How much might Arthur Smith's departure hurt Tennessee?

[notthatbluestuff]

Is the offense set up to function at a high level without him? Is there a key assistant waiting in the wings to replace him? 

[JiffyJag]

Tough to say, but I've put in my resume, which pretty much just states that I have two plays that I want to run over and over:

 

Hand off to Derrick Henry OR run a play action pass

 

Every couple of attempts, I change the direction that the play runs in, but that's the gist. I have an interview at 4pm. 

[Calamity_Cometh]

I think they could benefit from a fresh mind.

From what I read from the Titans' playoff thread (great fanbase here by the way), the playcalling against the Ravens was... not good. Bashing Henry against a wall, not dialing up creative formations with Tannehill.

[Hunter2_1]

Early in the year I thought they'd massively miss him. 

The playoff game however, from a play calling POV, was pretty terrible and it wasn't indicative of a superbowl winning play caller.

 

Ravens were so obviously waiting for the run on early downs. Stacked boxes and no adjustments from Smith;

- Titans had 10 first downs in the first half and they ran on 80% of those plays, for 1.9 YPC. Completely predictable.

- Second drive was more passing (apparently it's a theme of Arthur's where he uses 2nd drive to throw more) and they went down the field on this one

- went away from it and called runs on early downs most of the remaining of game. 

- Week 11 vs Baltimore , Titans ran the ball 92% on first downs (11 runs, 1 pass), but Henry gained 5.1 YPC. 

- Don martindale was clearly waiting for this, and it was the exact same thing from TEN. Baltimore clamped down and knocked over 3 YPC off 

Edited January 15, 2021 by Hunter2_1

[Titansfan_13]

4 hours ago, Hunter2_1 said:

Early in the year I thought they'd massively miss him. 

The playoff game however, from a play calling POV, was pretty terrible and it wasn't indicative of a superbowl winning play caller.

 

Ravens were so obviously waiting for the run on early downs. Stacked boxes and no adjustments from Smith;

- Titans had 10 first downs in the first half and they ran on 80% of those plays, for 1.9 YPC. Completely predictable.

- Second drive was more passing (apparently it's a theme of Arthur's where he uses 2nd drive to throw more) and they went down the field on this one

- went away from it and called runs on early downs most of the remaining of game. 

- Week 11 vs Baltimore , Titans ran the ball 92% on first downs (11 runs, 1 pass), but Henry gained 5.1 YPC. 

- Don martindale was clearly waiting for this, and it was the exact same thing from TEN. Baltimore clamped down and knocked over 3 YPC off 

Yeah, both last year and this year we went super conservative in the playoffs. Which is great when your defense is playing well and Henry is hitting 5+ YPC. But when you don't make the adjustment to start passing when the other team loads the box to swarm Henry, no bueno.

[-Hope-]

arthur smith did a great job but he also had some serious, serious talent to work with, so i think we'll be ok. it's always tough to reproduce a top 5 offensive year and i don't think henry is gonna rush for 2k again lol, but don't have much reason to believe our offense will totally crater. there isn't an obvious guy on staff waiting in the wings to replace him, and to some extent that might be a good thing. i think we could stand to balance our offense out a little bit- there's no good reason to give henry 378 carries again next year and a new OC could help with that. arthur was really good overall and i don't want to undersell that, but he did tend to do some really infuriating stuff in big games, whether it was going hyper-conservative and pounding henry into oblivion or getting way too cute in straightforward situations. 

[SalvadorsDeli]

5 hours ago, Hunter2_1 said:

Early in the year I thought they'd massively miss him. 

The playoff game however, from a play calling POV, was pretty terrible and it wasn't indicative of a superbowl winning play caller.

 

Ravens were so obviously waiting for the run on early downs. Stacked boxes and no adjustments from Smith;

- Titans had 10 first downs in the first half and they ran on 80% of those plays, for 1.9 YPC. Completely predictable.

- Second drive was more passing (apparently it's a theme of Arthur's where he uses 2nd drive to throw more) and they went down the field on this one

- went away from it and called runs on early downs most of the remaining of game. 

- Week 11 vs Baltimore , Titans ran the ball 92% on first downs (11 runs, 1 pass), but Henry gained 5.1 YPC. 

- Don martindale was clearly waiting for this, and it was the exact same thing from TEN. Baltimore clamped down and knocked over 3 YPC off 

This isn't really the point of this thread but since we're talking about the playoff game - and this does somewhat get to Smith as a playcaller - is that probably the best thing that happened for the Ravens in terms of last weekend's matchup is that during the Titans win earlier in the season, we bottled Henry up for the majority of the game but wore down late and he went buck wild on us in the 4th quarter and OT and helped carry the Titans to victory. Seems pretty clear that Smith and the Titans were convinced he could and would do the same thing last weekend, no matter that we were stacking the box and our defensive line was AMPED for this game. They kept running Henry into a wall expecting we'd eventually wear down, but it didn't really work so the effect on the game really was just that we were able to get the Titans in a lot of 2nd and 3rd and longs and, the 1st quarter aside, our defense was able to dictate the game rather than the other way around. 

The funny thing is even though it didn't work, Smith wasn't really even THAT wrong with his faith in the running game. Henry was bottled up all game, and his longest run of the day was only 8 yards. BUT that 8 yard gain was one of his last touches of the game, in the 4th quarter, and on that run he moved the pile exactly the way as an opponent you never want him to, and if not for a hustle play/arm tackle from Derek Wolfe tripping him up at the last second, that run would have been a 50 yard TD run that would have given the Titans a 20-17 lead. Game of inches, truly. Of course, that 8 yard run was followed by 2 incomplete passes and then Vrabel's cowardly punt, and those playcalling decisions deserve every piece of criticism it gets. 

Edited January 15, 2021 by SalvadorsDeli

[Matts4313]

8 hours ago, Jaguarfan said:

Tough to say, but I've put in my resume, which pretty much just states that I have two plays that I want to run over and over:

 

Hand off to Derrick Henry OR run a play action pass

 

Every couple of attempts, I change the direction that the play runs in, but that's the gist. I have an interview at 4pm. 

So you plan on having a running game and utilize the most successful type of passing in NFL history. 

Why hasnt anyone thought of this before. 

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

44 minutes ago, Matts4313 said:

So you plan on having a running game and utilize the most successful type of passing in NFL history. 

Why hasnt anyone thought of this before. 

I think the trick is switching the sides you run the plays to. Everyone expects Derrick Henry to the right, but does anyone really expect Derrick Henry to the left???

[Hunter2_1]

14 hours ago, SalvadorsDeli said:

This isn't really the point of this thread but since we're talking about the playoff game - and this does somewhat get to Smith as a playcaller - is that probably the best thing that happened for the Ravens in terms of last weekend's matchup is that during the Titans win earlier in the season, we bottled Henry up for the majority of the game but wore down late and he went buck wild on us in the 4th quarter and OT and helped carry the Titans to victory. Seems pretty clear that Smith and the Titans were convinced he could and would do the same thing last weekend, no matter that we were stacking the box and our defensive line was AMPED for this game. They kept running Henry into a wall expecting we'd eventually wear down, but it didn't really work so the effect on the game really was just that we were able to get the Titans in a lot of 2nd and 3rd and longs and, the 1st quarter aside, our defense was able to dictate the game rather than the other way around. 

 

Definitely 

[berlin calling]

not more than the inevitable decline by Henry.