Shooting down the fan hysteria and preconceived bias against the offense

[TitansWycheck89]

@OILERMAN Did you see when Mariota thought that a poster of Andre Johnson was actually the real Andre Johnson and he threw it right in the posters hands 

[freakingeek]

You can't turn the ball over and give up 14 points in doing so. That will get you beat 99% of the time. The two TOs changed the game plan. Up until then, the Titans played well on both sides of the ball. Everyone just quit pissing and moaning. This is a young team. We played a good defense and went toe to toe with them. Yes the loss hurts but contrary to the chicken little contingent, the sky is not falling.

[CMJ]

19 minutes ago, TitansWycheck89 said:

@OILERMAN Did you see when Mariota thought that a poster of Andre Johnson was actually the real Andre Johnson and he threw it right in the posters hands 

Now is the time for ManningEnvy.

[CreepingDeath]

Yes, losing sucks.  Yes, I would like more exciting plays.  However, I think the team did well overall.  The 3 major mistakes were extremely costly (INT, fumble, kickoff return).  We will see how these get corrected going forward.  

On the bright side, the Jags and Colts both lost, too.  

[Rogue]

8 minutes ago, freakingeek said:

You can't turn the ball over and give up 14 points in doing so. That will get you beat 99% of the time. The two TOs changed the game plan. Up until then, the Titans played well on both sides of the ball. Everyone just quit pissing and moaning. This is a young team. We played a good defense and went toe to toe with them. Yes the loss hurts but contrary to the chicken little contingent, the sky is not falling.

Dude, you can't have coaches throwing picks and fumbling footballs.  I am going to kick puppies until the coaches stop throwing picks and fumbling footballs.  

 

[IsntLifeFunny]

8 minutes ago, freakingeek said:

You can't turn the ball over and give up 14 points in doing so. That will get you beat 99% of the time. The two TOs changed the game plan. Up until then, the Titans played well on both sides of the ball. Everyone just quit pissing and moaning. This is a young team. We played a good defense and went toe to toe with them. Yes the loss hurts but contrary to the chicken little contingent, the sky is not falling.

What I'm scared of is watching no less than five plays where Mariota is off in no man's land, all were read option related...and then they kept with it after the interception. What we saw was not an NFL offense. Thats what scares me. The talent is there, and I don't really care about the loss as a loss; I'm scared we are going to ruin MM's chance to develop as a true NFL, elite QB, if we keep him in this bullshit scheme. 

[Rogue]

2 hours ago, Jamalisms said:

Apart from the mistakes, they did what they wanted!

The costliest mistakes were 3 turnovers, 2 for TDs.  

[TitanDuckFan]

This coaching staff needs to be prepared to win games against great defenses the way all good teams do.  I didn't like the run/pass split, and I didn't like sacrificing quick reaction plays for the sake of fakes and misdirection.

JRob invested heavily in FA and the draft to develop a stout run game, both from the RB and O-Line perspective, and then we abandoned it too early yesterday.

MN lost the Wildcard game to Seattle last year 10-9, and Seattle didn't score until the 4th qtr, but they stayed with their game plan, running more than they passed and wore MN's defense down in the process.  We were on path to do that yesterday until we didn't.  Great running teams, power running teams know they're going to play and win close low-scoring games.  It makes no sense to invest as heavily as we have in the run game and then throw the ball 67% of the time.  We don't have the pass protection to do that against a great pass rush like MN's, and we don't have the receivers for it, especially with Wright on the bench.

Mularkey has been preaching he wants a balanced attack since forever, and then in game one he went away from it.

It makes no damned sense IYAM.  The more you throw the ball the more you risk INTs.  That's just the law of averages.

And for those that think this secondary succeeded yesterday, MN had 3 receivers that averaged over 13 yards per catch on 15 receptions.  Diggs had over 100 yds on 7 receptions. 

We didn't lose the game because of the game plan.  But we didn't play the game the team was built around either.

Straight-up, hard-hitting physical football doesn't look like the TN offense I watched yesterday.  The front 7 yes, the offense no.

 

[oldschool]

1 hour ago, Jamalisms said:

We had WRs all over the field. Just look say their snap counts!

This deserves it's own thread. the Titans WR2 only had 37 snaps. Let that sink in then wonder why the Vikings played 8 and 9 man fronts.

[TitanDuckFan]

10 minutes ago, oldschool said:

This deserves it's own thread. the Titans WR2 only had 37 snaps. Let that sink in then wonder why the Vikings played 8 and 9 man fronts.

Yet we threw the ball 41 times, and only 5 of those were to Walker.
 

[freakingeek]

14 minutes ago, IsntLifeFunny said:

What I'm scared of is watching no less than five plays where Mariota is off in no man's land, all were read option related...and then they kept with it after the interception. What we saw was not an NFL offense. Thats what scares me. The talent is there, and I don't really care about the loss as a loss; I'm scared we are going to ruin MM's chance to develop as a true NFL, elite QB, if we keep him in this bullshit scheme. 

There were some herky jerky plays that left Mariota in space with an unblocked DE . I think those were designed with the intent of him being able to get the ball out quicker, which didn't happen. Other times he used his speed perfectly to run and slide. Our play action still needs some work. I wan to take advantage of Mariota's speed but not at the cost of getting him injured. 

[freakingeek]

7 minutes ago, TitanDuckFan said:

Yet we threw the ball 41 times, and only 5 of those were to Walker.
 

I agree. I thought before the game, that Walker should and would be heavily involved in the gameplan.

[Legaltitan]

3 minutes ago, oldschool said:

This deserves it's own thread. the Titans WR2 only had 37 snaps. Let that sink in then wonder why the Vikings played 8 and 9 man fronts.

Sounds like a creative way to move the ball and force mismatches to me.

Not talking to you necessarily, but for the folks who are against "the scheme" what is the exact criticism?

Because before the season the overarching concern I heard from Jamal and others was that we were going to be too run-oriented and were going to hamstring Mariota by forcing him to play in a boring, predictable smashmouth offense.

Instead we came out and threw more than we ran, ran creative plays to try to create mismatches, and gave Mariota the freedom to change plays based on coverages.

So what is it we are actually against here with Mularky? Because some of the main things I am reading (gimmicks and trick plays) is almost the opposite criticism I heard preseason (too conservative and predictable).

But on the specific point in this post, it seems to me if you run a lot of sets with RBs and TEs instead of WRs and end up passing it more than running it that seems like a fairly clever way to create mismatches and take advantage of a defense like Minnesotas.

I freely admit I am not a X and O type guy, but that throwing more than running with run-heavy personnel seems pretty clever.  Dare I say exotic-smashmouthy.  And for the most part we moved the ball pretty damn well against a good defense.

Plenty of concerns and criticism to go around, and maybe I don't understand "scheme" like some of the armchair offensive gurus around here, but it seems to me they had a pretty good offensive gameplan against a D like the Vikings.  It didn't work because we shot ourselves in the foot with turnovers, and got killed on ST. 

[IsntLifeFunny]

The criticism is that Mariota will never develop as a top end QB in this scheme, because it is not using pro style concepts in the passing game, and at least for one day was entirely predicated on the read option when we were in shotgun. It's a terrible offensive design. 

Sure, use some read option, but what I saw yesterday in no way resembled a pro style offense from the passing game. Mix in awful gimmick plays, and poor adjustments, and overall there are a lot of reasons for concern, not the least of which is MM's awful footwork on his throws. 

[Jamalisms]

19 minutes ago, oldschool said:

This deserves it's own thread. the Titans WR2 only had 37 snaps. Let that sink in then wonder why the Vikings played 8 and 9 man fronts.

No need for a separate thread.

I have it on good authority that we ran the offense I wanted and with that many four and five WR sets, these snap counts must be wrong.