The Rise of the Tennessee Titans: Fluke or Contender in 2020?

no matter who you are making a deep postseason run in the NFL is not a small accomplishment let alone as a major underdog in the playoff landscape in fact there's only been four times that a team has reached the conference championship with a regular-season record of nine and seven since the year 2000 with the most recent of those magical runs dating back to just a few months ago in the Tennessee Titans a team that looked completely lost in the middle of their year just to turn around and take command in the AFC seemingly in an instant before falling to the eventual Super Bowl champions in the Kansas City Chiefs but with those accomplishments said only once in that 20-year span has a nine and seven team been able to return to the conference championship game within even the next six seasons following a run like that and let's just say that journey didn't end with any parades so are the Tennessee Titans we saw in 2019 different from that norm or was their success just another outlier and a long line of teams that came within inches of playing for a Super Bowl before returning back to disappointment well today I'd like to see if we can answer that question along with taking a look at what made Tennessee's story such an interesting rise up from the ashes but before we get too deep into Tennessee Titans lore I'd like to thank audible for sponsoring this video and helping out the channel in what I'm sure you've noticed are not the most ideal of circumstances considering those circumstances there is really not a better time than now to learn something new or de-stress by listening to a great story an audible selection of thousands of titles and other content covering everything from finance to the classics to podcasts and comedy specials that entire selection has got you covered just personally I've been using their service years before I even posted my first video here on the channel and even right now I've been using audible to revisit david & goliath by malcolm gladwell it's long been one of my favorite collections of stories and it takes a new angle on the seemingly insurmountable conflicts we stumble on in life so needless to say it's been refreshing if you're interested in getting started with audible yourself you can visit audible.com slash set the edge or text set the edge to 500 500 to get started with a free 30-day trial a free audiobook and unlimited access to each months collection of audible originals again that is audible.com slash set the edge or simply texting set the edge to 500 500 to get started with the easiest way to incorporate some more depth into your daily routine so thank you again to audible and without further ado let's remember the Titans and yeah I've been saving that one for a quick second of all the heartbreaking Super Bowl losses over the years there's certainly a case to be made that no team came closer before having a title snatched away from them than the Tennessee Titans in 2000 it's a pain that I'm sure every single Titans fan now hates me for even bringing up but ever since that tragic moment the Titans have been understandably trying to get back and constantly fighting against forces that have often pulled them to falling short of anything meaningful and quite honestly that lack of overall direction has taken a significant toll on a franchise that was relocated from Houston just 23 years prior in recent years it's felt like the team is on a treadmill notably never winning the division since 2008 and in one of the most bizarre trends in recent history maintaining a 9 and 7 record every single season over the past four years so how was 2019 any different from that well it's a story of nearly every single important cog in the machine for Tennessee stepping up when they're back was up against the wall and it starts before the 2018 season with the team's decision to make the switch to Mike Vrabel at head coach just months earlier from that the team had made it to the divisional round under head coach Mike malarkey but in a bold decision the Titans evaluated that height as the ceiling for the team in the malarkey era and placed the talented roster in the hands of fresh faces and for a while it didn't look to be going well the player who was supposed to be their franchise quarterback in Marcus Mariota continued to struggle in yet another offensive scheme under Matt Lafleur in 2018 and though the team would rally around Derek Henry late in the season to just barely miss the playoffs at nine and seven there were no more answers to where Tennessee was headed in 2019 than they had going into the season in the first place nobody could deny the promise and talent the team had but the range of outcomes was still as unknown as ever with even more coordinator changes and an offense that just couldn't find the consistency there quietly dominant defense needed to put games away and though Vrabel was flashing ability as a great coach and even offered to sever his own manhood in pursuit of a Superbowl ring through the first six games of 2019 things were not looking up the team went two and four and was now fresh off of a disheartening 16-0 shutout at the hands of the Joe Flacco LED Broncos that game saw the benching of Marcus Mariota for the first time in his five-year NFL career with the Titans and it marked the end of an era that was almost entirely comprised of just repeating the phrase maybe this is the year he'll put it all together over and over and over again until you went completely known so he'd passed the torch to Ryan Tannehill coincidentally an even older veteran who had yet to reach his full potential who was originally traded for cheap in the offseason as an insurance policy for Mariota due to his famously troubled injury history so needless to say things weren't exactly optimistic in the Music City sitting at the bottom of the AFC South two games behind both the Texans and Colts with an offense that had been dead in the water all season long the offensive line had been a complete revolving door giving up twenty nine sacks the play calling by new offensive coordinator Arthur Smith had been boring and predictable and while their defense had yet to give up more than 20 points in a game on the year it felt like the team was lost once again in a cycle of trying to get out of their own way so at this point the team had two options either make an attempt to change their entire identity halfway through the season and potentially flame out even harder or tuck tail and begin the preparations for 2020 another concession that the Titans were just lost in a fog of mediocrity without a flashlight obviously hindsight is gonna make that sound like an easy decision but for the Titans to pull off a turnaround and make the playoffs with only about a 9% probability of getting there in week six the margin for error was going to have to be close to razor thin for the entire organization and while sometimes you can knock over a domino and fail to have it caused any response at all sometimes all it takes is a push in the right direction to set off a chain reaction to the fortune of Tennessee Tannehill was a complete breath of fresh air for their offense which almost overnight was able to transform from stagnant into one of the biggest threats in the NFL the team still wasn't making much noise and they wouldn't all the way until deep into January but make no mistake the Titans that shocked the NFL in the playoffs were born long before with the culmination of Tannehill accuracy and decision-making feeding off of the dominance of Derek Henry's presence and vice versa the Titans quickly morphed into the team they always aim to be with marcus mariota as Tannehill led up the remainder of their schedule with a league-leading 70 point three percent completion rate league-leading 9.2 yards per attempt and posting over 2700 yards and 22 touchdowns to six interceptions through 12 games establishing himself as the most efficient passer in the entire NFL in that span four years in miami Tannehill found himself more often a victim of an incompetent organization than just outright terrible especially with his years under who should be considered one of the biggest frauds in NFL coaching as far as I'm concerned and while no one expected that kind of turn in production to be in the cards for the 31 year old signal caller Tennessee's blend of run first calls with play-action passing lit Tanna Hills production on fire in fact according to pro Football Focus eleven hundred and sixty five of his twenty seven hundred and forty two yards came on play-action passes a whopping 42% of his overall production and of course that success is also due in no small part to the surge of weapons around him most notably in the receiving game in rookie AJ Brown who was the only player in his class to top a thousand receiving yards and of course L tractor cito himself Derrick Henry the NFL's rushing king who drew defenders up to the line on in every play basis and still just often managed to run them over anyways for a team that looked confused on what its offensive identity should resemble early on in the year Arthur Smith deserves a significant amount of credit for quickly figuring out what worked with Tannehill under center and just sticking by it their turnaround was nothing short of rapid winning six of their next seven games including a 35 to 32 shocker over the Kansas City Chiefs that rallied the whole city behind them and pushed them through to a 9 and 7 finish in a tough closing schedule in their final seven games they scored an average of 33 point 4 points each so the Titans offense had gone from the pedestrian unit that held back any lead defense to an elite unit that was able to pick up the slack in times where the team's defense faltered and now all of a sudden the team that had been written off as finally hitting rock bottom was back in the playoffs of course when you talk about a team that has just gone 9 and 7 for a fourth consecutive year in an AFC filled with explosive offensive talent across the board it starts to become pretty clear why the Titans were going to be unfairly slept on from the beginning they had a great run and now they got the privilege of making a first-round exit at the hands of the defending champion New England Patriots in Foxborough the writing was already on the wall before kickoff even happened for most people but as this happened many times before when disciples of Belichick like Mike rave will face-off against the Patriots the Titans had New England's number Derrick Henry ran all over the Patriots for 182 yards and a touchdown that night and in a low-scoring grudge match the Patriots inability to slow Henry down and in their title defense before it really even got started but while sending Tom Brady out of New England on a pick six was impressive that was nothing compared to what Tennessee was asked to do just one week later go in to Baltimore and beat the Superbowl favorite Ravens and MVP Lamar Jackson on their home field the Ravens boasted one of the best offenses in NFL history in 2019 with Jackson's electric play making setting NFL records that won't be contested by anybody other than himself in the many years to come the Titans were ten point underdogs and it was clear to everyone that Tennessee was going to have to try and execute the exact same game plan to perfection if they wanted a legitimate chance of keeping up with Baltimore to make a long story short they did the Titans defense absolutely suffocated Lamar Jackson capitalizing on every mistake to create short fields and jump out to an early lead before the Ravens could even blink after that it was Derrick Henry time once again pounding the rock on 30 carries 495 yards and setting a new NFL record in the process with his third straight hundred eighty plus yard rushing effort oh and he also threw for a touchdown just to rub salt in the wound the Ravens were completely embarrassed in front of the nation with the endless confidence they entered with flipped around entirely by just halftime it was only the fifth time in NFL history that a team that has started two and four in the season has reached a conference championship matchup and with their 28 12 victory over the Ravens the Titans had successfully completed one of the most incredible mid-season turnarounds the league has ever seen of course it didn't end entirely in glory the following week Tennessee came face-to-face with quarterback Jesus incarnate Patrick mahomes in Kansas City and while the team put up a respectable fight it just wasn't enough to stop the eventual Super Bowl champions but the fact they didn't make it to Miami for Super Bowl 54 is not something you can even count as a disappointment considering the Titans were not supposed to be anywhere near the AFC Championship game in the first place they ran the table in a way that few teams have ever been able to and I'm happy for Titans fans that have stood by the team all these years and have now been rewarded with two of the most amazing upsets you could have asked for so now for the big question are they here to stay and this is an interesting one because for me at least it's really got two separate parts one will the Titans be able to continue building a roster at the same or better quality than their 2019 team and two well the magic of the Titans continued with Ryan's Hannah Hill and Derrick Henry leading the way the first question is one that lays mostly in the hands of Titans GM John Robinson who I've come to believe is one of the better executives in the NFL right now he's as strong of a drafter as they come and he just seems to get it when it comes to building a team in the Mike Vrabel era the scheme might not have always fit but it's always felt like more of a coaching issue than a personnel issue in most areas of the roster which is why as soon as things began to click in 2019 people started rapidly taking notice of hey this Titans roster is pretty good so naturally they paid the player that was deemed responsible for that turnaround and they paid him a lot while I'm not personally convinced that Ryan Tannehill is a four-year hundred 18 million with 92 million guaranteed type of quarterback after an excellent half season I can understand the need to secure that position after years of second and third chances with Mariota and not only that but the team currently sits on the 5th most caps base of any front office giving them plenty of flexibility to re-sign players like Derek Henry later this offseason or I don't know maybe a professional kicker considering they were eight of 18 on field goals last year no I'm not making that up the team is sustaining important losses like that of jerel Casey on the defensive line who the team will need to replace soon given the questionable return of a seventh round pick for him and losing Jack Conklin at tackle who the team will likely try to replace in the draft overall though I've liked the moves Robinson is made and believe that this Titans roster is going to be at least if not more competitive in 2020 and 2021 with the vast majority of their key players already signed for the long haul and that brings us to the other side of the question whether or not the success the team found in the back half of 2019 is going to be replicable in the years to come and this one it's a lot tougher because while the Titans run was insanely impressive there's a lot of things that are going to need to go correctly to keep that train moving in the AFC there's a big bet being placed right now that this is the new norm for Tennant who was excellent in 2019 but on a very limited sample size from an eight year career and betting long-term on the quarterback who's finally putting it all together has proven to be costly more often than not additionally Arthur Smith is going to have to prove again that he can adapt to changing tides as the rest of the league is going to take notice of Tennessee strengths but last year did prove that the run first offense isn't dead in the NFL so long as you can be unpredictable and how you line up and your quarterback play is sharp enough to take advantage of those gaps that a Derrick Henry creates typically in the modern NFL the notion that running success doesn't contribute to passing success is a correct one but with most things as it seems Tennessee has poised themselves as an outlier in that sphere as well but now the outlier needs to continue to be an outlier and it's easy to say that regression is on the way for Tannehill and likely Henry as well with 5.1 yards per carry on 303 rushes and 9.6 yards per attempt for Tannehill nearly impossible to replicate but if they're going to try it's gonna be paramount to bring back the defense to elite levels and stay in the same vein as the 49ers did this past season with a clever run first approach backed by an elite defensive unit that road will be made tougher by Mike Vrabel having to take the reins as coordinator of the defense and the reshuffling of a defensive line that was already struggling in pass rush but with the draft and back half a free agency there are pieces that can make the process a lot easier and believe me when I say the defense is going to need to return to form if they're going to have a legitimate shot at the end of the day the Titans future is so fun to talk about because anybody can see anything they want in it if you're a Titans fan you've got all the evidence and statistics you want to show that Tannehill was the guy the team needed for years and if you're a detractor you've got all the historical stats needed to show that 2019 was mostly smoke and mirrors it's definitely a good to be alive for titans fans this is easily the most optimism the team has seen in years but if you ask me there is a very tough road ahead for Tennessee to recreate that magic in 2020 historically teams that are reaching that height in miraculous fashion don't usually muster the staying power to return it's not really an overstatement to say that things went nearly perfect in regard to injuries game plans and executing the exact way they wanted to in all the right moments and if there's one thing we've learned in the NFL it's that betting on those overnight wonders doesn't typically end up paying well but that doesn't mean Tennessee isn't a contender because they certainly will be and quite honestly if there's anything the team has proven so far it's that writing off the Titans is exactly the position they want to be

Channel: Set the Edge

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Length: 16min 28sec (988 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 25 2020