Week 7: Tennessee Titans (3-3) @ Cleveland Browns (0-6)

[KingTitan]

1 minute ago, titans0021 said:

I would be absolutely stunned if that was the case. I believe in one of PK's periscopes during camp, he mentioned something along the lines of a receiver clearly running the wrong route and Mariota still made a point to stick his hand out and try to take the blame. Even yesterday, when he threw it early and missed Matthews wide on a comebacker, you could clearly see Marcus telling Matthews that it was on him.

With that said, I can get the frustration when your coaching staff is constantly placing the blame on your positional group. Especially in the Twitter age, where fans see that and probably fire off garbage tweets without any fundamental understanding of the game.

I do feel like I recall Murlakey saying that Marcus missed some throws in the Colts game. Maybe I'm wrong. 
Ehh...
I don't care about the tweet personally. 

I'm ready to scrap our offense approach.  Same time I don't trust Marcus 100% yet to lay it at his feet. 

[SerenityNow]

Yeah our offense is just really stuck in the mud and a lot of that along with the play calling is on the scheme in general. We're so tied to these tight formations and the power football concept that it's literally destroying our entire offense. It's a horse that's been beat to death, but we still don't seem to have much interest in letting Marcus run the show by spreading out the offense even when our run game clearly isn't working and we're playing one of the worst secondaries in the league. I'll never understand that.

My biggest fear is that we're watching history repeat itself by wasting our franchise QB's best years just like we did to Steve.  We spent far too long tying Steve down to the power run scheme, rarely ever spread out the offense, and ran Eddie into the ground in the process. The game was still heavily run based back then, so it's more understandable, but that's even a bigger indictment on Mularkey and co. Our offense is stuck in the past, and our limited formations make it really hard for our receivers to succeed. Do guys need to be able to win in one on one coverage? Absolutely, but that's not going to happen every time especially when you're only running 2 WR sets. The coaches need to be able to scheme our guys open as well, but there isn't a lot of room for creativity in offensive scheming when all you run is tight formations. 

It's important to have a run/pass balance, but that doesn't mean that you cut your nose off to spite your face in the passing game. There is no reason why we shouldn't be letting Marcus go to work from the shotgun with 4-5 WR sets early and often throughout games especially with all of the new weapons that Jon brought in for the offense this year.  We can still get into the power formations that Mularkey loves throughout a game, but our QB is literally getting wasted in this offense. Did he make some bad throws yesterday? Absolutely, but with the current offensive set up he has to be damn near perfect to complete a pass not to mention the fact that he hardly passes throughout a game and when he does it's in terrible 3rd and 13 3rd and 16 situations. It's like telling a 3 point shooter in basketball not to take any shots throughout the game until you really need one in the clutch. Shooters just like QBs need some shots early to get a feel for the game. So, it's no surprise that Marcus missed some throws yesterday that he should've made. Those are on him, but I believe the playcalling had just as big of an affect on those throws as it did on the rest of the game in the grand scheme of things.

[TitanTuff]

Audibles. Let's get a few in our arsenal. If Marcus sees 8-9 men crowding the line, let's audible to hot routes/screens/pass plays. 

[Andrei01]

5 hours ago, SerenityNow said:

Yeah our offense is just really stuck in the mud and a lot of that along with the play calling is on the scheme in general. We're so tied to these tight formations and the power football concept that it's literally destroying our entire offense. It's a horse that's been beat to death, but we still don't seem to have much interest in letting Marcus run the show by spreading out the offense even when our run game clearly isn't working and we're playing one of the worst secondaries in the league. I'll never understand that.

My biggest fear is that we're watching history repeat itself by wasting our franchise QB's best years just like we did to Steve.  We spent far too long tying Steve down to the power run scheme, rarely ever spread out the offense, and ran Eddie into the ground in the process. The game was still heavily run based back then, so it's more understandable, but that's even a bigger indictment on Mularkey and co. Our offense is stuck in the past, and our limited formations make it really hard for our receivers to succeed. Do guys need to be able to win in one on one coverage? Absolutely, but that's not going to happen every time especially when you're only running 2 WR sets. The coaches need to be able to scheme our guys open as well, but there isn't a lot of room for creativity in offensive scheming when all you run is tight formations. 

It's important to have a run/pass balance, but that doesn't mean that you cut your nose off to spite your face in the passing game. There is no reason why we shouldn't be letting Marcus go to work from the shotgun with 4-5 WR sets early and often throughout games especially with all of the new weapons that Jon brought in for the offense this year.  We can still get into the power formations that Mularkey loves throughout a game, but our QB is literally getting wasted in this offense. Did he make some bad throws yesterday? Absolutely, but with the current offensive set up he has to be damn near perfect to complete a pass not to mention the fact that he hardly passes throughout a game and when he does it's in terrible 3rd and 13 3rd and 16 situations. It's like telling a 3 point shooter in basketball not to take any shots throughout the game until you really need one in the clutch. Shooters just like QBs need some shots early to get a feel for the game. So, it's no surprise that Marcus missed some throws yesterday that he should've made. Those are on him, but I believe the playcalling had just as big of an affect on those throws as it did on the rest of the game in the grand scheme of things.

I don't question that the gameplan and execution in this particular game sucked and almost ended up costing us what arguably should've been a more convincing win. But the problem I have with what you're saying, what 4-5 WRs do we even have on roster? Not counting Delanie, we have Matthews, Decker, Taylor and Weems healthy, if I'm not missing anyone. Is that really enough to spread the ball around effectively and as often as most of you are screaming for? I guess you may disagree, but I seriously doubt that. 

I also disagree 100% with the notion that they haven't been able to scheme guys open. If this offense were to rely solely on the WR's ability to get open by themselves, this would be a much uglier offense than you may argue it has already been this year. Again, I think this needs to be emphasized, we're talking about a group that consists of Rishard Matthews, Eric Decker, Taywan Taylor and Eric Weems (who we all know is basically a ST player). And we're talking about an offense that after seven weeks is ranked 13th in points scored per game, ahead of units like Seattle, Oakland, Atlanta or Pittsburgh. 11th in offense DVOA. Has it been pretty? I agree it hasn't, but after having the starting QB leave a game with an injury, miss an other and playing limited in at least one more, their record is above .500 and for better or worse, by most metrics this offense still has been able to perform better than most.

[SerenityNow]

4 hours ago, Andrei01 said:

I don't question that the gameplan and execution in this particular game sucked and almost ended up costing us what arguably should've been a more convincing win. But the problem I have with what you're saying, what 4-5 WRs do we even have on roster? Not counting Delanie, we have Matthews, Decker, Taylor and Weems healthy, if I'm not missing anyone. Is that really enough to spread the ball around effectively and as often as most of you are screaming for? I guess you may disagree, but I seriously doubt that. 

I also disagree 100% with the notion that they haven't been able to scheme guys open. If this offense were to rely solely on the WR's ability to get open by themselves, this would be a much uglier offense than you may argue it has already been this year. Again, I think this needs to be emphasized, we're talking about a group that consists of Rishard Matthews, Eric Decker, Taywan Taylor and Eric Weems (who we all know is basically a ST player). And we're talking about an offense that after seven wee-ks is ranked 13th in points scored per game, ahead of units like Seattle, Oakland, Atlanta or Pittsburgh. 11th in offense DVOA. Has it been pretty? I agree it hasn't, but after having the starting QB leave a game with an injury, miss an other and playing limited in at least one more, their record is above .500 and for better or worse, by most metrics this offense still has been able to perform better than most.

What's stopping us from lining up Delanie and Jonnu Smith at WR periodically throughout games when we want to spread out the offense? We don't have to throw Eric Weems out there , and I wasn't calling for that. We have two TEs in Delanie and Jonnu that are matchup problems against DBs and LBs. There's no reason that we can't get in that personnel grouping even without Corey.  It's about finding creative ways to use the personnel that we have and not pigeon holing ourselves to certain formations based off of the semantics that we don't want Weems out there playing receiver. Jon drafted Jonnu, because of his versatility. Just because he's listed as a TE on the depth chart doesn't mean we can't line him up as a WR in 4-5 WR sets along with Delanie. Literally every team does that throughout the league. Saying that we can't run 4-5 WR sets because of Eric Weems when we have the receiving TEs that we have is absolutely ridiculous. Matthews-Decker-Taywan-Delanie-Jonnu is a more than fine grouping when we want to get in the 4-5 WR grouping without Corey in the picture. If our coaching staff can't see that then we have bigger problems than we think.

I get the notion that a win is a win, and I'm as happy as anyone to be above .500, but the problem is if our offense refuses to adjust and spread things out we're ultimately not going to get to where we all want to get to (Playoffs/Super Bowl).  An offense like we saw Sunday that stays in those tight formations all game long and doesn't spread things out until we're in 3rd and long situations isn't going to beat any playoff teams. We're lucky that we were playing the Browns, because we would've gotten smoked against probably any other team in the league on Sunday. A win is great and the stats you throw out about offensive rankings are great, but a lack of creativity offensively along with a complete stubborn attitude not to adjust when the run game clearly isn't working throughout a game are going to come back and bite us against the better teams that we play throughout the rest of the year if we don't change.

[Andrei01]

1 hour ago, SerenityNow said:

What's stopping us from lining up Delanie and Jonnu Smith at WR periodically throughout games when we want to spread out the offense? We don't have to throw Eric Weems out there , and I wasn't calling for that. We have two TEs in Delanie and Jonnu that are matchup problems against DBs and LBs. There's no reason that we can't get in that personnel grouping even without Corey.  It's about finding creative ways to use the personnel that we have and not pigeon holing ourselves to certain formations based off of the semantics that we don't want Weems out there playing receiver. Jon drafted Jonnu, because of his versatility. Just because he's listed as a TE on the depth chart doesn't mean we can't line him up as a WR in 4-5 WR sets along with Delanie. Literally every team does that throughout the league. Saying that we can't run 4-5 WR sets because of Eric Weems when we have the receiving TEs that we have is absolutely ridiculous. Matthews-Decker-Taywan-Delanie-Jonnu is a more than fine grouping when we want to get in the 4-5 WR grouping without Corey in the picture. If our coaching staff can't see that then we have bigger problems than we think.

I get the notion that a win is a win, and I'm as happy as anyone to be above .500, but the problem is if our offense refuses to adjust and spread things out we're ultimately not going to get to where we all want to get to (Playoffs/Super Bowl).  An offense like we saw Sunday that stays in those tight formations all game long and doesn't spread things out until we're in 3rd and long situations isn't going to beat any playoff teams. We're lucky that we were playing the Browns, because we would've gotten smoked against probably any other team in the league on Sunday. A win is great and the stats you throw out about offensive rankings are great, but a lack of creativity offensively along with a complete stubborn attitude not to adjust when the run game clearly isn't working throughout a game are going to come back and bite us against the better teams that we play throughout the rest of the year if we don't change.

And we've seen Delanie being spread out wide, come on. We've seen Murray too in the past, for what it's worth. Maybe not so much Jonnu, who has been doing fine for what they asked him to do, but I guess you can still be free to use that as a reason for why Mularkey's system sucks and he can't adapt because he's not playing Jonnu in the the role that you envision for him. And no offense, while Mularkey (or Robiskie) may not be the two brightest minds in the league, I still trust their philosophy much more than your utopian version of what the offense could or should be.

And come on now, I can send you back to some of the last year's wins or Seattle this year that go against your claim that this offense is not capable of beating any playoff team. I've admitted that this performance wouldn't have gotten it done against any other team in the league, we've all agreed that this was a very poor performance. But as for the future, we'll eventually get Mariota, Murray and Delanie back to 100% and Davis back. Basically anything can happen in this league on any given Sunday. While it was definitely a very weak showing, in no way do I think it will define how the rest of the season will go.

[SerenityNow]

3 hours ago, Andrei01 said:

And we've seen Delanie being spread out wide, come on. We've seen Murray too in the past, for what it's worth. Maybe not so much Jonnu, who has been doing fine for what they asked him to do, but I guess you can still be free to use that as a reason for why Mularkey's system sucks and he can't adapt because he's not playing Jonnu in the the role that you envision for him. And no offense, while Mularkey (or Robiskie) may not be the two brightest minds in the league, I still trust their philosophy much more than your utopian version of what the offense could or should be.

And come on now, I can send you back to some of the last year's wins or Seattle this year that go against your claim that this offense is not capable of beating any playoff team. I've admitted that this performance wouldn't have gotten it done against any other team in the league, we've all agreed that this was a very poor performance. But as for the future, we'll eventually get Mariota, Murray and Delanie back to 100% and Davis back. Basically anything can happen in this league on any given Sunday. While it was definitely a very weak showing, in no way do I think it will define how the rest of the season will go.

You're obviously not really understanding what I'm getting at. First of all, I never said that Mularkey's system sucked. I said that right now our offense is stuck in the mud, because we're so hooked on running out of tight formations instead of mixing it up with different formations and creating more of a balance between the run and the pass. I'm not asking to throw the ball 50 times a game. I get establishing the run, and I believe in it, but when it's not working you have to adjust. You can personally attack my vision of what the offense could be if you want to though that's fine. I just believe that we have a QB that could be one of the best in the league if our coaching staff would mix things up more, and it pains me to see us beat our head against a wall with the run game over and over against a team that is stout against the run and poor against the pass like the Browns were. But you can keep blindly believing that Mularkey and Robiskie are letting this offense play to their full potential right now.

Last year was last year. I never said that we couldn't beat playoff teams, but with where the team is at Right Now we won't be beating many if any if we don't get more of a balance going offensively. Last year we had one of the best Red Zone offenses in the league. This year we don't. Last year we had one of the best run blocking TEs in the league in Anthony Fasano that was a HUGE underrated aspect of our run game that helped us to have so much success. This year we don't.  I agree that when everybody gets healthy we'll hopefully see a better more balanced offensive showing, but if we continue on this track that we're on now offensively it's going to be awfully difficult to beat the upper echelon teams in the league if they stack the box on us and we continue to try to pound the ball up the middle over and over and over again especially if we continue to struggle in the red zone.  Hopefully Corey Davis coming back will help to open up things in the pass game more, but we'll see.

[Andrei01]

4 minutes ago, SerenityNow said:

You're obviously not really understanding what I'm getting at. First of all, I never said that Mularkey's system sucked. I said that right now our offense is stuck in the mud, because we're so hooked on running out of tight formations instead of mixing it up with different formations and creating more of a balance between the run and the pass. I'm not asking to throw the ball 50 times a game. I get establishing the run, and I believe in it, but when it's not working you have to adjust. You can personally attack my vision of what the offense could be if you want to though that's fine. I just believe that we have a QB that could be one of the best in the league if our coaching staff would mix things up more, and it pains me to see us beat our head against a wall with the run game over and over against a team that is stout against the run and poor against the pass like the Browns were. But you can keep blindly believing that Mularkey and Robiskie are letting this offense play to their full potential right now.

Last year was last year. I never said that we couldn't beat playoff teams, but with where the team is at Right Now we won't be beating many if any if we don't get more of a balance going offensively. Last year we had one of the best Red Zone offenses in the league. This year we don't. Last year we had one of the best run blocking TEs in the league in Anthony Fasano that was a HUGE underrated aspect of our run game that helped us to have so much success. This year we don't.  I agree that when everybody gets healthy we'll hopefully see a better more balanced offensive showing, but if we continue on this track that we're on now offensively it's going to be awfully difficult to beat the upper echelon teams in the league if they stack the box on us and we continue to try to pound the ball up the middle over and over and over again especially if we continue to struggle in the red zone.  Hopefully Corey Davis coming back will help to open up things in the pass game more, but we'll see.

First of all, you can't go from saying I'm misinterpreting or not understanding your points to doing the same exact thing with mine. I don't think I'm blindly believing anything. We've seen both good and both bad from this offense. It's not a perfect system, it has its flaws and I get that it's not the most eye pleasing type of offense you can find. It has worked, though, beautifully too I might add on a bunch of occasions. Last year, as well as this year. I've already said multiple times and I don't think anyone has disputed the fact that running the ball as much as they have in the Cleveland game was a mistake and the overall performance was incredibly poor. Again, no one has or is disputing that.

I got what you were saying all the way, I just don't really agree with it. Walker has been used as a WR. I don't know the rate for that, I don't have access to PFF numbers who IIRC count the amount of snaps someone's lining up in the slot, outside, as a TE, etc. Also, it's not my place (and I don't believe it's yours either) to judge what Jonnu can be in this offense. We don't have the right personnel right now to spread the ball more even if they wanted to, that's my belief. Nor do I believe it's necessarily a negative they're not looking to spread it out as much as you or some of the other fans would like to see them do. The whole concept that you begin to spread it out and open up the playbook when you have to convert on a longer down or are trailing is not something that Mularkey or Robiskie has invented.

For what it's worth, we punted three times in the regular time, two of those on the last two possessions, one drive basically being ended with Marcus taking the sack and the other one ended after three pass attempts with 40-something seconds left in the game. While I do 100% agree that it was a terrible performance, at no point in the game other than maybe OT I imagine they felt the pressure to switch something up radically because if not for some hiccups on the execution part (Marcus' pass and the goal line stand itself, Decker's drop that would have put us in FG range, slightly underthrown ball on that breakup pass attempted to Delanie in the endzone), things would've worked out a bit differently.

Also, this team right now is a bit affected or limited by injuries, and because most NFL games don't look much alike from one week to another, I don't think the Cleveland performance paints the right picture of this team either. I do agree that time will tell, though.

[KingTitan]

 

[TitanLegend]

30 minutes ago, KingTitan said:

 

There were a couple plays where he didn't see Matthews get open. Especially on the first OT drive.

Mariota has certainly had better days. Watching the game in all-22 makes you appreciate that maybe the play calling(while still not ideal by any means) wasn't quite as bad as some posters here might make you believe. Mariota, Murray and Henry left so many plays on the field.

[SerenityNow]

26 minutes ago, Andrei01 said:

First of all, you can't go from saying I'm misinterpreting or not understanding your points to doing the same exact thing with mine. I don't think I'm blindly believing anything. We've seen both good and both bad from this offense. It's not a perfect system, it has its flaws and I get that it's not the most eye pleasing type of offense you can find. It has worked, though, beautifully too I might add on a bunch of occasions. Last year, as well as this year. I've already said multiple times and I don't think anyone has disputed the fact that running the ball as much as they have in the Cleveland game was a mistake and the overall performance was incredibly poor. Again, no one has or is disputing that.

I got what you were saying all the way, I just don't really agree with it. Walker has been used as a WR. I don't know the rate for that, I don't have access to PFF numbers who IIRC count the amount of snaps someone's lining up in the slot, outside, as a TE, etc. Also, it's not my place (and I don't believe it's yours either) to judge what Jonnu can be in this offense. We don't have the right personnel right now to spread the ball more even if they wanted to, that's my belief. Nor do I believe it's necessarily a negative they're not looking to spread it out as much as you or some of the other fans would like to see them do. The whole concept that you begin to spread it out and open up the playbook when you have to convert on a longer down or are trailing is not something that Mularkey or Robiskie has invented.

For what it's worth, we punted three times in the regular time, two of those on the last two possessions, one drive basically being ended with Marcus taking the sack and the other one ended after three pass attempts with 40-something seconds left in the game. While I do 100% agree that it was a terrible performance, at no point in the game other than maybe OT I imagine they felt the pressure to switch something up radically because if not for some hiccups on the execution part (Marcus' pass and the goal line stand itself, Decker's drop that would have put us in FG range, slightly underthrown ball on that breakup pass attempted to Delanie in the endzone), things would've worked out a bit differently.

Also, this team right now is a bit affected or limited by injuries, and because most NFL games don't look much alike from one week to another, I don't think the Cleveland performance paints the right picture of this team either. I do agree that time will tell, though.

Yeah I was actually a big fan of Robiskie and what he was doing with the offense for the majority of last year. I thought we had a great balance for the majority of the year, and I believe that Mularkey/Robiskie's scheme can work when we have a nice balance and mix up our formations.  I think that's part of what is frustrating me now.  We have the formations already in place within our offense to spread things out when we want to, but I think you're right. The injuries particularly to Corey are probably holding us back from spreading it out more often. I'd just like to get to that more early in games and on earlier downs just to give our offense more versatility and allow Marcus to get in more of a rhythm. I think when our run game is struggling we should reverse things and use the pass to open up the run rather than continuously pounding it and only opening it up on 3rd and long. I think that's just making our offense one dimensional and making it harder for Marcus and our receivers to succeed. We have a bye week to hopefully adjust some things and hopefully by Baltimore that balance that made our offense successful last year is back. 

[-Hope-]

22 minutes ago, TitanLegend said:

There were a couple plays where he didn't see Matthews get open. Especially on the first OT drive.

Mariota has certainly had better days. Watching the game in all-22 makes you appreciate that maybe the play calling(while still not ideal by any means) wasn't quite as bad as some posters here might make you believe. Mariota, Murray and Henry left so many plays on the field.

sort of have to wonder if some combination of the broken fibula recovery + the current hamstring injury is still affecting his ability to be comfortable in the pocket - abandoning reads too early to avoid pressure that isn't there, etc

[renndawg37]

I just want to see us spread it out. So, so tired of this terrible offensive "scheme". 

[KingTitan]

30 minutes ago, renndawg37 said:

I just want to see us spread it out. So, so tired of this terrible offensive "scheme". 

While I am going toward this more and more.  
Games like this past week let me know it's not all the scheme.  He missed throws and missed guys open. 
We passed the ball 34 times. So it's not like we are sitting on the ball.  
Spread it out and passing the ball are two different things, but at the same time it isn't like we are just running all day and night. Mariota as a passer still needs work and giving him all the passes in the world isn't exactly comforting either.  Needs to develop a little more.

[Mesa_Titan]

1 hour ago, KingTitan said:

While I am going toward this more and more.  
Games like this past week let me know it's not all the scheme.  He missed throws and missed guys open. 
We passed the ball 34 times. So it's not like we are sitting on the ball.  
Spread it out and passing the ball are two different things, but at the same time it isn't like we are just running all day and night. Mariota as a passer still needs work and giving him all the passes in the world isn't exactly comforting either.  Needs to develop a little more.

We also we're way too predicable. We ran the ball on first down. 18 times to 10 passes, and a ton of those runs on first down came when we already knew we weren't running the ball well. That's not something I want to see. If the run isn't working, especially with how badly it wasn't working, they need to adjust, quickly.