NFL First Thoughts: Tennessee Titans
Despite what he says, expect same style of play under new OC Tim Kelly.
Below is a transcript from The Simple Handicap podcast (listen here), presented by Right Angle Sports. We’ll be doing a first-look preview of all 32 NFL teams, followed by more complete team previews prior to the season. Interested in signing up for the RAS NFL service? Join here.
The big offseason change for the Tennessee Titans is that Todd Downing, the team’s offensive coordinator, is out. Tim Kelly is in. If you search online, you won’t see a lot of media appearances for Kelly so far. But he did have an introductory press conference, and he said a lot of good things.
Here’s something he said that stood out:
"The big thing that how I was raised and how I want to build this thing is we want to be versatile. We want to have versatile players who can do multiple things from multiple formations and multiple personnel groupings and be out there and give the illusion of being complex. The concepts may not change a whole ton, but the illusion of (change is) being complex and putting our guys in position to go out and execute at a high level is. We want guys who can be vertical threats downfield, we want to find a mix of pass and run, and make sure we’re being as efficient as we can on offense.”
When you read that, you think, “OK, this could be a big change!” Because what do we know about the Titans? Not just last year, but the last three, four, five seasons. It’s a very run-centric team. It’s one of the slowest teams snap to snap. Last year, they were 30th. They had the highest run rate on first down, the second-highest run rate on second down. Then on third down their pass rates spiked. They were very predictable. But it’s been season after season of a very similar story where the Titans get away with it because of the brilliance of Derrick Henry and pieces on the Titans playing well above their expectations.
If you have high expectations hearing this, you can be forgiven. But there’s reason to have doubts, because we heard this same thing from Downing when he was introduced. Very similar. We also heard, and saw, very similar things from Arthur Smith, who now years later is viewed as modern and innovative. So you have to look to see if Kelly’s words match up with Kelly’s past. We saw Kelly previously as a play caller in Houston with Deshaun Watson and those really good Texans offenses. You look at the pass/run split, and Houston during the Kelly years were consistently below average in pass rate. They favored the run. We saw a guy like Arthur Smith, pass rates for the Titans among the lowest in the league. Downing, same thing. So not only is it a difficult thing to believe that Kelly will change his personal tendencies, but there very well could be internally within the Titans under Vrabel a mandate to play a very specific type of football. Because again, the two prior OC’s, also internal hires, said the same things only to not change up the play calling.
Expect much of the same from the Titans.