AFC South Discussion Thread

[KingTitan]

3 minutes ago, titans0021 said:

We have a +6 point differential against three average to bad teams. If that has you feeling comfortable, great. I have high hopes for this team, the way we’ve played the last three weeks simply isn’t good enough to beat top teams.

I’m certainly not panicking, sloppy early season wins are just fine. But we need to play better if we don’t want to lose the next two weeks. Fortunately, I believe we are entirely capable of that.

Maybe I misread. 
But naw, I'm not feeling comfortable or great. I'm feeling good.  
Games we would have complained about a year or two ago about the "Same ol' Titans"  and losing a close game, we are winning right now. I'm happy about that. 
If the season goes well, nobody is going to look back at the 3-0 start and say, dang we in the AFC Championship game, but them early wins were _____.

As long as they find ways to win,  you won't find me notching too much in the complaint column. 

Improvements are needed badly. But I also don't think the team should apologize for how they won or who the won against. 

[KingTitan]

7 minutes ago, -Hope- said:

cornerback health issues aside, we have the talent to hang with anyone. it really shouldn't be controversial to understand that (at least on defense) we haven't come anywhere close to playing up to that talent, which could be a serious problem moving forward.

The blueprint I hope we follow is the same as last year's Chiefs.  Minus having the best QB in the league, we are a decent offense now. 
Chiefs last year had some rough, ROUGH defensive outings. But they tightened up after week 13 as the season went on and they made plays when they needed, despite giving up early leads.

[Titans fan 617]

Pats blew out a healthy Steelers team and a crappy Dolphins team to start the year last year and then got ran over by Henry for 4 quarters of football in January so I really don’t care how much we win by right now just as long as we keep winning 

I’m hoping that by the end of the year we are still winning games but have cleaned up the sloppiness but for now just keep winning 

[twotonebluenation]

Damn. Looks like the Colts rank at the top in most defensive numbers. I wonder if the numbers tell the truth. I know they have not played the best teams but the stats are interesting.

[TitanSS]

The point isn't that we're not happy with winning close games and that we want blowouts.

The point is that if you are forecasting the strength of your team in terms of predicting the outcome of future games, the quality of football being played is more important than whether or not you won or lost. As Daniel noted, these 1-2 point games generally trend towards being 50/50 over time and we've just been on the lucky side of the coin flip at least 2 weeks in a row.

That doesn't mean I'm any less happy with our wins than anyone else. It only means that you can get a sense of how strong your football team is by watching them play and completely ignoring our record.

Getting lucky and barely scraping by against really bad football teams early in the season doesn't exactly forecast a really good football team. That is the point being made and pointing out how other teams got better in previous seasons doesn't really change that. We may get better, and we may not, but that's not something we can predict and it really doesn't have anything to do with our team in the current season. 

It's not being pessimistic. It's being objective.

[KingTitan]

9 minutes ago, TitanSS said:

The point isn't that we're not happy with winning close games and that we want blowouts.

The point is that if you are forecasting the strength of your team in terms of predicting the outcome of future games, the quality of football being played is more important than whether or not you won or lost. As Daniel noted, these 1-2 point games generally trend towards being 50/50 over time and we've just been on the lucky side of the coin flip at least 2 weeks in a row.

That doesn't mean I'm any less happy with our wins than anyone else. It only means that you can get a sense of how strong your football team is by watching them play and completely ignoring our record.

Getting lucky and barely scraping by against really bad football teams early in the season doesn't exactly forecast a really good football team. That is the point being made and pointing out how other teams got better in previous seasons doesn't really change that. We may get better, and we may not, but that's not something we can predict and it really doesn't have anything to do with our team in the current season. 

It's not being pessimistic. It's being objective.

I think it can go the other way.  lol

Just like we can't know if we are really a good team or not, we don't know if the Vikings or Jags are really bad teams, can we???
Broncos and injuries aside aren't scrubs.
Jags are a better team this year.
Vikings have talent to do things, as we saw. 

 

I know we need something to talk about. lol But I truly think it's a wait and see what happens.

[TitanSS]

1 minute ago, KingTitan said:

I think it can go the other way.  lol

Just like we can't know if we are really a good team or not, we don't know if the Vikings or Jags are really bad teams, can we???
Broncos and injuries aside aren't scrubs.
Jags are a better team this year.
Vikings have talent to do things, as we saw. 

 

I know we need something to talk about. lol But I truly think it's a wait and see what happens.

I think we all know how good the Broncos and the Jaguars are.  Young QBs are a great story, and they sometimes have good games, but neither of them were going to be a playoff team. The Vikings may be better than they have let on this season, but no Kirk Cousins lead team should every be unstoppable on offense and they looked awful last week. It's not a coincidence that every offense we play looks outstanding against us. Even the Broncos stopped themselves with wide-open drops by Jeudy.  

Again, I'm not saying that we won't get better in 8 weeks. I'm just saying you can look at the performances we've put out there and tell that we're not playing very well defensively. It's not exactly a hard conclusion to come to. The performances we have given are not indicative of good football teams. It needs to be fixed or we'll be 3-3 in a few weeks as the schedule toughens up.

[twotonebluenation]

4 minutes ago, TitanSS said:

The point isn't that we're not happy with winning close games and that we want blowouts.

The point is that if you are forecasting the strength of your team in terms of predicting the outcome of future games, the quality of football being played is more important than whether or not you won or lost. As Daniel noted, these 1-2 point games generally trend towards being 50/50 over time and we've just been on the lucky side of the coin flip at least 2 weeks in a row.

That doesn't mean I'm any less happy with our wins than anyone else. It only means that you can get a sense of how strong your football team is by watching them play and completely ignoring our record.

Getting lucky and barely scraping by against really bad football teams early in the season doesn't exactly forecast a really good football team. That is the point being made and pointing out how other teams got better in previous seasons doesn't really change that. We may get better, and we may not, but that's not something we can predict and it really doesn't have anything to do with our team in the current season. 

It's not being pessimistic. It's being objective.

I totally get this. Do I hate the stress of grind out games every week, yes. Especially when I feel we could be blowing out these teams. I do have concerns about our run AND pass defense. Honestly luck has not been on our side when it comes to injuries. I really do think having Adoree and AJ back will shore up some of these things. They may just be two players but they are two players that I truly believe can flip the game with a catch or just shoring up one side of the defense. I think AJ is the type of player that if we had him out there against the Vikings, maybe those 3 first field goals at least one of them would have been a touchdown, that can totally change the momentum of the game. I don't get mad about objectivity, I welcome that, but when you see the thread full of "same old blah blah titans" "worst defense in the world" "same old field goal titans offense after one drive" its a bit spastic and pessimistic. The defense has to get there ish together, this is a major part of our schedule, we cant afford to lose all three of these next games. I see us going 2-1 in the next three. 1-2 at worst, and that leaves us at 4-2. (Lets hope that win comes against Houston!) Which is not bad. Then we face the Bengals, Bears, and Colts, out of bye which are very winnable that could get us to 7-2. A lot of things can change and we have a lot of things to get better with, but Vrabel has earned my respect that in that I think he isn't that stubborn that he would let our defense continue to bleed out under his play calling.

[deeluxx3]

12 minutes ago, TitanSS said:

I think we all know how good the Broncos and the Jaguars are.  Young QBs are a great story, and they sometimes have good games, but neither of them were going to be a playoff team. The Vikings may be better than they have let on this season, but no Kirk Cousins lead team should every be unstoppable on offense and they looked awful last week. It's not a coincidence that every offense we play looks outstanding against us. Even the Broncos stopped themselves with wide-open drops by Jeudy.  

Again, I'm not saying that we won't get better in 8 weeks. I'm just saying you can look at the performances we've put out there and tell that we're not playing very well defensively. It's not exactly a hard conclusion to come to. The performances we have given are not indicative of good football teams. It needs to be fixed or we'll be 3-3 in a few weeks as the schedule toughens up.

It's week 3 and we're ironing a ton of stuff out after a non-existent offseason. Plus, 2 of those games were on the road

It's a cliche, but there's so much truth to "any given sunday." Arizona looked hot as can be, and they just lost to Detroit. Philly cannot buy a win. Chicago is somehow 3-0 and just benched Mitch.

winning is hard in this fickle league. We're far from a finished product and clearly haven't come close to playing our best football on both sides of the ball. To be 3-0 at this point shows a resilient team who comes together and keeps fighting. That's very telling

[TitanSlim]

It’s funny. If Gostkowski hits his FGs in Denver and Clowney doesn’t get that penalty on the pick six and we convert just one of those FG ending drives into a TD, we’re talking about double digit wins in 2 out of our 3 wins. A 26-14 win against the Broncos and 42-30 win against the Vikings (both on the road) has a completely different feel.

We’d still be talking about the defensive concerns of course but the conversation and mood would be totally different. 

 

Edited September 28, 2020 by TitanSlim

[TitanSS]

8 minutes ago, TitanSlim said:

It’s funny. If Gostkowski hits his FGs in Denver and Clowney doesn’t get that penalty on the pick six and we convert just one of those FG ending drives into a TD, we’re talking about double digit wins in 2 out of our 3 wins. A 26-14 win against the Broncos and 42-30 win against the Vikings (both on the road) has a completely different feel.

We’d still be talking about the defensive concerns of course but the conversation and mood would be totally different. 

 

If Tannehill's easy pick isn't dropped on the game-winning drive yesterday, if Myles Jack isn't called for a basically non-existent DPI on our game-winning drive last week, if Gos doesn't shake off the jitters and finally hit a FG in week 1, we're looking at 0-3.

You can do the shoulda, woulda, couldas either way, but they're not changing how much we've left to be desired in terms of playing like a top football team. We've played like an average football team, nothing more, and could see major regression when we see an increase in the quality of our opponents.

I'm very happy to be 3-0, but I'm not gonna pretend I'm blind just because I was happy with the outcome.

Edited September 28, 2020 by TitanSS

[TitanSS]

13 minutes ago, deeluxx3 said:

It's week 3 and we're ironing a ton of stuff out after a non-existent offseason. Plus, 2 of those games were on the road

It's a cliche, but there's so much truth to "any given sunday." Arizona looked hot as can be, and they just lost to Detroit. Philly cannot buy a win. Chicago is somehow 3-0 and just benched Mitch.

winning is hard in this fickle league. We're far from a finished product and clearly haven't come close to playing our best football on both sides of the ball. To be 3-0 at this point shows a resilient team who comes together and keeps fighting. That's very telling

Chicago is 3-0. Who among us is thinking to themselves "Oh they've managed to overcome so much adversity and still be 3-0 against 3 opponents without a victory. They're going to be really tough to beat this year"?

Probably none of us. There probably isn't a person here who's looking at Chicago being 3-0 against 3 winless teams and thinking how good they are going to be going forward. I'm sure we're all expecting their record to regress to what their talent is when they actually play a decent football team.

3-0 is impressive in a vacuum, but nothing in the NFL is in a vacuum, and just like their record we have to put ours into perspective when gauging how strong our team is.

Edited September 28, 2020 by TitanSS

[deeluxx3]

2 minutes ago, TitanSS said:

Chicago is 3-0. Who among us is thinking to themselves "Oh they've managed to overcome so much adversity and still be 3-0 against 3 opponents without a victory. They're going to be really tough to beat this year"?

Probably none of us. There probably isn't a person here who's looking at Chicago being 3-0 against 3 winless teams and thinking how good they are going to be going forward. I'm sure we're all expecting their record to regress to what their talent is when they actually play a decent football team.

3-0 is impressive in a vacuum, but nothing in the NFL is in a vacuum, and just like their record we have to put ours into perspective when gauging how strong our team is.

My point is more around how much things can change week-to-week in the NFL and how fickle it is, so that a team like Chicago can come back by like 17 and beat Detroit with Mitch Trubisky and then two weeks later Detroit beats a "hot" Arizona team

We're a good football team that's not playing good football right now. For us to be 3-0 and winning the way we've been winning shows that we're resilient, stick to the gameplan, and know how to execute when we need to. Those are positive takeaways.

Could a "good" team show up and beat us to a pulp? Sure. It most certainly will happen. But I don't see a reason not to think this team won't get it together and clean fixable things up -- ie the run defense -- when playoff push time arrives

 

I'm not saying or insinuating you're saying the sky is falling, but the sky isn't falling here, guys. And anyone who thinks that "Pitt is def going to kill us" is a clown because it's not like they've been blowing out the teams they've faced.

[TitanSS]

1 minute ago, deeluxx3 said:

My point is more around how much things can change week-to-week in the NFL and how fickle it is, so that a team like Chicago can come back by like 17 and beat Detroit with Mitch Trubisky and then two weeks later Detroit beats a "hot" Arizona team

We're a good football team that's not playing good football right now. For us to be 3-0 and winning the way we've been winning shows that we're resilient, stick to the gameplan, and know how to execute when we need to. Those are positive takeaways.

Could a "good" team show up and beat us to a pulp? Sure. It most certainly will happen. But I don't see a reason not to think this team won't get it together and clean fixable things up -- ie the run defense -- when playoff push time arrives

 

I'm not saying or insinuating you're saying the sky is falling, but the sky isn't falling here, guys. And anyone who thinks that "Pitt is def going to kill us" is a clown because it's not like they've been blowing out the teams they've faced.

It's not that I don't believe we can't clean things up either, but there are simply a large number of things that need to be fixed before we're at that level and we are very fortunate to have had the schedule that we've had for 3 weeks as opposed to the Texans who are on the opposite side of that spectrum. These mistakes + quality opponents = losses.

Pitt has holes as well and with Tannehill and the O playing as well as they are we can compete in most games, but consistently winning in shootouts is hard to do in the NFL and if we force our offense to play that way we'll start to see more losses.

[Titansfan_13]

38 minutes ago, deeluxx3 said:

It's week 3 and we're ironing a ton of stuff out after a non-existent offseason. Plus, 2 of those games were on the road

 

winning is hard in this fickle league. We're far from a finished product and clearly haven't come close to playing our best football on both sides of the ball. To be 3-0 at this point shows a resilient team who comes together and keeps fighting. That's very telling

I think this is being extremely overlooked. We had a ridiculously short off season compared to normal, and we changed DC which compounds the difficulty I think. Even if Vrabel is using the same playbook as Peas, he didn't have 4 preseason games to get a rhythm down and whatnot for how he would manage everything and make adjustments.