Florio comments on Titans offense this AM

[pat]

Would love to lead the league in rushing. That's winning football.

[OILERMAN]

Just now, Jamalisms said:

The key is how to implement an offense that passes efficiently, given your personnel.

I'd say early indications are it's being built fine based on personnel. Two big RBs, a great TE and 3 good(potentially) possession WRs, a power blocking OL and an accurate QB with a quick release

[Titans279]

Dallas in 2014 passed 50.36% of the time Seattle in 2014 passed 48.56% of the time. Only one team passed less that year, Houston (48.07%).

So being around 50% (+/- 2) would mean the offense is literally quite balanced, but it would also be a very run heavy offense in the modern NFL.

I expect we'll see them attempt to be in that range.

Edit: source https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/stat/passing-play-pct?date=2015-02-01

[NewsToTom]

1 hour ago, Superhorn said:

You mean because he likes to mix in RPO which - philosophically - resembles the triple option?

Because we've seen Mularkey as OC, before, direct as run-oriented an attack as you see in the current NFL. That seems to me to be his fundamental philosophy.

Mularkey's comments since January (and I've listened to every podcasted NSH radio hit; read the transcript and/or watched the video of everything the team has posted; and caught some but by no means all or even most of the non-NSH media interviews) make it clear to me that he likes to run the ball, that he believes running the ball can be a good way to be successful in the NFL of 2016, and run success will help the passing game succeed.

At the same time, Mularkey is selling to the media and his doubters that this doesn't mean that he's minimizing Mariota, that he doesn't believe in throwing the ball, or some of the more aggressive of the claims against him. Rather, his conception of his offense is one that includes an active and efficient passing game (not the best description, but I hope you get the gist).

Overall, I think an ideal Mularkey gameplan would feature the Titans running the ball 45 times and throwing it 25. That's in contrast to, say, a Whisenhunt gameplan, where he might have done just the opposite. Whether the 2016 Titans will actually be able to execute that sort of gameplan is a different question, of course.

 

Shifting topics a little bit, the Falcons from 2009 to 2011 ranked in the top five in the NFL in offensive plays run. For purposes of this thread, both the pass- and run-heaviness of their offense is therefore somewhat exaggerated by the raw numbers of passing and rushing plays (by the situational numbers I cited earlier for the 08 Falcons I quoted earlier, the 2009-11 teams were much closer to average in run pct.). This is a bit of an outstanding question for the 2016 Titans. The past two seasons, the Titans have run the fewest and third-fewest plays in the NFL. A lot of that's been because the offense has sucked so much, of course, but Mularkey is no Chip Kelly. The only mentions of pace and speed I recall have been more about what I'd call crispness, getting in and out of the huddle and to the line more easily, than expressing the idea of what I might call tempo (running plays as quickly as possible). Obviously we saw the successful no huddle drive against the Panthers, so that will probably be part of the offense at times, but I'd bet the Titans again rank in the bottom half of the NFL in total number of offensive plays again, which would mean they rank outside the top ten in both number of passing attempts and number of rushing attempts.

 

And while I'm rambling, going back to the OP, (1) Henry is obviously going to play some role in the offense this year. I think a 65/35 Murray/Henry split (roughly my expectations before training camp began and relatively unchanged since then) is consonant with what we've heard before and could be referred to as "sharing the load." (2) Mularkey has mentioned using Mariota's mobility more, which makes sense. It wouldn't surprise me to see his carry total go from 3/gm (34 in 12 last year) to more like 4-5/gm (60-80 overall?), less because of designed runs than because of more bootlegs, rollouts, and opportunistic scrambles. But I'd be really surprised if you see Mariota running, say, QB Power like Cam does or getting to 100+ carries like Cam's had every year.

[EagleEye]

58 minutes ago, OILERMAN said:

More like grabbed by the back of the collar and thrown out the door into the street

Horsecollar?

[Denali]

6 hours ago, CreepingDeath said:

Fun bit of franchise historical role.  Oilers go pass-heavy when defenses aren't built to cover multiple WR sets to take advantage of mismatches.  Now the Titans go run-heavy to take advantage of smaller, pass-defending defenses.  

If the Run-and-Shoot's weakness was stalling out in the redzone due to a lack of field, I wonder what the biggest weakness (besides media quips) will be for this offense.  Stretching the field?

Easily exploited weaknesses are the bane of unbalanced offenses.

[OILERMAN]

Whiz also wanted to run the ball and talked a lot about it, he's also talking about it back in SD

[Starkiller]

4 minutes ago, OILERMAN said:

Whiz also wanted to run the ball and talked a lot about it, he's also talking about it back in SD

In Wiz's defense (and I hate even saying that) he was starting Antonio Andrews and Dexter McCluster...

[Cyrus]

Where is the 45/25 number coming from Tom? I ask because Matt Ryan only had games with less than 25 P/A twice from 2009-2011. (they won both games).* Obviously he had many <25 P/A games as a rookie, but that's only two games in three years.

*I'm omitting games due to injury or games rested.

[NewsToTom]

3 minutes ago, Cyrus said:

Where is the 45/25 number coming from Tom? I ask because Matt Ryan only had games with less than 25 P/A twice from 2009-2011. (they won both games).* Obviously he had many <25 P/A games as a rookie, but that's only two games in three years.

*I'm omitting games due to injury or games rested.

Idealized hypothetical.

But as I noted the Falcons were running more plays than an average team, so raw numbers will be high. Also, the 2010 and 2011 Falcons were a bottom 10 team in run offense DVOA, which isn't part of Idealized Mularkey (2008 team was 18th).

[OILERMAN]

Cool, so Mularkey adapts and overcomes!

[TitanDuckFan]

29 minutes ago, Starkiller said:

In Wiz's defense (and I hate even saying that) he was starting Antonio Andrews and Dexter McCluster...

That's how you know Whis was full of it.

He kept talking about establishing an identity of a power running team, with an absolute shit O-Line and RB's that were less effective finding a hole than the average mole.

The guy was a bad joke, punting on 4th and 2 from the opponent's 38 Yd line.

[TitanDuckFan]

The no-huddle plays into this too folks, and that's why he's got Marcus operating out of it every game in pre-season, for at least a drive or 2.

When he finds something that works, be it run or pass, he's trapping the defense's sub package (or base) on the field knowing they have the wrong personnel in the game, preventing substitutions.  We may see entire drives go one way, or at least 6-8 plays straight, all pass or all run with Marcus calling them out as they approach the line, or changing it up depending on alignments.

So the Defense either calls the timeout to sub, or suffers.

[NashvilleNinja]

8 hours ago, code said:

In the end, it will be exciting if we win (though I don't recall many folks excited about Fisherball even when we won).

How many people were excited about Titans football the last two years with the new age offensive scheme that got Mariota's season sacked and both Locker and Mettenberger sacked the year before? How exciting were those 2-14 and 3-13 finishes?

[XAEA12]

2 hours ago, Alcibiades said:

CTF left?

I remember when he was a good poster. 

 

Reefer madness is real.