Texans make Titans go back to square one

[deeluxx3]

I’m disgusted. Livid. Frustrated, apathetic and numb. The Titans jumped out to a 10-0 lead in a must-win divisional road game against the Houston Texans after failing to show up for a must-win divisional road game against the Indianapolis Colts. The lead was erased in a matter of moments, en route to a 34-17 blowout win for Houston. Our too-good-to-be-true defense, once ranked #1 in scoring, showed their true colors as Deshaun Watson and Lamar Miller took turns making big plays. The offense showed promise early on, only to be completely let down by an incompetent offensive line and even more incompetent playcalling.  

Shut it down. Tear it all apart. Start from scratch. I don’t know how drastic of measures this team needs to take to shake off the stench of losing and mediocrity that’s plagued them over the past decade, but something simply isn’t working.

Jon Robinson. Ohh, Jonny Rob. Where do I begin? While his seat certainly should not feel warm, several of his offseason decisions were simply atrocious and have proven to be detrimental to the team. Lucrative contracts gifted to Josh Klein, DaQuan Jones and Malcom Butler all seem like mistakes at this point. Klein has been the offense’s most glaring weak-link, Jones has been a ghost and the position Butler plays makes his maddeningly inconsistent play even more of a liability for the team. Robinson’s decision to not add skill position reinforcements on offense –  other than Dion Lewis, who has seemed to plateau, and a handful of UDFAs – has left the Titans fielding an offense of no-names. You cannot predict losing Delanie Walker and Rishard Matthews weeks into the season, but you also could not have gone into the season thinking our offensive roster was just a coaching-change away from being NFL-caliber. Defensively, Robinson missed signs from last year that Derrick Morgan and Brian Orakpo were on their last legs, as if their respective ages didn’t make that clear. While Jurrell Casey has been fantastic as always, any sort of push elsewhere on the defensive line is simply non-existent. Bennie Logan was a bad signing and can we all just move on now from Austin Johnson?

I’m willing to forgive growing pains with the coaching staff, but perhaps my charity is influenced by the holiday season. Mike Vrabel is a leader of men, that much is clear, but has been either unable or unwilling to establish an identity for this team. As misguided as Mularkey’s “exotic smashmouth” was, we consistently trotted that offense onto the field for 3-and-out after 3-and-out. Vrabel has refused to pull the reigns in on dangerously fickle Matt LeFleur and, perhaps even more concerning, has validated LeFleur’s most bizarre playcalls to date. While throwing LeFleur under the bus is the last and worst thing Vrabel could do, telling the media that he was confident in the Stocker 4^th-and-1 rush based on film is a harrowing quote. Has Vrabel confused “innovative” for “simply reckless”? Don’t answer that.

The 2018 Tennessee Titans are a bad team. We won’t run the table and clinch a playoff spot. We might beat the Jets this Sunday, and maybe even a couple other of the “bad teams” we play to close out the season. But we’ll lose to at least one of them, as well, and that’ll be enough to finally douse the hopes of even the most naively optimistic fans. I’ve been burnt by this team several times the year, as I have been before and will certainly be again in the future. Now, I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders with my loss of faith in this team. Whether it’s due to the squad that Robinson has built or the decisions that Vrabel doesn’t make, this up-and-down season is over and I, for one, am relieved to be off the roller coaster.

[Andrei01]

Here are my two cents.

First, J Rob. With the luxury of hindsight, has he made mistakes? Absolutely. But it's important to give context. He gave a multi-year deal to Kline, that looks bad. Thing is, we could get out of that contract this next offseason and save back the cap. Not that we're in cap trouble right now or anything, but you get the point. Plus everyone thought the fit of him in the new scheme was going to be so great. The same transition wasn't supposed to be easy on Spain, for example, who would've thought that at this point in the season he would turn out to be our best OL? I guess you expect godly things and abilities out of the people making these decisions on an NFL roster, but guess what, no one is 100% right on evaluating players. Important thing is we could still very well move on from Kline this offseason.

He didn't add weapons for Mariota. Fine, again, in hindsight that's a season costly mistake. But I'd have a hard time believing it wasn't a pretty much consensus feeling that a healthy Davis, Matthews and Taylor plus Walker and what was supposed to be an on-the-rise Jonnu Smith is more than a good enough WR corps. He could've added more bodies, sure, but with not a lot of Draft picks to work with, he focused on the most pressing needs as he has always done since he came here, inside and outside linebacker. He ignored the aging of Rak and Morgan? How? He drafted Landry pretty high, for now at least that looks like a hit. He then trades for Correa to provide depth and experience in the system. Could've he had done more? Maybe, but how much do you really expect the guy to invest into a position he already has two starters signed and healthy?

Was giving Butler that big deal a mistake? I guess you could argue that, after all it may very well turn out to be the biggest miss on his resume. But it's also fair to admit that he's not really as bad as his numbers may suggest or as some people may believe him to be. Has he given up big plays? Well, sure, it's the nature of the position that even the top players will give up those. This is still a much, much improved secondary from the not-so-long-ago days when we were fielding the likes of Perrish Cox, McCain or Antwon Blake and for better or worse, he's helping with that.

What I will add is this: we may very well have finished our season relatively too early in the season, and it hurts that it took two blowout losses to division rivals for it to come to an end. But I don't agree that this is a bad team. Just highly inconsistent and not nearly mature enough to sustain any level of success. But I refuse to believe that any bad team would pull off a win on Texans with a backup quarterback, would basically dominate the Patriots, win in Dallas and come back to beat the still reigning SB champs in the manner we did. We're just not as close to it as we might've imagined, but even right now, you'd have a very difficult time making me to believe that this team is not heading into the right direction.

[deeluxx3]

23 minutes ago, Andrei01 said:

Here are my two cents.

First, J Rob. With the luxury of hindsight, has he made mistakes? Absolutely. But it's important to give context. He gave a multi-year deal to Kline, that looks bad. Thing is, we could get out of that contract this next offseason and save back the cap. Not that we're in cap trouble right now or anything, but you get the point. Plus everyone thought the fit of him in the new scheme was going to be so great. The same transition wasn't supposed to be easy on Spain, for example, who would've thought that at this point in the season he would turn out to be our best OL? I guess you expect godly things and abilities out of the people making these decisions on an NFL roster, but guess what, no one is 100% right on evaluating players. Important thing is we could still very well move on from Kline this offseason.

He didn't add weapons for Mariota. Fine, again, in hindsight that's a season costly mistake. But I'd have a hard time believing it wasn't a pretty much consensus feeling that a healthy Davis, Matthews and Taylor plus Walker and what was supposed to be an on-the-rise Jonnu Smith is more than a good enough WR corps. He could've added more bodies, sure, but with not a lot of Draft picks to work with, he focused on the most pressing needs as he has always done since he came here, inside and outside linebacker. He ignored the aging of Rak and Morgan? How? He drafted Landry pretty high, for now at least that looks like a hit. He then trades for Correa to provide depth and experience in the system. Could've he had done more? Maybe, but how much do you really expect the guy to invest into a position he already has two starters signed and healthy?

Was giving Butler that big deal a mistake? I guess you could argue that, after all it may very well turn out to be the biggest miss on his resume. But it's also fair to admit that he's not really as bad as his numbers may suggest or as some people may believe him to be. Has he given up big plays? Well, sure, it's the nature of the position that even the top players will give up those. This is still a much, much improved secondary from the not-so-long-ago days when we were fielding the likes of Perrish Cox, McCain or Antwon Blake and for better or worse, he's helping with that.

What I will add is this: we may very well have finished our season relatively too early in the season, and it hurts that it took two blowout losses to division rivals for it to come to an end. But I don't agree that this is a bad team. Just highly inconsistent and not nearly mature enough to sustain any level of success. But I refuse to believe that any bad team would pull off a win on Texans with a backup quarterback, would basically dominate the Patriots, win in Dallas and come back to beat the still reigning SB champs in the manner we did. We're just not as close to it as we might've imagined, but even right now, you'd have a very difficult time making me to believe that this team is not heading into the right direction.

all great and fair points! I wanted to go scorched earth for this week's article...tensions are high!!!