as an option there, which has always been a little confusing to me. Now, the reason for that is, and Mike Vrabel has cited this before, he didn't get a lot of reps early on due to injury and training camp and preseason.

So when you're a rookie and you're coming in, you're learning a new system, all that, it's so important to have that time, and he wasn't able to get it. So mentally, it's possible that he's not prepared and it's not his fault he just hasn't had the reps out on the field to be able to do that you're focused on getting the people who are going to play out on the field so you can't be given you know important reps away to Nate Davis when he's just not ready but at this point Jamil Douglas has had those, and he's not ready either. So it only makes sense that you would go with Nate Davis. Now, one thing to consider is once we've gotten into the regular season, that's less time for Davis to have.

There are less padded practices. And we had a Thursday night game already, which shortens a week of practice. There wasn't even a padded practice because you've got to give those guys time to rest up. So he has had limited time. There will be growing pains. That's something I want to say up front. There will be growing pains even if Davis plays. We can't expect a huge improvement, but I would rather give him those reps when he's the one who I expect to be our starter eventually anyways. And if someone's going to fail on the job and someone's going to make mistakes and have to learn from them, I'd rather it be Davis than Douglas. And that should be the tenor of any Titans fan at this moment in time. So really excited to see if Davis can step in.

What I find super interesting here is it seems like Mike Vrabel almost was forced into this. It seems like he's been trying to keep Davis away because he knows that he's not ready, he hasn't had the reps. But at this point, I don't know if it came from John Robinson, if it's pressure from the media. Vrabel doesn't seem like the type of guy who makes decisions based on pressure from the media. But it does make sense that Robinson would have come to him

and said, hey man, I know he might not be ready in your opinion, but at this point, we got to do something different, and he is the different. If he can come in, Davis can make an improvement at right guard, he can be an upgrade, and then Taylor LeJuan comes back, we know that he's an upgrade over Dennis Kelly. So now we're upgrading two positions on the offensive line over the course of time, and that, along with what we're going to talk about in Tic Tac Titans,

has the opportunity to really give this Titans offense a boost. And anyone who's watched this team knows that's all this team needs to be competitive. All of these games could be wins if we just had a competent offense. I feel like the defense would play even better if they had an offense that put pressure on the other team. Imagine that. Imagine how well this defense would play if they had an offense on the other side of the ball that actually was the one putting pressure on the other team rather than always staying

even or coming from behind. I don't know what else to say other than that would have to be a better version of the defense, right? They can't be worse playing with so much stress to be perfect all the time. So having Nate Davis come back, he has to eventually be an improvement over Jameel Douglas, or it's just a missed draft pick. And I'm going to hope at this moment in time that Davis will be a big improvement on Jameel Douglas.

Get Taylor LeJuan back after the Falcons game. Now we're looking at a whole different line. If the Titans do find a way to win this ball game on Sunday, two and two, that's really not that hateful regardless of how it's looked so far. So I really want to see Nate Davis play. Looking forward to see what he can do this week and hopefully he is the starter. Titans had a light practice today, so the injury report for that, Delaney Walker, Deion Lewis, of course Kevin Panfield, Wesley Woodyard, Darren Bates, and Chris Milton all did not practice. From what we saw in the game, Delaney Walker, Deion Lewis,

don't really see those as significant injuries, probably just maintenance days for those guys. Everybody else has been on the injury report previously last week, so we can assume that their injuries are something that we need to look at and pay attention to. Surprisingly, one of the biggest surprises of the season, finally, the man who must have blackmail on John Robinson and Mike Rabel, David Flewellen, has returned to practice. I was worried at some point in time.

I'm not certain how he held a roster spot hostage for so long, but hopefully now that he's practicing, he can get back on the field and contribute in some way to justify his roster spot. So excited to see that. Hope that we can get a positive contribution out of him. I want to thank Jim Wyatt for reporting those injury updates the last thing I want to talk about in our first segment here is we all saw the really bad holding calls on Thursday night I am not going to

be one to blame the officials the Titans offense played bad enough in the first half. Really, really below average NFL offense in the first half. And that's really what just totally derailed the game. But the holding penalties and the calls from the officials in the Titans game on Thursday night and league wide. If you guys watch any football this Sunday, the Titans weren't on. I would imagine some of you watch some football games. The holding has just been unreal, and I know that it's something that the NFL put an emphasis on this preseason, but

it's ruining how the game is viewed. As a Titans fan, I'm upset competitively. It's hurting the team and their chances of winning when these things happen, but speaking as a person who just likes to watch football, it makes the game hard to watch when there are constant penalties all the time, holding all the time. There's holding on every play. That's been something that you hear all the time. There's holding that could be called on every play. So I know that we need to get the egregious ones that affect the play, but at some point, throwing all these flags are just hurting my eyes while I try to watch the game. So, get the calls right, but let's not overdo it.

And on that note, surprisingly, based on the first couple of weeks, but after watching that Titans-Jaguars game, I'm sure that was the straw that broke the camel's back, the NFL had a conference call with all 17 lead officials on Saturday night to discuss holding being over-called, flags being overthrown. It's something, like I said, that's affected how people view the game, how much you enjoy watching the football game, but it's also affected the game competitively at this point. Pretty disappointing that the officials are making that big of an impact on something that they shouldn't really have that much of an impact on.

I understand they're trying to do their job the best, but it is something that's negatively affecting the game in multiple ways. So just thought it was ironic and something of note that after that debacle on Thursday night with all those penalties, the NFL literally had to have a meeting with all the officials about it. So all we can do is shake our head, Titans fans. But we're going to jump into the film room next, start breaking down some X's and O's on Tic Tac Tuesday. I'll see you guys on the other side. Before we do, I do want to remind you guys

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Okay, Titans fans. So what I want to do is I want to talk about Adam Humphreys. He was able to get going a little bit on Thursday night, six catches for 93 yards. As I mentioned in previous shows, a lot of those yards were off some garbage time, at least two of them very late. The last two plays of the game,

he was able to rack up a good amount of his yards. But what we saw from the first four catches were actually something that the Titans can take from this game and use going forward because Adam Humphrey was a big free agent signing. He was expected to help elevate this offense being in the slot and being a chain mover for Marcus. So seeing him come alive and find a way to get open and hopefully him and Marcus can

get some chemistry going and actual real live game action, and that can help this offense quite a bit because they just need something that can move the change. Even on short yardage, they need something that moves the change. So I'm going to set the stage for you guys a little bit here. Jacksonville came out in the first drive of the game, and they played essentially man on the outsides and man with their safety and linebackers and just had one deep safety uh sort of a man undercover one defense and what they're doing is they're just challenging um the titans receivers to get open and create separation we

know that they have a talented secondary at least on the outside corners so they're essentially challenging the titans they know they've seen the game footage. They know that the Titans are keeping in a lot of their tight ends. They're chipping with Adam Humphreys in the slot. They're keeping in a lot of their running backs to block. So if you're the Jaguars, you're going to man up. And probably two of the linebackers, or at least a linebacker and a safety, their responsibility and man coverage is

going to stay in and block, which just allows them to kind of flow, play his own, and watch Marcus, which limits what he's able to do scrambling and running if things break down. So really good game plan from the Jaguars on defense. The Titans let them do whatever really they wanted to there with their ineptitude, but it was a good plan to start. So essentially what happens here is Adam Humphrey starts on the outside on the left. Not a lot of these plays did he end up being the most outside receiver. He motions over to the right, becomes the slot next to Corey. And like I said, Jacksonville played almost exclusively man on the first drive. So this is the Titans' first play of the second drive. They know that

the Jags are going to come out playing man coverage. Like I said, they motion Humphreys over. He's in the slot next to Corey and he runs a beautiful, beautiful route. He kind of goes to the outside. Corey is going up the field and then goes to the inside And Humphreys puts a double move on his defender. He gets a linebacker on him. The Titans are smart enough. They see that the Jaguars are just shifting their linebackers and their defensive backs over when the Titans do motion. So a linebacker ends up on Adam Humphreys. He does a nice little outbreaking route about six or seven yards down the field, five to seven yards down the field. The linebacker bites on it, thinks that's it, and he kind of peels off with a spin move towards the sideline

and turns it into a wheel route down the sideline. And it's a big completion for the Titans, 30 yards. And at this moment in time, the Titans' offense really needed something to kickstart them and thought this would be it. Unfortunately, the drive obviously stalled out as the Titans had zero points in the first half. But something like that to beat man coverage is important for the Titans to be able to do on command.

And someone like Adam Humphreys was brought in here to do just that. So really important development, I think. We're going to go to play two. Play two is in the second quarter. There's three minutes left. The Titans are down 14 to nothing. They have to get something going. They have to get the chains moving. Unfortunately, this isn't one of my favorite plays. I'm going to keep it positive, but I have to point out the realities of this play. The Titans line up in five wide receivers. They're going to have to start doing that a little bit more to spread

out the defense. I'm surprised that they've done the opposite of that. They've had heavy sets with multiple tight ends. I think that spreading the defense out, letting your guys create a little bit of separation and letting Marcus make some quick short throws would help, but they've done something different. I'd like to see more of a mixture, but at this point, we're one game away from Taylor LeJuan coming back. So the Titans are in five wide. Adam Humphreys is on the left-hand side, and he just runs a simple out route at about five yards. Marcus completes it.

Humphreys comes back to the ball a little bit and ends up getting a gain of three on second down. So we're looking at a third and eight after it being second and 11. So we're looking at a third and eight after it being second and 11. The reality of this play is if you look on the other side, Corey Davis is doing a deep dig route about 15 yards from the line of scrimmage over the middle. I know that Marcus didn't have a lot of time and I know that there's going to be some cause of hypocrisy because a lot of people are saying Marcus is holding the ball too long and he is doing that on some plays. But here he had a clean pocket. He just looked at Humphreys the whole way to his left didn't

look for Davis over the middle and at that time at second and 11 I can't think that the five yard out is the primary option there like I know that he's trying to get rid of the ball but at this moment in time he'd only been sacked once so we can't even say that he had been taking a bunch of pressure up to this point that's something that that sets this offense back Corey Davis is in the outside slot on the right hand side and yeah runs about a 15 yard in route he's wide open over the middle because like I said the Jacksonville Jaguars have been running strictly man coverage pretty much the entire time he had a pocket he had time and he just turned to the left and threw the five yard out and never really looked over the middle at the wide open Corey Davis so think about that when you're criticizing Corey Davis as well he's been open a lot this year and running

pretty good routes not all the time he did make some mistakes with his route running in this game but it's just something something to consider. Now, the positive from this is Adam Humphreys has to be able to convert those. There are going to be third and three, third and two, fourth and two, fourth and one situations throughout the rest of the season. Think, you know, we have 13 games left, Titans fans. It's very early. A lot of time to get things right, and this is one thing that we're going to have to rely on. So Adam Humphreys beating his man-in-man coverage for a nice little five-yard out,

something that's going to have to be relied on in this Titans offense. Play three, the Titans are in shotgun. It's 17-0 in the third quarter. They have Corey Davis to the outside to the right, Adam Humphreys in the slot to the right, Humphries in the slot to the right and the reason that I wanted to point out this play is because the Titans do a really good job of picking up the blitz pressure they're able to identify where it's coming from and the offensive line is able to communicate and block it up the Jaguars initially show pressure from their slot

corner on the right and their middle linebacker up the middle over the center. They drop the middle linebacker over the center. They bring the slot corner from the left up as well, so they're bringing pressure from DBs on both sides. The Titans pick it up. Adam Humphreys is able to run a 13-yard out to the right side while Corey Davis runs up the field and clears his man, which is Jalen Ramsey, and the Titans convert a 13-yard catch on the sideline late in the game when they got to push the ball down the field. Plays like that are going to be important going forward, and it's a really positive note that the Titans were able to identify the blitz, pick it up, and allow Marcus time to make a throw 13 yards down the field.

They need to have time to be able to do that, and they were able to execute on that play. So, thought that picking up that blitz concept and turning it into a nice gain down the sideline is something that we should take going forward our last play is going to be Adam Humphreys in the left side slot with Corey Davis on the outside there's about two minutes left in the game one positive that I did find from this is the Jaguars defense shows a blitz up front. They have five men on the line of scrimmage at the last second. They drop back a linebacker into a cover three. Adam Humphreys knows exactly where to sit down in the zone and Marcus throws the ball with anticipation so that the ball is right there for Adam Humphreys when he turns around. Now, anyone could counter with the

Jaguars are playing a pretty soft zone here. They're obviously just trying to not give up a big play late in the game, but Marcus does throw with anticipation. Him and Humphreys are starting to develop chemistry. If he knows exactly where Humphreys is going to be and he trusts him to be there, that means that they're developing chemistry, and that's something that is positive that we can take going out of this game. So, one play, a beautiful move on a linebacker and man coverage to get a big gain down the sideline. Our second play was just a nice three-yard out, which is going to be necessary to pick up short yardage on third down. Our third play was a nice 10-yard out against a really tough blitz that the Titans picked up, and our fourth play was Adam Humphreys settling down in zone coverage perfectly

and being right on the same page with Marcus to pick up about 10 yards. So those are things that we can be optimistic about going forward. That's going to wrap up this week's Tick-Tack Tuesday. In our last segment, I'm going to give you some Titans talk and give you a couple of snippets from Mike Vrabel's press conference. Important information I think Titans fans should hear directly from the coach himself. I want to give a shout out to titansonline.com for the audio. Remember, I'm going to be posting visuals to go with these plays on my Twitter account. I do as best I can to post a couple of the plays onto Facebook to let you guys know what's going on and let you know to listen to the show. I will be posting all four plays, so please follow me on Twitter at TicTacTitans, where I'll be

breaking down the X's and O's all year and have a visual thread to go with all of our segments when we talk about these kind of things. So hopefully you guys will join me there as well. So we are going to jump into a little bit of Titans talk. I'm going to give you guys a few clips from Mike Vrabel's press conference earlier today. Some news and notes that I think are interesting that he had to speak on. Some things I think you guys will want to hear and need to hear. So I'll let you get to those now. Once again, that audio is courtesy of TitansOnline.com. I think it's just a continual process. I think that the thing that we felt like we needed to get back to

was we focused over the weekend and today on accountability and fundamentals. And that's just what I felt like was something that was easy that we could all look at in the meeting rooms this morning, being accountable. I told him a story. I had a teacher in the fifth grade. I hope he's watching. Not sure if he is or not, but when we get, when we got in trouble, you know, he made us write out like 3,000 times, I will take responsibility for my own actions. Figured out later on in life that was called accountability, taking responsibility and fixing it. It's not just enough to say, you know what, I have to be better, but it's like I have to be better and then this is how I'm going to fix it.

The fundamentals, I think, is something that I've always felt as a player was critical. The fundamentals, I think, is something that I've always felt as a player was critical. You know, I think some of the penalties that we did have could be a result of just some fundamentals and just getting back to concentrating and focusing on our fundamentals. Well, I mean, I think that's how we're always evaluated. I mean, that's the bottom line is you get one crack a week to to go out there and and put your best product out there and to make changes in the game if things are going in a different direction than maybe how you had planned for them to fix things during the game I mean that's all the challenge that's the three hours and you know 10 or 15 minutes that we get every week and then the players time to go out

there and put all the you know use all the work that they put in and get something out of it. I want to try to play Nate and see you know the only way that you can see again to you guys's point was was the games. I mean it's hard to when some of these practices with one padded practice a week or in last week's case none you know those those are difficult things and so you know we're going to have to try to get him ready to go as soon as we possibly can none, those are difficult things. We're going to have to try to get him ready to go as soon as we possibly can. I'm hopeful that that's this week. A lot of reps. A lot of reps that through training camp you have and preseason games where you're out there and you're able to maybe run some of your

base core concepts and start to build a routine on what certain blocks need to look like and feel like and and reacting and pass rush situations and and bodies around you and you know live pass rush where you know one-on-one pass rush is one thing but you know the rest of the guys usually scatter when when there's a move by the defensive player and in a game you know there's other bodies there's a move by the defensive player. And in a game, there's other bodies, there's legs, there's traffic. So there's, I think, a lot that goes into it. But we're trying our best to get him. And I know he is.

He wants to get back. And he wants to try to help this football team. The only thing I'll tell you is when we got a couple of them in preseason and if they're at the point of attack, that's really where where they're coming up I can just coach the fundamentals and the proper technique that when a guy breaks the framework of your body that you're going to have to give them a shove we're not going to be able to to stay latched on to them whether our hands are inside or our hands are outside that that's what they're seeing and that's that's what they're calling which you know it's fine we have to we have to coach it better and and execute it with better fundamentals And that's what they're seeing, and that's what they're calling, which is fine.

We have to coach it better and execute it with better fundamentals. And if we lose a guy, we've got to give him a shove and hope that the ball carrier can gain those extra yards. I don't think they ever take the coach's thoughts too much into consideration. Holding was always an individual thing. I had a really great D-line coach, John Mitchell, and I remember showing up at the Steelers and had massive offensive linemen, and I wasn't very good. I said, Coach, man, I can't do anything. Just hold me.

And he said, That's a you problem. That's something that you're going to have to deal with. And so I've never complained about holding. You know what, there was crap, you know what I mean, as you put it. There were plenty of bad plays that we've showed them and coached them and talked about it, and that's kind of where the accountability, you know, comes from. But, you know, we have to do everything we can to prepare this week,

to go on a road and try to do everything we can to get to two and two. You know, I'm not, I mean, I just know that in every game there's some good, some bad, and there's things to get you beat. And when there's not enough good, you usually lose. And so, you know, we can't, you know, we understand that there's ways for us to play football games. And not to say that you can't come back from being down 14-0 on the road on Thursday night, but there's going to have to be a lot of things that go right.

And that's not really the plan for us. And we'll try to do better in that regard next week. Well, I mean, I think that that's just part of this process. And there's one of those three things that are happening. And we need to be more good and less things that get you beat. You know, I just feel like if we're always harping or coaching the areas of focus, that maybe, you know, I mean, I try to point out the good. I try to point out everything, I guess is what I'm saying.

And so I don't, when we win, you know, I point out the bad things and the things that could get us beat when we win. So I would try to do the same thing when we don't win. I thought it was a good day. I mean, I thought we got what we wanted accomplished. Fundamentals, conditioning, game plan on Atlanta, get started on Atlanta here, watching them closely, understanding who their personnel is on special teams and defense and what their front is on defense and

who they have at secondary and who the nickel is. So we got all that accomplished, and we'll try to give them another day to rest on Tuesday and get back on Wednesday. I think so. I think that just having been through this thing, it's a long season. We are where we are. We're 1-2.

Haven't played good enough in two games. So we can only focus on Atlanta and putting everything into it that we can to try to go win a game on the road. Okay Titans fans that was Titans talk we jumped into the film room for Tic Tac Tuesday and broke down how Marcus and Adam Humphries are getting their chemistry together and were successful in multiple situations that's something that I think can really really help the Titans offense going forward and help turn this season around. In our first segment, we hit some news and notes with some injury report, Nate Davis, and the ridiculous conference call that the officials had because of the penalties thrown in the Titans-Jacksonville game. Hope you guys enjoyed

the show. I had a really fun time bringing it to you. Remember, follow me on Twitter at TicTacTitans to get all the visual breakdowns to go along with our second segment. Also, if you aren't already, subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Google Play, on Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm your host, Tyler Rowland, and this is Locked on Titans.