Locked On Titans - Daily Podcast On The Tennessee Titans - Titans Rewatch Wednesday: Puzzling Roster Move, Rewatch Insights From Week 10 & Defensive Role Change

Episode Date: November 18, 2020

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You are Locked On Titans, your daily Tennessee Titans podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome to the Locked On Titans podcast. I am your host, Tyler Rowland. Titans fans, this re-watch Wednesday edition of the Locked On Titans podcast is presented by Pepsi. This football season will be different and Pepsi is here to get you ready for game day no matter how you watch this season. Pepsi is the refreshment you need to power through game day and become a member of the League of Football Watchers. These passionate

fans are the real generational talent that Pepsi fuels because Pepsi isn't made for those who play the game. It's made for those who watch it. Pepsi, made for football watching. Go to madeforfootballwatching.com to check out the latest football watching content from Pepsi. And it is a re-watch Wednesday here on the Locked on Titans podcast, which means we are going to jump into my additional analysis and extra tidbits from re-watching the coaches tape multiple times since the Titans lost last Thursday and I got a few extra opportunities

this week so I have some really good information that I want to give to you guys. We are going to do that in the middle of today's show and we are going to start things off by taking a look at a curious roster move that the Titans made on Tuesday. So something that was unexpected. We talked about some roster moves in yesterday's podcast. One unexpected move that did not take place as the Titans kept Steven Gostkowski on the roster. But now it's time to talk about an unexpected roster move that did take place on Tuesday.

It again came on special teams. So I'll explain what took place there. And then we will get into my additional analysis in our rewatch Wednesday on offense and defense for the Titans. And we will cap off today's show talking about a schematic role change we could see for one struggling Titans defender that the assistant coach for his position group talked about on Tuesday. So I'll be talking about that with you guys today. So a jam-packed rewatch Wednesday here on the Locked On Titans podcast. Let's get it.

After the loss to the Indianapolis Colts, most fans suspected that the Titans would make a change to their special teams unit in the form of kicking cutter Steven Gostkowski, who has missed eight kicks on the year. But on Monday, Titans head coach Mike Rabel made it seem like that wasn't something that was going to take place anytime soon. However, we did get a special teams roster move from the Titans this week that was a surprise. And that's when the Titans on Tuesday decided to wave punter Ryan Allen and if you remember Ryan Allen was the first punter that got an opportunity after the injury to Titans punter Brett Kern he punted for the Titans against the Chicago Bears and had a relatively fantastic performance. Allen had eight punts in that game, including punts of 65 yards and 60 yards. He had an average of 50.5 yards per punt.

Those eight punts were 55 yards, 42 yards, 60, 48, 65, 47, 46, and 41. So a very good performance from Ryan Allen in filling in for Titans all-pro and Pro Bowl punter Brett Kern. All that you could ask for as a replacement from Ryan Allen in that game against Chicago. Which made it even more curious that the Titans decided to go away from Ryan Allen and go to punter Trevor Daniels. So Ryan Allen had a fantastic day against the Bears in his eight punts and had been the holder with Steven Gostkowski for six years in New England. So his performance on the field and punting, along with that familiarity holding, made

all the sense in the world for Ryan Allen to be the Titans punter until Brett Kern is back and ready to go but the Titans did choose to turn to Trevor Daniel as reports indicated that he beat out Allen and outperformed Allen in practice leading up to the game against the Colts so the Titans went with Trevor Daniel instead of Ryan Allen, and Trevor Daniel had a complete meltdown. His first punt was 47 yards, but after that, a 17-yard shank that resulted in the go-ahead touchdown for the Colts, and then a blocked punt that turned into a touchdown for the Titans that basically put the game out of reach. So a miserable performance from Trevor Daniel, which brings us to Tuesday's decision.

And the Titans decide to keep Trevor Daniel on the practice squad and waive Ryan Allen. It doesn't make any sense in the world. The Titans must be seeing something completely different in practice. But the reality is some guys play better in practice. And when the lights get bright in the game game they can't seem to do the job and Trevor Daniel seems to fall into that category at this moment in time now new reports do indicate that the Titans hope that Ryan Allen does clear waivers they're able to sign him back to the practice squad and again let a battle take place between Daniel and Ryan Allen to see who will be

the punter brought up from the practice squad to the active roster for this game against the Ravens. The optimistic view could be that Brett Kern is almost ready to return. Therefore, he would be added to the active 53-man roster and then Daniel would be kept on the practice squad. But that is not the case and the reports are true that the Titans are looking to have another practice squad battle between Allen and Daniel. That does leave you scratching your head as Allen has clearly outperformed Daniel in the actual game opportunities they were given.

And then you add in the experience Allen has with holding for Gostkowski, who's struggling, and you want to make things as comfortable for him as possible. This move from the Titans to seem to favor Daniel over Allen just doesn't make much sense at this moment in time, but it will be something that we monitor going forward as the Titans get closer to the game against the Baltimore Ravens this weekend. What I am hoping for is that the Titans come to their senses, get Allen back on this roster,

and ultimately let him punt against the Ravens on Sunday. But hopefully, optimistically speaking, the Titans won't need to use a punter very often on Sunday. I know that's asking a lot against a great Baltimore Ravens defense. But, you know, we can hope for certain things. And I'm hoping that that punter decision won't be as crucial as it has been at least the last few weeks for the Titans. But that's probably blind optimism. But we are going to move into our rewatch Wednesday portion of our show,

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Let's get into my additional analysis, my extra tidbits here, my additional insights into what I saw from the Titans, schematically speaking, taking a look at the coaches tape the all 22 multiple times over the last few days. And we are going to start with the Titans offense. And I'm going to start at the quarterback position. So Ryan Tannehill is getting smoked in the pocket time after time for the last few weeks. It's definitely affected him. It's affected how long he's willing to wait, how he's willing to take a hit. It's affected where he's putting his ball, his ball placement, his pinpoint accuracy is being affected.

It's not all on him. He's had some drops in recent weeks. The pressure is getting in his face a lot quicker than it has before, but he's also been off on a few throws. The Titans offense has such a small margin for error now because of what the defense is doing and the special teams is doing it just makes it very difficult on Tannehill he basically has to be perfect over and over and over again and he's not even perfect consistently right now so let alone the entire time one of the big reasons that he's having trouble is the Titans are chipping so much and that's when you have either your tight end or your slot wide receiver stay in for a half a second on the snap to help the offensive tackles block.

Now this is not just an offensive tackle problem. The Titans are trying to help the interior. The Titans are trying to help obviously Ty Sambrillo and Dennis Kelly as well of course but this is a whole entire offensive line problem. The protection is starting to deteriorate now that Taylor LeJuan has been out for multiple weeks, so the Titans are countering that like they did at the beginning of the season last year when Marcus was playing quarterback by chipping, and the problem with that is you're keeping your running back in most of the time, not sending him out for a passing route. You're having either your tight end or your slot wide receiver, an eligible receiver, stay in the block at the beginning of the route.

So a lot of the time, the Titans are releasing only three people into a route on the snap. And if the other team is playing zone coverage or they're playing a man coverage with some zone defenders mixed in, well, it just makes it too easy to guard those route combinations. And the Titans also like to do a ton of curls where they go up as far as they need for the first down and just turn around and Ryan Tannehill will fire it in there. Well, they lost Adam Humphreys, who's pretty good at that. Jonu Smith isn't very good at that,

so you have to play Anthony Ferkser, who isn't quite the athlete that Jonu Smith is. And what happens is it's a combination of Ryan Tannehill has been off some because he's starting to get pressure and guys aren't coming open as quickly or as easily the Titans route combinations that they're choosing are a lot of curls a lot of sit down routes so defenders are being very aggressive downhill because the Titans offense doesn't threaten you vertically. So that's a problem too. So basically defenders aren't worried about being deep, being beat deep over the top. The Titans also run a lot of sit down routes and they usually only have two to three people out in the route concept because they're chipping with their wide receiver or they're tied in and they're keeping their running back in and pass protection all of that together is just a very difficult place for

the Titans offense to be and what happens is they have small windows they have small opportunities rare opportunities that pop up during the game that they have to take advantage of because they won't get as many opportunities and that's what we saw with the two A.J. Brown drops, one in the Steelers game, or I'm sorry, one in the Bengals game, and then one in the game against the Colts. A.J. Brown had two big drops on what would have been big plays, maybe touchdowns, and it was an opportunity that the Titans offense just didn't get enough throughout the game. So the Titans passing offense is having problems

because the pass protection is slipping, they're having having to chip which takes less people out of the routes And then the routes that they are running are sit down routes underneath routes that teams are being aggressive downhill on They don't have a lot of people who can win one-on-one and man coverage They don't have a lot of people who are going to beat you vertically and beat you deep So the titans are in a tough. Their offense is limited right now, and the Titans are running the ball. Let's talk about the run defense or the run offense. Teams are penetrating heavily up the middle, shooting A-gaps, shooting B-gaps, trying to disrupt the Titans' running game. But the Titans are having some good success in the run game anyways. I mean,

they ran for over 100 yards against the Colts, ran for over 200 against the Bengals, and lost those games. So the run offense is not the real problem here. Now, one of the reasons is people are doing those interior penetration blitzes on running downs, and no one likes the toss plays, but the Titans are trying to do those perimeter toss plays and those perimeter runs because teams are being so aggressive blitzing up the middle that if you can get out on the perimeter while those aggressive blitzes up the middle happen you're going to have a numbers advantage on the outside and some of the Titans best run plays came in those toss pitch scenarios so people need to slow down on how much they're criticizing the toss sweeps and the pitches that is a direct counter to the interior blitzing that we're seeing

against the Titans on rundowns. And a lot of that worked. Another counter is the Titans are starting to do more pulls. They're starting to do more trap plays, trying to take advantage of that aggressive interior penetration. If you've got a guy aggressively penetrating through the interior on an agap blitz and your center can block down while your guard pulls, that's going to give you that wide opening that I talked about on the pitch plays

in the perimeter runs that I was just discussing. So that's the problems that the Titans are having on offense. They're getting a lot of interior penetration and early down run blitzes up the middle, which is taking them out of their zone scheme. And then on the flip side, on the offense, tons of pressure on Ryan Tannehill. The Titans are countering by chipping with their tight ends, with their wide receivers, which takes guys out of the passing routes, takes guys out of the route combinations. The Titans don't have a vertical threat to challenge defenses deep, so they're using

those curl routes, those sit-down routes. Defenses are keying on it, being aggressive downhill in zones. It's just giving the Titans a tough spot on offense. Let's move to the defensive side of the ball. And I have to start with the linebacker group. Jim Haslett is now the coach of the Titans linebackers. It was Tyrell Williams before, and we're seeing a direct downfall here in the coaching. The Titans linebacker group of Jayon Brown and Rashawn Evans have fallen off in terms of their play.

We're going to talk more about Rashawn later. They've been terrible in their gap discipline. So it's called a run fit. But on a run play, every defender is responsible for a certain gap. Well, there are multiple plays, especially on Thursday against the Colts, but throughout the season where Jayon Brown and Rashawn Evans are in the wrong gap, they're in the same gap they're overflowing, they're darting underneath defenders

and getting washed away so just a terrible, terrible season for Jayon Brown and Rashawn Evans and Jim Haslett has to be looked at as the linebackers coach when you look at the drop in play over the last few years Kevin Byard and Kenny Vaccaro as well. The defensive back group has really slipped. You got to look at Anthony Midgett. Who's a new coach obviously with this Titans team.

Kevin Byard's been terrible in zone coverage. He hasn't been great tackling. Kenny Vaccaro's been terrible in man coverage. They're starting to use Kenny Vaccaro more at linebacker. And taking Rashawn Evans off the field. Playing Imani Hooker. And at safety, Kenny Vaccaro more at linebacker and taking Rashawn Evans off the field, playing Imani Hooker. And at safety, Kenny Vaccaro at linebacker because Rashawn Evans is such a liability in coverage. He's been terrible all year.

That's something to look forward to, something that the Titans are going to be doing going forward. And that was confirmed by Jim Haslett on Tuesday. I'll talk more about that in our next segment when we talk about a schematic role change for a Tennessee Titans defender. But part of that will result in more Imani Hooker, so I expect to see more of him. The substitutions on the defensive line are killing the Titans and have been all year.

Whenever that rotational defensive line comes in, they get blown off the ball, and those are usually some great drives. The Colts had two bad drives to start off the game, and then they had a good drive a productive drive once the Titans rotated out their starting defensive line and rotated in their backup defensive line that's Crawford and Tartt they were pretty bad in this game after Tartt had an encouraging performance against the Bears but maybe that's the offensive line difference there's just not enough speed-strength combinations on the Titans. The Titans have strength up front, and they have a speed-strength guy in Jadavion Clowney, of course.

We know that, Jeffrey Simmons. But at linebacker, Rashawn Evans is a strength guy, but he doesn't have functional speed in coverage. Jayon Brown is a speed guy, but his lack of strength in the run game is starting to get exposed. Kenny Vaccaro is a strong downhill pass, you know, run defender, and he'll hit you in the pass game, but he doesn't have sideline-to-sideline coverage ability. And Kevin Byard's, you know, athleticism is starting to slip a little bit as we get into the later portion of his career. I know it doesn't seem like that, but that is a reality here as he gets into his late 20s. So the Titans are just facing a talent deficit on defense that they

didn't think would be a reality going into the season. If the coaching isn't going to, if the coaching is what was elevating these guys, well that coaching with Kerry Coombs and Tyrell Williams is gone now. So the Titans are going to have to get some better talent if they're going to have to overcome the coaching deficit that the Titans are clearly facing right now. So they need either better talent or better coaching, one of the two. Plus, there's been tons of miscommunications. One of our Tic Tac four-pack plays I highlighted yesterday and in this week's Tic Tac film breakdown is that there was a miscommunication on defense in the fourth quarter that resulted

in a 40-yard play for the Colts offense. Just can't have stuff like that happening. If the Titans are going to be a Super Bowl contending team like they plan to be, you just simply can't have stuff like that happening. So miscommunications with alignment, miscommunications with assignment, miscommunications with coverage concept. Why are these things happening? That's a direct result of coaching,

and maybe Mike Grable not having a defensive coordinator is one of the reasons we're seeing some of that happen. And all I can say is, going back to the linebacker discussion, Jayon Brown was attacked and targeted by the Colts, and that's why the Titans made that change to bring Amani Hooker closer to the line of scrimmage to put Kenny Vaccaro in Rashawn Evans' linebacker spot and bring Amani Hooker onto the field.

The Titans are their best players in coverage. Kevin Byard and Jayon Brown are being targeted by other teams, and that simply can't be the case if the Titans want to have success. So we are going to move into some comments from some Titans assistant coaches. Might have just talked about those two assistant coaches in this segment as they discuss a schematic role change for a particular Titans defender before we get into that I want to tell you guys about Bilt Bar last time we had a deal going with Bilt Bar you guys sold out their inventory and that was just with their 12

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off your next order whether you use the promo code before or not and get a free cooler with your purchase while supplies last so once again use promo code locked on for 20% off at builtbar.com we got some quotes from some titans assistant coaches on tuesday and there was no video or no audio of this but we did get some of those quotes released on Twitter. So I want to talk about some of those revelations and some of the information that came out of some of those quotes. And we are going to start with something that I have been teasing throughout the show. And that is a defensive role change for a Titan starter on defense. And that is linebacker Rashawn Evans. And as I mentioned in our Rwatch Wednesday segment Rashaun Evans has just been terrible in pass coverage this year he's a liability and the Titans started making

changes in the second half against the Colts to get a Monty Hooker on the field more get you know Kenny Vaccaro in that linebacker spot more and pass coverage to take over for Rashawn Evans, but you don't want your first round pick from 2018 just not being on the field in passing situations. So how can the Titans get Rashawn Evans on the field? Well, one way is through the pass rush, and we've talked about this basically throughout Rashawn Evans' entire career. He started out at Alabama as a pass rusher and was eventually moved to an off-the-ball inside linebacker. So it is not something ridiculous to say when you talk about Rashawn Evans being a pass rusher for the Titans or getting more pass rush opportunities. And that would be a good way to keep him involved since he obviously can't help the Titans in pass coverage as an actual

off the ball linebacker. And it's not like the Titans pass rush has been fantastic. So the opportunities that he would be losing out on, I don't think could go to someone else and be more opportunistic. So it'd be a good way to get Rashawn Evans involved in a better way than what he is currently doing per pro football focus. He has a 55.4 coverage grade on the year and a 62.9 pass rush grade. So that's pretty good for Rashawn Evans, and he's better as a pass rusher than he is as a coverage linebacker. So that's something that we are going to watch.

And Jim Haslett actually had this to say about Rashawn Evans as a pass rusher. He said they're going to use Evans a bit more in the pass rush quote to get more sacks. He has good rush ability and can impact the game when he's doing those things. We try to move him around a bit and do different things with Rashawn. So that's something that Jim Haslett even talked about on Tuesday is that you know we're going to have to get Rashawn more involved in the pass rush not only to help the pass rush but also to help Rashawn Evans and looking at his you know pass rush grade I mean in 2018 when he was asked to pass rush a little bit more 58.1 pass rush grade so not terrible for an off the ball linebacker obviously not as consistent as you want it to be but against

Chicago at a 72.4 pass rush grade, so definitely something that they want to see with Evans more is him being used as a pass rusher and off the field when it comes to, or not off the field, but out of the middle of the field when it comes to pass coverage. A pass coverage linebacker who the Titans need to play better is Jayon Brown. Hazlitt had this to say about Jayon Brown on Tuesday. Said the Titans need to get him off the field more to rest him, but may need to watch his snaps at time. They use his unique skill set, and he plays a lot of snaps.

And that's true. Jayon Brown doesn't have a unique skill set in the sense of he has a good pass coverage, linebacker, or should be, but he has fallen off in that sense this year. And you have to wonder how much Hazlitt's coaching or lack thereof has contributed to that. So Jayon Brown clearly banged up, tired. That's something that I've noticed that shoulder injury from the playoffs last year has continued to follow him throughout this year.

And you could see him nursing it during games, but he's going to have to play better if he's out on the field. That's's all it really comes down to and then the final thing here is from Anthony Midgett and he talked about Malcolm Butler and also talked about some of the schematic things they're doing on defense in terms of their cornerback alignments and Midgett had this to say in terms of pressing wide receivers at the line of scrimmage quote we're asking the guys to be more aggressive in the back end. The last couple of weeks, the guys are doing more of that, but we will stress that along with being aware of what the down and distance is. Also, Midget talked about Malcolm Butler as a cornerback who's comfortable in press.

Also talked about Breon Borders playing some good press recently. And I agree that is something the Titans are going to have to do more of. They're going to have to challenge guys at the line of scrimmage and not give them such easy completions with those short intermediate routes. So that's something that the Titans, obviously, from a coaching staff perspective, are looking at as well. And that gives me some hope that things could possibly get better on defense. And if the offense can improve, the Titans can get back in a winning style of football here, get back on defense and if the offense can improve the Titans can get back in a winning

you know style of football here get back on the winning track but that's going to do it for our show today as always I am your host Tyler Rowland and this was Locked on Titans you