Titans vs Jaguars Thursday Night Recap

second and they get that big win. And um, I am in the garage here at handsas manner as we continue to mix it up on Thursday night. This is our first standalone minipod and joining me here is the great Mark Cessler. How are you, buddy, I'm doing good. I'm already impressed by your effort here. Or as you mentioned, we're in this garage. There is a a rogue cricket over in the corner um trying to make a racket

interrupt our show. And you picked up a football from your sitting position here across the room, pelted it nailed the corner of the garage where the cricket seems to be, and he quieted down. That aggressive nature was something Marcus Mariotta was missing tonight, but Gardner Minshew was not well put. And uh, listeners of this show that also listen to the throwback pod, we're sitting in the market is in

the Bob's Bob chair right now. And the cricket has been an ongoing subplot for over two summers now, so it came back in a big spot for the Around the NFL podcast. And yes, and we'll get to the Jags, who deserve credit for really showing up and balling out in this game, especially on defense. But yeah, let's start with the Tytoons here. And I just want to there is one play or one series that is really so emblematic of uh, this game and this team and this quarterback.

And it's seven, three and a half minutes to play. The Titans take over deep in their own end after a bizarre Doug Morown decision to go for it on fourth down instead of kicking the icing field goal. Uh. The reason Doug Moron did is because he was showing the Titans no respect that they could actually march down the field. And what do they do? Mark at seven with three and a half minutes to play, and yes, I understand it is very close to a foregone conclusion.

This game is over. They run the football for five yards and then slowly get back to the line and Mariotto looks around the line, does his checks, and and and as Chris Westling says, the sands are falling through the hourglass. And it's just like it was. It was such a perfect encapsulation of everything that's wrong with the Titans. There's no there's there's no urgency with this offense. And this has been going on forever. Yeah, I mean it

was early. You're in the game because this is not just a one moment event in this affair where they were down seventeen nothing and appeared to be milking the clock. You're trailing by seventeen points, and you're right though the Rezero urgency and and whether or not at the end of the game. The drive you're mentioning, which I was listening to on the radio driving over and the color guy and I drove here without an accident, credit to me. And I'm a good driver. I just realized by the

way I am. After we're done today and you drive home, I am following you into my driveway and I want to see you get in that car, get behind the wheel and drive away, because I've literally never seen it. It's been a while since I've been behind the wheel, and I feel I feel a new uh, sort of

a new purpose. And I kind of loved driving in l A. But point being on the way over, the color man on the broadcast was beside himself, and he should be, because if any team in the league has talent but has an optics problem when it comes to being dynamic and changing the way that we feel about them, it's the Titans. And that romp over the Browns a couple of weeks ago feels as far from the East

and the West at this point. Yeah, And I remember us talking before a Week two You were very impressed by what you saw in that Week one game, and not to play it. I told you so. But I feel like this is not surprising what's happened here, because we've seen this forever with the Titans. They suck people in with a big performance and then they go back to sleep. And who knows. The way their their history is is that they might have a big win next week, or they lose next week, and then they win three

in a row. Or four out of five, and here we are again there eight and six in December. But don't get sucked in because you know where this is ending. It's ending at nine and seven, because it always ends at nine and seven. It is I'm willing to at this point, I'm not you know, I'm not totally conceding, but it's only because it's a matter of time. I think maybe I'm also willing to hand you a loss.

Uh in progress on Gardner Minshew being an exciting quarterback because and I get the hesitating shan or in your case, I think you were kind of bucking the trend of everyone jumping all over Gardner Minshew on Twitter, and I understand that too, but give me this. He looked clean tonight and what I liked about him even in that first game, because you see some of these backups come in and they'll go fifteen for eighteen, and you want to find out what that means. Does that mean it's

dump offs or it's there. You're putting the quarterback into an extremely safe situation where you know a high school quarterback could essentially connect on most of those passes. In that first game, Minshew was throwing aggressively down the field, and I kind of love what John D. Filippo, the

offensive coordinated for the Jaguars, did tonight. He was comfortable right away in Philadelphia with Nick Foles and did not turn the volume down when Foles went on that magical run with the Eagles, and he John D. Filippo, I thought, approached Minshew in the same way, and in an Aikman mentioned earlier in the game that they talked to the coaching staff and they wanted to open it up and

be aggressive on offense. They got up fourteen nothing with some big strikes down the field, some great you know, one on one catches, and then in then the weather happened and the refs happened with an insane flood of calls, and I thought slowed this game to a sort of a rain delayed tennis match. If you will to enter Greg's world, if we if we choose to do, I choose not to. Okay, well, I I tried to pull

you there too. Um. First of all, I want to make it very clear that my reluctance to get on the gardener Minshew the second band wagon was always just about the social media buzz and like you, let's get behind the wacky guy with the facial hair and the low cut shirts and all that stuff. I have no issue with mitshe the quarterback. I've been kind of following him, um and was you know, impressed in this game as well. He should have three touchdowns. Didie Westbrook can't catch a ball?

I mean, Didie Westbrook come back to us? Um? But back to your point. So, yes, as I've made clear on this podcast, i am not on the Minshew train. I'm watching it. You guys seem to be having fun, and I'm just sitting this one out and I'm happy for you. I mean, if this were to continue, we'd allow you on, like I mean, it's not I don't think that would be right. I don't. I just don't think it would be right. It would be weird and and I would never be truly accepted on the train.

I mean, to be fair, I find the growing social media, I mean sort of just the way the whole broadcast dealt with him. It's like part of me feels like I jumped on on the train with the like roughly thirty or forty other people. Wasn't just me, but now it's it's you're adding zeros and zeros to that it doesn't feel so special, you know, I do like that he stretches fully nude in the locker room in a jockstrap. That was the first nugget where I was like, oh, man, I do I wish I was kind of on that

train right now. Not to see him stretching, that would be gross. Anyway, to your point, the officiating, this is how bad the officiating was. Tom Brady, who is despite his issues with the league and the fact that he's been suspended, and if you're a member of the Patriots, you believe over the years you've been targeted by the league on various things, which you know whatever. Um, he

comes on Twitter and pointedly says, I can't watch. I'm turning this off, and he was referring to the officiating. And what we had here was fifteen penalties in the first half, called by referee Shawn Hockley's crew, eight of which were for holding, and and um, things got a little bit better in the second half, but this is and then by the way, entering Thursday night, the highest total of holding penalties in a game was eleven. So we were heading towards an absolute atrocity. And I'm a

little confused about this market. Maybe you could shed some light here. In the first ever around the NFL podcast minipod, we kept hearing that there was going to be added emphasis on holding this year, and sure enough, I think it's up. Like s if the main goal of professional football as a piece of entertainment to be consumed and enjoyed and people to pump their resources into it and the whole machine is fed and the beast is happy, is for the product to be fun to watch. Why

was there this? Who likes holding penalties? Is this like a Jeff Fisher type vibe? What happened here? And like whoever signed off on this? Uh, they got what they want. But this is what this is what happens. It's not It's not a fun product to watch. And I know Mark, you just like me and everybody else on the pod, we watch game pass to catch up, uh, and and

cycle through these games. You can't even get through a condensed game anymore in forty minutes because all it is is stop downs and they call the penalty every time, over and over. So this is going on across the league and the fact that Tom Brady points it out and then Troy Aikman, a Hall of Famer, says the league better be paying attention to this because Tom Brady just spoke up, this is this is bad news. Well

it's it's almost like the the uh the league. I t people pre supposed this because the condensed version of game pass games are now called game in forty. I mean they're not even they're basically telling you don't even try to get out of here, do not even not even a good ring to Well, it's it already it already in my world. To take some energy out of it, because you're you get a little jolt when you find

a game that's thready on thirty one minutes. I will say this the I mean a lot of times with these early season trends, we all think we feel something, but then some sort of hot headed nerd produces a number showing that nothing's really up more than two or three percent. There were a hundred and nine holding calls last year. Coming into Week three, there were a hundred and seventy nine No one wins. It's part of belichick screw because it was in response to coaches complaining about

specifically holding calls more than anything else. Now I find it funny that you come out of halftime where obviously, you know, social media and the football world at large is on fire about what we saw in the first half, and of course Tom Brady tweets, and you don't see a penalty in the third quarter until like a minute to go that it goes deep. It's like, you do wonder if the refs at this point are just shifting in the wind and sort of toying and catering to

public response. I'm sure they would say that's ridiculous us, but the game had so many stoppages tonight that it's the one thing that you could say, and I know you're a big baseball guy, that baseball is complaint or issue is it's too slow? How do you speed it up? Why are we taking football, which there's so much more ability to control the pace in the tempo and turning it into what we saw tonight. Cannot cannot continue that way. I'm with you, alright. Three more points on uh two

on the Jackson and one on the Titoons. One Leonard Fournette, who busted off a sixty nine yard or late in this game. You'll never see the stat line ever again. Fifteen carries sixty six yards with a long of sixty nine an average. To have a sixty nine yard running a game and only average four and four point four yards per tote is pretty amazing. Uh. Shout out to Claiss Campbell who was a monster in this game. Finished

with three sacks, seven tackles, four tackles for loss. Was a total nightmare on a banged up foot too, on a banged up foot and he uh, this very much looked like the two thousand seventeen Jags. And then my last point, Mark is uh our own collegen world wolf are sweet tiny Box pointed out during the halftime show. She threw out the point that, hey, the Titans don't wake up and they were getting shut out at this point.

Is Ryan Tannehill somebody that should maybe come into this game, And Steve Smith kind of dismissed her out of hand, and whatever, Steve Smith can do that, but Connie was onto something there and the titoons they can continue to back Marcus Mariota and and continue to have games like this from now until eternity, or they could wake up and say we actually have an option behind this guy to see if we could spark a team otherwise you're

just gonna stay this team forever. Yeah, I think that, you know, someone like Joe Thomas probably agreed with with Colleen Wolf even if you didn't speak on that point, because he's been in Cleveland and he sees what happens when you've got something behind a failing starting quarterback. And if they if the Titans had an exciting preseason rookie that was even a third or fourth rounder behind Mariota, I think would hasten the process here. I mean, the problem is that if you were to have anyone as

boring as Mariota, it might be Ryan Tannehill. That's the only thing I could see a flip flop scenario back and forth. One thing I will say, well, in Calais Campbell, what is the what? Look at the contrast between what he's done through a lot of ups and downs. In Jacksonville, Tonight goes out and does what he does, and you may have Jalen Ramsey playing his last game in a Jaguars uniform amidst him saying, you know, he's not where the trade talks coming from. Obviously he wants to be

moved and he could be gone as soon as tomorrow. Morning. Well, I mean, you know, he's coming out and saying he's all about the team and this or that, and look, I mean, I'm not Jalen Ramsey has been an awesome Jaguar and I just think it's a shame that that's a narrative that you want to bail on this club.

And we don't know everything that's going on here, but the Jaguars have a little life to him after this, and Thursday Night can kind of mess you up because you can get married to what you saw in this weird and these weird Thursday night games and it doesn't play out the rest of the year. But if you get this kind of a game from Minshew, you know most of the time and the defense has been pretty good,

continues to play this way. Losing Ramsey's a huge loss and could be a complete game changer in a very winnable a f C South. And that's why I think the Jags people were saying, oh, why would you play Ramsey and risk him getting hurt when you might be looking to trade him from multiple number one picks. Well, first of all, we're taping this while they're in the locker room and doing their media availability. I wonder how Jalen Ramsey feels now and which is part of the

reason why. And we were talking about in the pot earlier this week. It didn't sit well with me that all of a sudden, this trade demand comes out because there O and two and things don't seem to be going well. Well, now you're Saxonville again. I wonder if Jalen revs, like, ah, maybe we can work this out, which whatever, We'll see how that all um plays out. But you know, for for one game, everything looks okay for the Jags, and in the a f C South,

I think it's a wide open division. Yeah, and it's and if you go if anyone didn't watch the Titans Cleveland game, I'm not suggesting you go watch it, but that was an amazing performance by the Titans that made me think differently about them. And here we are mere weeks later, and I have no clue who this team is. I guess that's exactly what they are. I thought that

I thought a change had occurred. The whole division feels that way, and you know, I kind of like divisions like this and other ones that are kind of bought and sold from the start. This one's totally different and spicy. Al Right, do we have anything else we want to touch in the first ever? I mean, it's meant to be. It's meant to be a mini pod, and I don't know how what minute we're what is mini when it comes to podcast? Is it a micro pod? Or want to wrap it up soon? It's not going to be many,

so I suggests we get out of here. Then, alright, good, next time you hear from us, it will be Sunday night, the flagship program um. And remember you also have the full week to preview podcast that just went up earlier today. So you got that, you got this, you got Sunday night, and then we're back on Tuesday. I mean, the content markets it is. It's a legitimate, it's a it's a watershed of content, and if you can't keep up, that is on you. All right, there you go, All right, now,

that's it. Dana hands a signing off for the Quiet Storm here in hands its manner Later