Week1 GDT:Cardinals(0-0)at Titans(0-0)

[KingTitan]

1 minute ago, titans0021 said:

We should be throwing to set up the run. If team’s want to stack the box right out the gate (like Arizona did today), come out and attack them outside and down field. I had kind of hoped that was the point of the Julio trade. Force teams to play two-deep and then bludgeon them with Henry. And when they start creeping back up, hit them with the PA. 

We did the Cardinals a giant favor by plowing into crowded boxes and only throwing on obvious passing downs for the first 20+ minutes. 

Today I really felt like (for the first time) Tanny isn't the guy to lead us to the promise land. Teams still not afraid of him throwing on us even with Julio and AJ on the outside and today really proved that to be true. 
I don't know if it's the offense scheme or him, but the didn't look comfortable at all. He should have had maybe 3 INTs with some of his throws.
His pass to AJ for the TD was close to being an INT if Budda breaks differently. 

[titans0021]

3 minutes ago, titans0021 said:

We should be throwing to set up the run. If team’s want to stack the box right out the gate (like Arizona did today), come out and attack them outside and down field. I had kind of hoped that was the point of the Julio trade. Force teams to play two-deep and then bludgeon them with Henry. And when they start creeping back up, hit them with the PA. 

We did the Cardinals a giant favor by plowing into crowded boxes and only throwing on obvious passing downs for the first 20+ minutes. 

If there’s a point where we have a healthy AJB, Julio, Reynolds, Rogers and Firk and are still consistently trotting out Swaim and Pruitt on first downs, yeah, I think it’s safe to say the offense could be a problem.

[KingTitan]

3 minutes ago, titans0021 said:

Only throwing in obvious passing situations + sliding help to Q and away from Jones = no chance for Tannehill. 

Running plays was also an issue with Smith. 
Reasonable to conclude this is a Vrabel issue. 

[TitanSlim]

16 minutes ago, KingTitan said:

I know we scored a lot points last year and we looked good doing it a lot of the time.

But is our offense a problem?  Should we be throwing it around 50 times a game?

We don’t need to throw 50 times every game but we need to attack mismatches and use our personnel better game by game. It’s been my biggest gripe with this franchise for years.
 

If a team has a poor secondary we’ve never attacked it. I love Henry but we have freakin Julio Jones and a ascending star in AJ Brown. Like @titans0021just said we need to set up the run with our passing and not vice versa. No excuses why those guys each shouldn’t of had 7 plus targets each vs the Cards secondary. 

Edited September 13, 2021 by TitanSlim

[titans0021]

11 minutes ago, KingTitan said:

Today I really felt like (for the first time) Tanny isn't the guy to lead us to the promise land. Teams still not afraid of him throwing on us even with Julio and AJ on the outside and today really proved that to be true. 
I don't know if it's the offense scheme or him, but the didn't look comfortable at all. He should have had maybe 3 INTs with some of his throws.
His pass to AJ for the TD was close to being an INT if Budda breaks differently. 

It was the same thing today as it’s been in pretty much every poor offensive performance of the Tanny era. Run game doesn’t work, we fall behind early, and we only let Tannehill throw in obvious passing downs where defenders can pin their ears back and RT has to hold on to it to try to go downfield.

Its not a coincidence that the stretch of two TDs and a FG attempt in three drives came when we put the ball in Tannehill’s hands. And it’s not a coincidence that the passing game stalled when we forced our QB into clear passing situations (either because of down and distance or because of the score). 

RT isn’t a superstar. He’s not going to turn garbage into gold. But he’s certainly good enough to lead an offense with Henry, AJB and Julio Jones. But only if we let him, which is where the obvious concerns come in.

[deeluxx3]

7 minutes ago, KingTitan said:

I know we scored a lot points last year and we looked good doing it a lot of the time.

But is our offense a problem?  Should we be throwing it around 50 times a game?

We should be making a concerted effort to incorporate the passing game earlier in our offense and try to get the ball in AJ and Julio's hands early and often.

Before we got the ball with like 90sec in the first half, AJ had one catch. Julio had zero.

Name a single other team in the NFL in which those two guys would have a combined one catch 29m into the game against a defense whose corners were considered their weakness? Never mind the fact the Cards corners played very well today...we didn't even make a concerted effort to attack a defense's clear weakness.

Because getting AJ the ball seems to always be an after thought in this offense. It's get Derrick going. Get Derrick going. Get Derrick going.

Oh. A defense is selling out to stop him? Well, let's hope they bite on this play action on a clear passing down!

 

It's lather, rinse, repeat with this offense. And the NFL catches up to you fast. I've said it a million times on here. Look at our last three "playoff"-type games (KC AFCCG, GB in GB Week 16 last year and BAL in AFCWCG) and how we approached each game.

Run Derrick and run Derrick and run Derrick. All three teams know it and all three teams contained him. Because any decent front 7 can sell out against our OL and keep Derrick from taking over.

Ryan cannot drop back 50x a game and pick apart a defense. He's not that guy, never will be that guy, but can certainly drop back and hit guys within the context of a balanced offense in terms of playcalling. But we don't let our passing offense even get a chance to get rolling without even the insinuation of the run. I'd be curious to look at all of Tanny's games (ie once our O actually became potent) and see the % of PA-pass to non-PA-pass in the first half of games. I bet it's gotta be overwhelmingly in the % of PA-pass....we likely only just drop back on 3rd and longs.

You know who's the most explosive player on this offense? AJ Brown.  And that's not saying Derrick isn't explosive, he's an absolute phenom. And we treat him like an accessory when he should be as much of Downing's priority as Derrick, especially with Julio on the field and even a good pass catcher like Firk.

No reason Tanny shouldn't be doing 3-step drops on a rub route we call for AJ. That's in literally every playbook around the league right now...but ours. 

 

The goal is to win the super bowl. We cannot win the Super Bowl by continuing to shackle ourselves the our offensive philosophy as it currently stands. We need to allow Ryan and the receiving weapons to be able to do their thing "separate" from the run game, because overall there's the talent to do so. And then that'll even make running the ball more impactful and consistent. Think 4 yard runs instead of 1s and 2s.

 

 

But also. We need to effing block.

[titans0021]

1 minute ago, deeluxx3 said:

Oh. A defense is selling out to stop him? Well, let's hope they bite on this play action on a clear passing down!

On this note, I’m sure I’m missing some, but man, off the top of my head, the PA boot that Jones blew up on 2nd and 11 (such an incredible time for that call) is pretty much the only instance of play action I can recall in the first half. In theory, you script the first 15 plays. How does one have six months and come up with that script?

[615finest]

Yea at some point we gotta attack a defense weakness instead of trying to force Henry into an 8 man box every game. It’s like our coaching staff is so stubborn. We have 2 great WRs on the outside but we still don’t let Tanny air it out until it’s too late. If we loosened defenses up with throwing Henry would get his touches regardless. We don’t adapt and it’s sad. It’s clear AZ knew we were running on early downs.

I really wish we could have gotten Ryan Day. We need an OC with no prior Titan connection. We got the pieces to do power spread if we wanted.

 

ravens gave everybody the recipe on how to stop us in the playoffs and we still play right into it

Edited September 13, 2021 by 615finest

[Andrei01]

19 minutes ago, titans0021 said:

Only throwing in obvious passing situations + sliding help to Q and away from Jones = no chance for Tannehill. 

Only one of those sacks came on a 3rd down. Yes, sliding more to Jones' side might have been an adjustment, but he had already impacted the game big time by that point.

Lewan just had an awful game is what it mostly comes down to.

[deeluxx3]

As much of a god-send as he's been from a fan's perspective...I mean he often lights up the scoreboard...I don't and haven't thought that Ryan can lead us to the promised land w/o everything else going right around him.

 

He's a very good quarterback. Big arm, athletic, good leader, confident passer. But to win a super bowl in the NFL, you need a QB who can just dictate a game. It's just how the league is now...unless you put together an objectively balanced and great team (bad example b/c they lost haha, but like the 2019 49ers w/ Jimmy G). 

We don't have that. As great as JRob is...I think he's yet to put together a top-to-bottom GREAT unit that has proven itself to be great (this year's offense is TBD, but great on paper minus RT). Even when Pees had our defense playing great, it was never stockpiled with talent. 

For conversation's sake, let's assume JRob stays his current course. We're competitive but never top 3-4 teams throughout a year. So we'd ultimately need that true "franchise" guy who can control a game.

LA Rams are a good example right now. Sure Goff was awful, but they concluded that they need a QB who can control games with his arm. Clearly they see that in Stafford. Time will tell if it pans out for them, but I'd bet that McVay knows that ultimately it will ALL come down to your QB.

[titans0021]

More than anything, at a certain point you need to find out what Tannehill is capable of when put in charge of the offense. Because it will be required at some point if you hope to win a championship. And either he can handle it, in which case you open up the offense moving forward. Or he can’t, in which case you have some hard questions to ask yourself.

Regardless, it’s better to know the answer to that question in September than to be trying to find it out in January.

[titans0021]

I’ll say what I know for sure. On a list of what will hold this team back from a SB, there’s a canyon sized chasm between No. 1, the Mike Vrabel and Shane Bowen coached defense, and wherever you’d like to place Ryan Tannehill.

[deeluxx3]

1 minute ago, titans0021 said:

More than anything, at a certain point you need to find out what Tannehill is capable of when put in charge of the offense. Because it will be required at some point if you hope to win a championship. And either he can handle it, in which case you open up the offense moving forward. Or he can’t, in which case you have some hard questions to ask yourself.

Regardless, it’s better to know the answer to that question in September than to be trying to find it out in January.

I think -- even with the Julio acquisition (which is awesome and huge and opens things for other guys, but from a numbers perspective can we realistically expect that much different than Corey) -- we're just stagnant as an offense. We want to be a black-and-blue running team that wears teams out. But that doesn't work when the OL falls apart and when good teams figure you out. The league's best teams have figured us out.

It's evolve or die in the NFL. I'm not saying move on from Ryan and make a move for a 1st round rookie. But we have balked at adding any diversity to this offense since Ryan took over.

We're big. We're physical. We're slow.

And we acquire guys that are big, physical, and slow. 

So you play an athletic, organized defense like Arizona's and that happens. 

How nice would it be to have a guy like Rondale Moore? We've made ONE move to add speed to our offense from an intentional and "significant" investment and that was Evans and, unfortunately, he cannot stay healthy. But otherwise, zero effort to add different dimensions to this offense. Physically, current day Julio and Corey are more or less the same players. Not like we injected track speed in our offense.

The bubble's about to pop. It was only a matter of time. Now we adapt or it will indeed pop.

[twotonebluenation]

Just now, titans0021 said:

More than anything, at a certain point you need to find out what Tannehill is capable of when put in charge of the offense. Because it will be required at some point if you hope to win a championship. And either he can handle it, in which case you open up the offense moving forward. Or he can’t, in which case you have some hard questions to ask yourself.

Regardless, it’s better to know the answer to that question in September than to be trying to find it out in January.

I agree. To me that question needs to be answered this year. It's time. Let's see what he is fully capable of. 

I have thought this since last year. I think too much needs to be perfect around Tanne to be Super Bowl capable. Our defense is just not good enough to help carry the load. 

I would love to be proven wrong, obviously. I really like Tannehill. Would love to have him be the guy. I feel it would take some perfect scenarios for it to work out. 

If we had even a top 15 defense, I think super bowl could be possible if this offense clicked. Defense showed some stuff today but it is quite a bit away from being that. 

Really worried where that puts are our team with Henry in his prime and AJ on the come up. The opportunity to utilize Julio while you still can. We are in such a weird window. Feels like we are wasting talent if we don't make things happen this year. 

 

[titans0021]

2 minutes ago, deeluxx3 said:

How nice would it be to have a guy like Rondale Moore?

I was thinking about this today, would it even really matter? I have no confidence that we’d use him in anything other than the occasional PA, deep shot, Khalif Raymond role.