| Projected Record | 7-10 (ACTUAL: 4-8) |
| Weighted DVOA Offense* | 22nd |
| Weighted DVOA Defense | 22nd |
| Early Down DVOA | 1st Down – 17th, 2nd Down – 25th |
| Explosive Play Rate | Offense – 21st (Run 23rd, Pass 15th), Defense – 11th (Run 2nd, Pass 20th) |
| Key Additions | Trevon Wesco FB, Chris Moore WR, DeAndre Hopkins WR, Andre Dillard OT, Daniel Brunskill OT, Chris Hubbard OT, Arden Key EDGE, Azeez Al-Shaair LB, Sean Murphy-Bunting CB, Terrell Edmunds S, Eric Garror S, Cade York K, Nick Folk K |
| Key Departures | Robert Woods WR, Austin Hooper TE, Geoff Swaim TE, Dennis Daley OT, Taylor Lewan OT, Nate Davis IOL, Ben Jones IOL, DeMarcus Walker DI, Bud Dupree EDGE, Mario Edwards EDGE, Zach Cunningham LB, David Long LB, A.J. Moore S, Kevin Byard S, Randy Bullock K |
| Rookies to Watch | Will Levis QB, Tyjae Spears RB, Peter Skoronski IOL |
Injury Report
Players on IR: Hassan Haskins RB, Julius Chestnut RB, Kearis Jackson WR, Nicholas Petit-Frere T, Chris Hubbard G, Shakel Brown IDL, Joe Jones LB, Chance Campbell LB, Caleb Farley CB, Ryan Stonehouse P
Quarterback
Ryan Football Tannehill is out in Tennessee after another season of collapsing after mediocre results! While that statement is probably unfair to Tannehill, who graded out as truly elite in 2019 and 2020, Tannehill was 42-48 as a starter in Miami and now has a career record of 78-65 in games started over his career. The highlights came from 2019-2021, when Tannehill was absolutely on fire. He went 7-3 as the midseason replacement in 2019, including two playoff wins where he didn’t throw much and the team knocked off the Patriots and the Ravens during Brady’s last season in New England and Lamar Jackson’s MVP season respectively. The Titans would rely a bit more on Tannehill the next two years, going 11-5 and 12-5. Then, in 2022, the bottom fell out on the Tannehill experience. A lingering ankle injury and calls to see 3rd-round pick Malik Willis (who had plenty of 1st-round hype) left Tannehill in and out of the lineup. Now 35, Tannehill had one last chance as the team’s starter to prove he deserves more years as the face of a franchise (even if it is not in Tennessee). Complicating matters is a general lack of talent that more or less explains Tannehill’s dramatic dropoff in play: A.J. Brown was famously traded to Philadelphia, where he became the #1 target on an NFC Championship run. Tannehill was left throwing last year to the Ghost of Austin Hooper (54 targets), the raw Treylon Burks, a second Ghost (Robert Woods, who saw the most targets of anyone), Nick Westbrook-Ikhine (who has cockroach-in-nuclear-bomb-situation levels of survival), and Chigoziem Okonkwo (who, I will highlight later, rocks). Each of these players was in and out of the lineup for reasons of injury or performance, and all save Okonkwo underwhelmed. The days of Ryan Tannehill as an efficient starter are probably over, due in part to a diminished ability to demonstrate the timing and accuracy needed to be a plus player in the league. In PFF’s Accuracy+ measure, Tannehill ranked 30th of all QBs and threw the 9th highest percentage of accurate passes. Plenty of that can be chalked up to an inability, be it through offensive play calls or Tannehill’s own poor processing, to find easy targets within the scheme. To best understand how a QB throws within a scheme, you often have to look for the throws released in less than 2.5 seconds*, as it filters out a lot of improvisation and focuses instead on timing. In that metric, Tannehill didn’t crack the top 20 in PFF passer grade and barely cracked the top 20 in completion percentage. He had a higher depth of target, but those targets did not result in particularly strong EPA/play* metrics. Another explanation for the poor quick game is Tannehill’s reluctance to even throw out wide where there is more space on a football field. He threw just 34% of his passes there, good for dead last among qualifiers. Instead, he targeted his RB at the 2nd highest percentage rate, his slot receiver at the 11th, and his TEs at the 16th. Derrick Henry is great, but as a focal point of your pass game? Even when Henry was off the field, Tannehill kept going to his RBs, sending 40 targets to the combination of Dontrell Hilliard and Hasaan Haskins, two guys who do not need that work. The glimmer of hope for Ryan, and the reason the Titans were hesitant to press the reset button, is that he still runs this offense in a manner that can work when all the pieces are in place. Numbers may indicate regression, but others indicate that this is still a player who can avoid catastrophe and best utilize the potential for a strong ground game. Tannehill is fantastic against the blitz, in large part because of his size and athleticism. When blitzed, Tannehill had the 4th highest passing grade per PFF* and the best EPA/play. That’s right, Ryan Tannehill (not Mahomes, Burrow, Allen, you name it) was the absolute best in a top analytical measure for adding points against the blitz. This year is the beginning of the end for Tannehill: how soon it all ends depends mostly on whether he can will himself out of throwing outside, improve the quick game with better weapons, and utilize the play action that revitalized his career when he first made good in Tennessee.
But he won’t have that chance in Tennessee. When Tannehill went down with a high ankle sprain after struggling to a 2-4 record, rookie Will Levis entered and promptly balled out. In a high-flying 28-23 victory over the Falcons, Levis was 19-29 while throwing for 238 yards and 4 TDs. 3 TDs went to new target DeAndre Hopkins, who looked young again. Hopkins took his 4 catches for 128 yards (!!) and 3 TDs (!!). More importantly, Levis was throwing on time: the Titans had a quick game again, and Levis’s quick trigger and excellent arm seemed perfect for what ailed the team. It hasn’t lasted, of course, as the Titans sit at 1-4 since that dynamite start, but Levis has still more or less fit the scouting report that he received out of college. PFF wrote that his winning trait was his “field-expanding arm,” and boy does he look good there. When Levis flicks the ball side-arm into tight windows, it’s not hard to make a comparison to Justin Herbert or Josh Allen. His TD to DeAndre Hopkins last week was a perfect example, with Hopkins running the out-and-in across the back line of the endzone and Levis threading the needle through a defensive line with their hands straight in the air. The classic Denver zone running scheme with deep play action, a scheme that dominated the 90s and early aughts that I associate with a Norv Turner type coordinator, would be perfect for Levis. In college, with former Rams OC Liam Coen at the helm in 2021, Levis was just that and he was often sensational. He had 8 yards per attempt, a very high deep ball passing grade from PFF, and his final bowl game against Iowa was a huge part of getting Wan’Dale Robinson drafted in the first round (10 catches for 170, with a number of well-placed balls from Levis helping him along the way). Unfortunately, Levis has a penchant for turning the ball over: PFF claimed his inconsistent footwork was the culprit, and that makes plenty of sense. He’s had some strange moments: backward passes, sailed deep balls, and poorly-timed scrambles come to mind. In the NFL, that has amounted to 11 big time throws* and 9 turnover-worthy plays*, a YPA* number of 6.9 that is hurt by how bad his completion percentage is (57.6%, topping only Dorian Thompson-Robinson and P.J. Walker of the Browns, who were both replaced by Joe Flacco’s wax dummy), and the highest ADOT* in the league. Second highest? Ryan Tannehill. The Titans plan has been to go vertical, and they simply do not have the receivers or consistency among the QBs to play this strategy. In the end, Levis does not seem to be a great upgrade over Ryan Tannehill right now: yes, the offense is more functional even if the run game lets them down, but Tannehill completed passes at a far better rate. That Tannehill has nearly the same YPA is indicative, though, that neither of these men are the solution to a 2023 rebound run. The future, though, is Levis, and the Titans will continue to see if he has the fireworks from his first game somewhere within him.
Coaching
Mike Vrabel may be running out of his “New Mike Tomlin” leash this season, as the team looks even worse in another “competitive rebuild” year. The Titans are the quintessential competitive rebuild: they have maintained a core of aging names, anchored by Ryan Tannehill until turning the reins to a young player, who struggles to integrate without dynamic talent around him. Competitive rebuilds often look like this: old veterans stay on a minute too long while holding up a scheme for a bunch of young guys, maybe a quarter of which will pan out. At their best, they are the Eagles striking gold in Jalen Hurts and discovering that their veterans have a lot more left in the tank than they worried. But the Vikings, at 6-6, look far more like what you get from a competitive rebuild: average play, watchable product, mediocre and ultimately non-competitive results. You see why Stephen Ross booted Gase out the door when he said he wanted to win: no elite QB is coming to bail you out at the end of the year. Instead, you have achieved competence and culture. Vrabel is no Mike Tomlin, who inherited Ben Roethlisberger and has yet to crack his own competitive rebuild. Vrabel does not have the long-standing league and fan respect to flail for as long as Tomlin, and the time is now for him to avoid the fate of the ultimate Competitive Rebuilder Tony Sparano and many, many others. Vrabel has exhausted the scapegoats: Jon Robinson was fired at the end of 2022 and replaced as General Manager by Ran Carthon, a key figure of two major successes in the Rams (2012-17) and 49ers (2017-22), assisting Les Snead and John Lynch respectively. Carthon is a rising star in the league, and the general feeling is that he is unafraid to set in motion any kind of housecleaning. Vrabel also did the second thing any head coach fighting for his job would do: he fired his offensive coordinator. Todd Downing, most famous for plodding offense and a high-profile DUI, finally received his comeuppance after fans demanded it for two years. Tim Kelly, imported from Houston last year to be the pass game coordinator, will be the new full-time OC and play caller. Kelly is a Bill O’Brien disciple, following him from Penn State to Houston and serving as his OC in a non-play calling role. Kelly stayed on for one year after O’Brien was fired, retaining the role and grabbing some valuable play calling experience, albeit on a team that was going absolutely nowhere. As such, there’s little from Kelly’s career to be gleaned, outside of the assumption that the Patriot Way offense (lots of personnel groupings, spacing out multiple attack points, a whole host of formations) will be incorporated in a similar way to O’Brien’s offense in Houston with Deshaun Watson. Does Tennessee have the offensive line and receiving talent to actually demonstrate creativity? Does Kelly even have creativity, as his portfolio is somewhat bereft of it? Can he actually incorporate a run game, as he was a pass coordinator and piloted one of the worst rushing offenses of all time in Houston? Many questions abound for Todd Downing’s replacement, and he has done little to answer them, with bland play-calling that relies too much on the aging Henry. The Titans run the ball fine at times (often better with rookie sensation Tyjae Spears out of Tulane) but then they mix in an ugly version of the Henry throwback screen and get dropped for a 6-yard loss. It isn’t fun!
Defensively, the only real reset is in the secondary, where young players have been consistently brought in and have not quite developed as they should. The spine of Vrabel’s defense remains mostly intact, but outside corner play led to the Titans giving up the most pass yards in the league last year. They finished 28th in the league in passing defense DVOA but were surprisingly the league’s best run defense in that metric (they also led the league in raw numbers, edging out the 49ers by just 14 yards). Mike Vrabel will never, ever fire a DC who has his linebackers humming against the run, but the secondary must be figured out. In comes Chris Harris (the coach, not the player) from the Commanders to sign on as the new passing defense coordinator. It is a slight step up for the longtime position coach after working under Marc Trestman, Anthony Lynn, and most recently Ron Rivera, and Vrabel made reference to the idea that there was a bidding war for his services. This makes some sense: the Commanders have made lemonade with a host of injuries and they’ve created a secondary plan around the perennially underrated CB Kendall Fuller, who steadied his career under Harris. Harris’s ideas from Rivera on how to get the most out of your coverage will be needed, as the storied Jim Schwartz had plenty of influence as a consultant last year on building the defensive scheme, especially with the pass rush. Even with Schwartz, who tends to be fairly old school in coverage, the 2022 Titans cribbed many of the Fangio concepts in hopes of protecting their corners, which worked for a 7-3 start but broke down as the Titans faced more high-flying offenses (Burrow, Hurts, Lawrence, and Herbert all in a row! Ouch!) It is unquestionably good that the Titans defense can mesh together so many different schemes, but their defense is not performing well and generally lacks an identity. The run stopping has started to fade as the offense fails Tennessee, made only worse by how easily teams are carving them up on short passes. The commentators on the games have stopped referring to excellent run statistics for a reason: the Titans have allowed 1274 yards against the run, placing them below teams they projected to be far better than, including the Bears, Texans, Dolphins, Jaguars, and Vikings. They’re mediocre at their strength. After two blocked punts, including a season-ending injury to MY FAVORITE PUNTER, Vrabel did the last Don’t-Fire-Me move in the toolkit: he fired the special teams coordinator. This team is in purgatory, and whether or not the Adams family moves on from Vrabel will tell us a lot about how they see their team.
Offense
In Tennessee, the goal was to construct an offense that possesses some level of explosion. Fans hoped that the old recipe, explosive runs stacked together by Derrick Henry followed by huge chunk plays on play action, was on its way out in Tennessee, mainly due to Henry’s age. He will be 29 when the season starts (that in itself feels like a miracle, my educated guess would be that Henry is 35, not younger than me!) with 1,750 NFL carries and 127 more catches for his career. Henry is coming off yet another high volume season, this time with 382 touches, and that should concern fans of the Titans. Different analysts put the number at different places (I’ve seen 335 and 370 most often) but it’s clear that this level of workload puts injury stress on a player. Henry was out for much of 2021 with a foot injury, and even with a fantastic 2022, the Titans stayed a bottom quarter offense while only managing a 7-10 record. These alarming numbers fueled an offseason call from many in the Titans fanbase to trade Henry and Tannehill, investing instead in a larger rebuild for the modern NFL. While that might not feel emotionally fulfilling, it nevertheless paints the 2022 trade of A.J. Brown, the one Titans piece who felt young and sustainable in the modern league, as an unmitigated disaster. Regardless of the big picture, Henry is a handful for any team to deal with, and he will likely be the focal point of their attack. He had the most yards after contact* by about 100 yards, averaging the 5th most yards after contact per carry (3.6) behind only some very young and relatively fresh backs in 2022. In fact, among players drafted prior to 2016 when Henry was drafted, only Raheem Mostert and Cordarrelle Patterson averaged more than 3 yards after contact per carry (Mostert with 3.52 and Patterson with 3.06) in 2022, and both had never carried a team’s rushing load until recently, let alone for every year of their career as Henry has. His list of peers who can still play physical football with his level of tread is extremely small, and both Patterson and Mostert have far fewer career carries due to their different career trajectories. Henry is fantastic in both zone concepts and gap concepts: he led the league in zone carries with 197 and was 5th in gap concepts, and his ability to be effective in both makes the Titans one of the most versatile run games in the NFL. Unfortunately, the Titans have indeed doubled down on their offensive approach, and Henry has the 4th most rushing attempts of any player this year. Henry is still 11th in the league in average yards after contact and 4th in the league in missed tackles forced* according to PFF, so he’s providing plenty of juice. He also has a truly helpful backfield companion for the first time since his rookie year: Tyjae Spears has been quite good, averaging 5 yards a carry on his 66 totes. He’s also far superior to the change of pace pass catchers the Titans have fielded in the past, with 33 catches for 192 yards and great PFF score in pass blocking. Henry’s usage may still be too high, but Spears may be better injury balm than simply cutting carries. Among Titans skill position players, just Chigoziem Okonkwo played up to Henry’s level in 2022. Last year’s 4th round pick, Okonkwo caught 32 passes for 449 yards, a remarkable 14 yards per catch. Titans QBs targeting him had a QB rating of 125, putting him with Travis Kelce and Dallas Goedert as one of the most helpful TEs in the league to his QB. He was a pedestrian blocker for Henry, but his real value is threatening the seams when LBs cheat up to help against Henry. Tim Kelly has struggled to find a role for Okonkwo, cutting out his quality deep routes in favor of much shorter plays: he has more catches this year for 136 fewer yards. Coming into 2023, we knew that the receivers will need to show a lot more this year for any kind of functional offense. Treylon Burks, selected with the pick the Titans got for trading A.J. Brown, is the player from that group that simply must break out. Burks had almost identical numbers to Okonkwo: 33 catches for 444, a 13.5 average, with 2 TDs to Okonkwo’s 3. Those may be efficient numbers for a TE, but a WR should have far more volume and be targeted far more often. Burks missed weeks 4-9 with an injury of his own, but that does not explain or excuse a low 1.75 yards per route run*. He did have the 13th highest yards after catch per reception* (5.4) on a fairly deep yards per target* (12.4, strikingly similar to Waddle for context), but efficient results with the ball only matters when you have the ball. Burks did not get targeted efficiently, and would need to make himself far more available as a route runner to be seen in 2023 as a true #1. It has not happened: Burks has dropped to .98 yards per route run on an absurd 19.5 ADOT. My guy is just running wind sprints out there. DeAndre Hopkins was signed to take the pressure off of Burks, and he has been solid, especially with Will Levis at the helm. Hopkins exploded, as I mentioned above, for 128 yards and 3 TDs on 4 catches against Atlanta, but also all 5 of his TDs have come with Levis. He has tied his best yards per route run average this year since 2020, with a 2.25 number, good for 16th in the league. Those are #1 receiver kind of rumblings, if not the numbers of a top 10 kind of guy. Undrafted Nick Westbrook-Ikhine returned to play the #2 receiver, bumped down on the chart after Hopkins was signed. He made the move to mostly slot last year to poor returns, averaging less than a yard per route run and just 6 catches on 20 contested targets. He is a prime candidate for replacement, as his numbers this year have been the same old pedestrian returns with more volume. Kyle Philips, a 5th round pick in 2022 who impressed in camp, will return after a 2022 season hampered by a week 5 hamstring injury that sidelined him most of the season. Philips was excellent in pre-draft processes, but his limitation to the slot dropped him from PFF’s 82nd ranked prospect all the way to the 163rd overall pick. He’s a great antidote to press man on the outside, as he works well in the middle of the field: with the highest yards per route run behind Hopkins and the best YAC average. Chris Moore, the final piece of the Titans receiving corps, has a ridiculous 22.5 yards per catch on 13 catches, and is 3 for 4 on contested catches*: he has fantastic length and works well in the Mack Hollins role. If the Titans had Brown, Hopkins, and a combination of Westbrook-Ikhine, Burks, Moore and Phillips, you might feel pretty good about these receivers. As it is, this is a unit just short of functional, and a new face is essential for next season to truly evaluate Levis.
Tennessee’s laundry list of concerns includes the offensive line, which delivered PFF’s worst pass blocking rating of the year in 2022. This slide has been happening now for a long time. The team had a top-half (and even top 10) pass blocking line through the first three years of Vrabel’s tenure, but in 2021, they dropped to bottom 5 due mainly to injuries and regression: Taylor Lewan, Rodger Saffold, and Ben Jones all went from elite to pedestrian or worse, and the stagnation defanged Ryan Tannehill’s ability to function within the offense. 2023 was even worse for Tannehill, who was essentially non-functional in the early season losses. The success of the Titans greatly depended on whether the Titans were able to utilize LB movement on play action to generate shots down the field and intermediate throws with plenty of YAC opportunity. Tannehill is a QB famous for taking a whole bunch of sacks that are his fault because he holds the ball and doesn’t feel the rush; a bad offensive line compounds the problem. Levis is far better, but the offense still looks like it’s moving uphill in the pass game, in large part to a lack of OL faith. The Titans are shuffling the deck at the positions after deciding not to retain Jones and Lewan at C and LT respectively. The resulting transition is still in flux, which is about the nicest thing I can say. At LT, the Titans signed former Eagles first-rounder Andre Dillard to an obscenely rich 3 year contract worth about $30 million. Dillard has never played more than 337 snaps in a season. First, he spot-started and rotated in as a rookie in 2019 before missing 2020 with a preseason injury, and then he played much of 2021 in the same kind of rotation before finally ending on the bench. The Titans optimism comes from the fact that he lost a battle to a prospect with far less draft renown in Jordan Mailata, who quickly became one of the best tackles in the league. Dillard is a pass protector first and foremost, graded by PFF as one of the best pass blockers in the country at Washington State in his final year of college. In Tennessee, with his first all-time opportunity, he has already found the bench after allowing 36 pressures* through 9 games. Tennessee fans are using this failure as a proxy for the general lackluster offseason moves, especially as the reason they signed him (pass protection) was his worst area in 2023. Jaelyn Duncan took over after Dillard’s concussion, and was allowed to start even with a healthy Dillard last week in the OT loss to the Colts: he gave up 9 pressures. It’s hard to be certain who Bradley Chubb will be rushing against on Monday. At center, the plan appears to be guard Aaron Brewer moving from his starting guard role into the starting role in the middle. Brewer was part of the passing nightmare in Tennessee last year, surrendering 36 pressures and earning one of PFF’s lowest pass block ratings. The hope, it appears, is that Brewer can get some additional push in the run game at a position that features far more double teams and help in the passing game. Things tend to get dicey when a player is seen as a liability at guard and then gets moved to the “easier” position at center. He came into the league in 2020 at a greatly undersized 276 pounds and, despite adding 25 pounds over his NFL career, Brewer still has not evolved a consistent base in the pass game. This year, PFF likes him as the best offensive lineman on the Titans, due in large part to some real nastiness in the run game. Think Connor Williams without the anchor in pass protection. Playing between the newcomers is yet another new starter, rookie Peter Skoronski. Skoronski is an excellent, technically-sound lineman from Northwestern, drafted 11th overall after taking over for the excellent Rashawn Slater at Northwestern. When a player like Slater goes to the pros and enjoys fabulous success, you expect a drop-off, but Skoronski did not miss a beat as a college starter. He allowed 6 pressures in his final year at Northwestern. Six. Pressures. He’s no slouch in the run game either: he may need to build strength over his rookie contract, but a good eye for angles and quick, smart movements will make him a quality player instantly. Titans fans may not have been in love with picking an interior player so high considering how close they are to needing to hit the reset button, but Skoronski is a foundational player rather than a luxury pick. There are few guards who can boast that kind of transformational talent, and Skoronski will have to back it up like Quentin Nelson did in his first year for Indianapolis. Skoronski will not have to immediately hop in at his college position of LT thanks to Dillard, but the Titans would be wise to give him reps there after the struggles. Skoronski is seen in league circles as a transformative guard rather than a top pick on the Laremy Tunsil Transition Plan, but why continues to surrender nightmares off the edge when you have a player with the skillset to step in at a more important spot? At RG, the Titans were forced to let starter Nate Davis go due to cap concerns. Davis was a key cog in the Titans continued run success from 2020 to 2022, and the entire team will be worse for his departure. Daniel Brunskill will take over from San Francisco, one of the many Kyle Shanahan no-name linemen to find success in his offense. Brunskill was one of the weaker links on that offensive line, due mostly to his inability to limit interior pressure. In 2021, he started a full year and allowed 41 pressures, a poor rate for a guard. Last year, in a part time role, Brunskill was far better, surrendering just 14 pressures on 337 pass block snaps. That is much more in line with what you hope for in a guard, and the Titans have seen him maintain that adequate play. In a world where Dillard and Skoronski pan out, competition for C and RG would be a priority next year, as Brunskill is probably more valuable as a plus backup at a few positions. That leaves RT, where the Titans will have a gaping hole through the first 6 games after Nicholas Petit-Frere was suspended for 6 games due to gambling violations. A league average player in the position has a chance to hold the spot for the entire year, as Petit-Frere was terrible after coming out of Ohio State as a high 3rd-round pick in 2022. Against talented defenses, Petit-Frere was beaten like a drum, giving up 4 pressures against Buffalo and 5 against Philadelphia. He was similarly inconsistent in the run game. The Titans played Chris Hubbard in his spot, and did indeed get league average play. Bye bye, Petit-Frere. After Hubbard injured his biceps in Week 11, the Titans moved guard Dillon Radunz out to tackle. Working his way back from a December, 2022 ACL injury, Radunz has shown some of his college bonafides. Radunz was a draft sleeper star in the 2021 draft: analysts trying desperately to get some useful film of Trey Lance at North Dakota State were blown away by Radunz’s technical skill. Radunz has a lot to learn at the tackle spot, with 7 pressures allowed to Tampa Bay representing the low point, but he was ferocious on the edge against Indianapolis last week. He may be an ascending player. Overall, though, this is not an ascending line, and outside of Skoronski, I wouldn’t place faith in any of starters returning next year. Competitive rebuild.
Defense
With some notable exceptions, Mike Vrabel’s defense continues to set a high floor for the Tennessee Titans every year. In 2023, the team is shallower than ever, but it wasn’t hard in the offseason to picture how success might still emerge through a fantastic run defense upfront (as good as 2nd in limiting explosive plays on the ground*, which helps the secondary keep their focus on limiting receivers) and rookie contract leaps from players on the back end. Upfront, as with many teams the Dolphins face, the talent starts inside. Jeffrey Simmons is still a true monster in the interior, with a top 10 pass rush grade on PFF and a top 20 run defense grade. Like Wilkins and Sieler, he also has the stamina to play a large number of snaps: he never comes off the field when he plays. He was solid but unspectacular in the run game (27 stops*) in 2022, which was a bit disappointing coming off of a disruptive 49 stops in 2021. He also misses a surprising amount of tackles, which bears watching this year, as 19 missed tackles over 2 years (14 in 2021) allows for some concern. Simmons was injured last week and will not play, a major issue for the Titans. But he has help: NT Teair Tart converted 23 of his 33 tackles into defensive stops in 2022, which represents a failed play for the offense, meaning that he cleans up in the run game when he is involved in a play (for context, that rate looks more like Aaron Donald than even Christian Wilkins in terms of how little he loses). Tart was a replacement level player prior to this strong year. Until a knee injury limited his season, Denico Autry was having his best year in the interior, racking up 54 pressures in an inside/outside role while seeing little drop in his run numbers from 2021 despite 220 fewer snaps. All three players haven’t given the offense their 2022 levels of hell, but they’re still tough maulers inside. On the edge, the Titans signed Arden Key to a reasonable 3-year deal for $21 million after the lanky pass rusher (6’5” 240) set a career high of 51 pressures (4.5 sacks) for Jacksonville last season. Key is an extremely athletic prospect who projected as a 1st round talent out of LSU, but went to rehab for marijuana (what a country we live in) and dropped two rounds. The potential has always been there, and there were signs of life in Jacksonville last year and San Francisco the year before. In 2023, Key is third on the team in pressures behind Simmons and Autry. On the other side, Harold Landry is wildly overpaid on a 5-year $87 million dollar deal with bad grades from PFF, but his counting stats continue to indicate good production. What Landry lacks in top-level physical traits has not stopped him from becoming a perfect scheme fit for Mike Vrabel, hoovering up 12 sacks on 70 pressures in 2021. He tore his ACL last year before playing a down in 2022, and has 26 pressures in 2023. Edge is the major weakness for this team, where they are paper thin outside of rotating Autry. Bud Dupree was released after a disappointing year, and the position has been a weakness despite hundreds of millions in investments for years now. At LB, Georgia 3rd rounder Monty Rice played well enough against the run to be seen as a replacement for David Long Jr., who went to Miami. He didn’t even keep his job through the offseason, replaced by Jack Gibbens, who has surprisingly ascended to a top LB in the NFL. Gibbens has been a bit of a mess in coverage, allowing 13 of 17 passes in his area* to be caught for 10.9 yards a pop (it all averages out to a QB rating of above 100). But Gibbens is an angry tackler, and is coming off his second double-digit tackle outing of the year last week. The Titans signed Azeez Al-Shaair in hopes of adding more physicality and athleticism to the unit to a one-year prove-it deal. Both LBs are 25, so the Titans are counting on one of them to ascend to play in the pass game and earn a spot on next year’s team. Vrabel himself always graded poorly in pass coverage, so the fact that he has two angry LBs who dominate RBs and can’t cover a soul makes plenty of sense.
When your LBs cannot cover the pass effectively, you simply must have good safeties to ensure there’s some accountability inside. The Titans made yet another trade choice to destroy that plan when they traded Kevin Byard. Byard is still an All-Pro caliber safety, never quite living up to the 2017 hype when he pulled down 8 INTs as a first-year starter but always improving. He was just behind Minkah Fitzpatrick for 4th in terms of PFF coverage grade among safeties last year, and still allowed just 33 of 49 passes to be completed in his area with 4 INTs to boot. He missed just 4.5% of tackles* in coverage last year, good for 11th, and put up 108 tackles in total. Byard is a real weapon, and is deployed all over the field (in the box, in the slot, and back deep) to maximize his skillset. For future draft capital, and with the knowledge that they had next to no chance to resign him, the Titans shipped Byard to the Eagles for young safety Terrell Edmunds, a 5th, and a 6th round pick. Edmunds has mostly helped as the third safety, with the team instead moving undersized Elijah Molden from CB to S. Molden has not been impressive in either the run or the pass, and is typically one of the culprits when the offense is moving at will. Next to him, Amani Hooker looks to bounce back after a difficult 2022, one which saw multiple injuries after he signed a decent contract extension. Hooker looked like Byard’s heir in 2021, playing equally varied roles and snagging 2 picks en route to a PFF 86.9 coverage score. The 2021 Titans had Hooker and Byard helping out in every way possible with interior coverage, but injuries in 2022 held them back from doing the same. The plan remained the same in 2023 until the Byard trade, and Hooker has been less effective without a secondary tandem partner to funnel plays and targets his way. At CB, newcomer Sean Murphy-Bunting, the highly-regarded slot corner out of Tampa Bay, emerged as a strong player in the Todd Bowles defense and signed his own prove-it deal in Tennessee. He was nuts in the Super Bowl run of 2020 when he grabbed 3 INTs and broke up 5 passes in the postseason. The lights are never too bright for the pesky corner, but the postseason does not totally reflect his own up-and-down journey in the slot, which kept him from the big contract. The Titans are allowing him to audition as a true outside corner, with just 3 snaps inside this year: he’s allowed 1 TD to 1 INT and a decent 24/37 rate to receivers in his coverage, and he’s played solid if not dazzling football. Roger McCreary and Kristian Fulton were initially penciled in to play the outside corner spots, but McCreary was the one who eventually ended up in the slot. McCreary turned in a decent performance in 2022, 2nd on the team with 6 pass breakups and leading the team by a cardinal mile in tackles. With 10 penalties, McCreary is arguably too physical and needs to refine his game, but the slot move has been great on that front: he has just 4 penalties and has allowed a fantastic 80.9 rating to opposing QBs. McCreary is one of the few Titans defenders who has shown growth. Kristian Fulton was also a good tackler, and allowed a completion percentage of just 56.9% in 2022. With more TDs allowed than pass breakups (5 to 3), he also needs plenty of seasoning, especially with how much of a step back that was from a 2021 campaign where he had 11 pass breakups and 2 INTs. Fulton will be out against the Dolphins, which will likely be addition by subtraction. Fulton has allowed an astounding 577 pass yards and 3 TDs to 2 pass breakups. We were essentially guaranteed a speedy Dolphins receiver catching a TD ball while Fulton falls down. With Fulton out, Tre Avery, Anthony Kendall, or McCreary with a Molden move to the slot may be the answer. None are ideal, but neither is Fulton’s inability to play consistently two years after he secured a starting job as a young ascending Pro Bowl caliber player. Vrabel’s potential ousting may come down to the fact that he couldn’t get edge right despite the resources poured in, and also that he could not develop young corners. Caleb Farley and the aforementioned Molden, two top 100 picks at corner, have struggled when they could even see the field due to injuries. That looks like a wasted draft, as the top 3 corners would need to go down before they would have a real shot again. It’s an odd defensive gameplan: young players who were brought in on Vrabel’s insistence to build on the defensive side of the ball are pushed down to make one last go at a playoff run in favor of one-year deal guys. Yes, this can be a good defense, but there is no eye for the future or emphasis on finding dynamic players through growing pains. Vrabel has the issue that so many insecure people have in his area of emphasis: he denies and doubles down on struggles while hoarding resources to make the same mistakes all over again. Black Monday may yet be coming for him next month.
Special Teams
The big guy Randy Bullock is gone after two relatively pedestrian years with the team, and was replaced by trade for Nick Folk. As he was in New England in 2020 and 2021 (even his down year last year was decent), Folk has been wildly consistent, 19/20 on XPs and 24/25 on FGs, including 4 for 5 beyond 50. Ryan Stonehouse (which sounds like a fake name Ryan Tannehill would use at a hotel) knows not the meaning of the word finesse: the punter averaged 53.1 yards per attempt last year! That includes a whopping 74-yarder. The fact that his hangtime was right about average was interesting, as you’d expect more distance to require less height. The coverage team was still good with chasing down a ball carrier that far: a net average of 44 was good for 4th in the league. As I watched the film this year, though, the dismissive Stonehouse comments above felt disrespectful: Stonehouse is actually an honest to god star punter. This is not a joke or a drill. Yes, he led the league in touchbacks, but those touchbacks were from miles away directly over the returner’s head. He also was 2nd in the league for punts inside the 20 and 3rd in net average. He was perhaps the only feared weapon on the Titans team when I watched the film outside of Simmons. I say “was” because Stonehouse suffered a torn ACL on one of the worst special teams plays I have ever seen: the Colts pulled off that stupid “Sprint Laterally Then Jump The Line” move on the punter and Stonehouse didn’t even kick the ball before it was slapped out of his hands and the defender rolled through his plant leg. It was a massive bummer. The Titans signed Ty Zentner, who was cut earlier in the year by Houston, to punt for them. His hangtime and punt average are nowhere near Stonehouse, a clear boon for Braxton Berrios. Perhaps to justify money spent, the Titans sent out former Rams star Robert Woods to return punts last year, which he did for a relatively bad 8.2 yard average. The Titans have gone more traditional in their choices this year, with Eric Garror capably handling punts and the talented Tyjae Spears returning kicks. Spears loves to return the ball, even when he should let it bounce. Luke Gifford and Monty Rice have been the most productive special teams players to date. After Stonehouse’s injury, the Titans fired their special teams coordinator, and do not have a replacement as of now.
Game Prediction
For yet another week, the Dolphins are favored in this game by double digits. Both this game and the next against the Jets will see the Dolphins as 2 touchdown favorites, which you don’t see very often in the NFL. The Dolphins have earned this honor, and will likely leave this weekend with the top offense in the league in total yardage yet again. It’s a horrendous matchup for the Tennessee defense: missing Jeffrey Simmons, the relatively light Harold Landry and Arden Key will be forced to stop the Dolphins from reaching the perimeter. The linebackers, for yet another week, cannot cover a soul. The corners cannot tackle, as both Fulton and Murphy-Bunting boast a missed tackle percentage of over 25% (13 tackles and 6 missed for Fulton, 11 tackles and 4 missed for Murphy-Bunting) and Fulton won’t even play. The Titans might have had a bit more advantage on offense, as Hopkins and Henry are still physical marvels and Jerome Baker is missing, but the Dolphins have the physicality and length to match up on the outside (Ramsey and Howard can easily keep up) and the sheer strength of the edge rushers matched up against sorry tackles will make it difficult for Henry to create plays. Another week of poor analysis: one team is better and the other team is worse.
And yet a Titans fan argued with me on Twitter that Vrabel can make a game messy and compete even when he shouldn’t. There’s ample evidence to support this idea: Vrabel was Chiefs and Ravens kryptonite for a minute at the turn of this decade, and he did it by really driving Henry and the offensive line to get those good play action looks. Do we believe a rookie can make the game messy for the Dolphins defense behind a porous offensive line? Do we believe the secondary can play up to the final whistle without a rigid front 7? The Titans got relatively good defensive play last week and at home, the team still found a way to drop the game in overtime with miscues in every phase of the game. There is no reason to believe the Titans on the road can make the game any more competitive than last week. Ultimately, since I can’t watch the great Ryan Stonehouse, I will be interested to see which Titans meet a challenge that initially seems insurmountable: will Henry or Hopkins turn back the clock? Does Spears make life challenging for Miami as payback for their own Achane deployment on the league? Is Jack Gibbens a special linebacker, or Amani Hooker a building block? Much like the Patriots, the best players on this team are either aging or best suited as complementary pieces. Thank you, NFL, for giving America a second Monday Night game, and good luck to the Titans as they seek to believe in Any Given Monday.
As it is playoff time, a note on scenarios: if the Titans won out, the NFL section of the New York Times Upshot gives them just an 11% chance to make the postseason. If they lose to the Dolphins and Texans next week, they will officially be eliminated.
Score Prediction: 24-10 Miami
Season Record (Taylor’s Picks): 10-2
* = See Glossary
