This is the OTP presented by Farm Bureau Health Plans. When it's game day for your health coverage, trust Farm Bureau Health Plans to draw up a winning play for you. They've been backing Tennesseeans for nearly eighty years, so please to now be joined by Titans head coach Brian Callahan.
Titans fall in Washington by account of forty two to nineteen. So, Brian, after you got on the plane and you're sitting there watching the tape of Sunday's loss, was there anything on that tape at all that surprised you?
No, man, I think surprise is maybe the wrong word.
Okay, give me a better one.
There was. There was some things that I that I was disappointed by just overall execution. Part of it was was left a little to be desired, obviously, but yeah, it was. It was a game that we we I didn't think at any point. I don't think our team felt at any point that should have looked the way it did by the end of it. That was a team that I thought we could compete with, and uh,
you know in the second half we did. And and when you just you just take the second half alone, and and and how we played there was much better than how we played to start the game, and it was more just an avalanche of things that just sort of it just spiral and it happened sometimes like that. But it was disappointing to see it just sort of get out of hand before we even really had a chance to start playing. That was That was the disappointing part.
There was some things that were positive, you know, I think Will's kind of stacked another positive performance together. I thought he did some nice things. I think Daryl Worley coming off coming off the street a couple of weeks ago and having seventeen tackles and playing nickel and safety was pretty impressive. But you know, overall, just too many, too many mistakes early on in a game and got away from us quickly and could couldn't climb out of it.
Which your message to the team much different on Monday than it was immediately after the game on Sunday.
No, it was exactly the same and probably maybe maybe even a little bit more strongly worded today than it was yesterday, just because of you know, you watch the things and it just we do too many things over the course of a game that put us in position to lose and not win. And that's one of the things I've stressed since since I've gotten here, is that you have to do things a particular way to give
yourself a chance to win the game. And too many times this year we've done those things where we've not given ourselves a chance to win the game. When you have penalties the way we've had penalties and controllable penalties that are that are focus related and execution related, and then you have turnovers those are Those are two very very glaring statistics that over the history of football would tell you that the more of those you have, the worsh off your team is going to be and the
more games are gonna lose. And right now we're in a bad spot in all those places. So I have to find a way to do that a lot better.
What specifically did the tape show about why the Titans had difficulty stopping the Commander's run game.
There's there's a there's I'll give credit where credit is due. They do a nice job with the run game there in Washington. I think Jaye Daniels ads an element to their run game that's not standard. It's a lot like Little Guy A Little Baltimore. There's just some things about the quarterback run game that you don't see a lot in the NFL. But there are some teams that do some of it, but they do it particularly well. They they've they use some of their gap schemes that were
that we misfit on some of the runs. You know, we didn't fit the gaps right. And when you're and you're in some of these kind of one back run games, the the term usually hear is kind of one back, one one one back, one gap, and when you're out of one of those gaps, that's where thirty yard runs come in, you know. And we just and and it's everybody has to do their job at the right spot at the right time and in order to knock the run out which we've done a very very good job
of for most of the year. And that that one, that one caught us a couple of times early in the game. And uh, you know, then the score of the game allowed them to continue to run the ball at a rate that isn't necessarily normal for the course of the game. But they got up big enough and they could just keep handing it off and keep running the ball.
So let's pull it that thread a little bit more. Was there anything that the Commanders did or didn't do in their running game that surprised you?
No, those are all they all the things that they've done were schemes that they'd shown on tape and and there wasn't anything, you know, earth shattering about how they came into the game and they just executed at a high level, and we didn't, you know, and they we we put ourselves in some spots where we had to get one more guy in the fit and we had to make a tackle, and then we didn't do those things.
And that's usually what happens in a game like that when it gets away, and then again they can they continued to run the ball, uh when they were up some scores and allowed for some production on the ground that I think, you know, ten nine out of ten weeks probably doesn't look like that, but but it did.
On Sunday, the Commanders were four or four converting third and ones, four of five converting third and twos. Now, before you get into the why of them being able to convert at such a high level, I mean, you have third and one or third and two, you've you've got a good percentage of conversion. It is just the overall number of chances they had on third and short the real problem.
Yes, and that's that's one of the things that we that every offense in the league preaches, and we certainly preach the same, is that you want to be in as third and manageable as possible. And you know, they would they they'd find a way to get four or five yards and two different plays, and all of a sudden it was third and two and it felt like and every time I looked up, I'm like, what is it third and one again? And then you know they're like, yep,
third and one again. I'm like, okay, well, it's feels like it's a lot. And it was. I mean, they were inside a third and five I think, what seven or eight time? I mean maybe, I mean. And so they did a great job of how we termin to staying on schedule on the early downs and giving yourself very third and manageables where you can still even run the ball and feel good about it. And you know, we didn't give ourselves. You know, the old adage in the NFL is that you had you have to earn
the right to rush the passer. You know, and we didn't earn the right to rush the passer because we didn't we didn't knock the run out well enough to put them in spots where they had to throw the football. It wasn't enough opportunities for that. And that's a that's a big part of playing successful offensive football is being manageable, and the good defenses keep you out of those spots and make you have to drop back and throw or hold the ball or whatever it may be in the
third and eight, nine, ten, eleven range. And we didn't do enough to get them in those spots where over the last handful of weeks we've done that.
You mentioned Daryl Worley credited with seventeen tackles in the game. The last time a Titan was credited with seventeen tackles in a game September twenty third, twenty twelve, a Keem Airs Wow against Detroit.
I remember, a.
Yeah. And the last time somebody had more Michael Griffin eighteen tackles the previous week against San Diego September sixteenth, twenty twelve. When a defensive back has that many tackles, is that is that.
That means the balls in the secondary more than you want it to be. The other part of that, too, is that actually Wary played both positions. He played safety for the majority of the beginning of the game, and then when Roger got knocked out, he moved in a nickel, So that shows his versatility. You know, when you're in a next when you're a nickel, you're gonna have way more action in the run game and tackling. So that's
probably where most of those ended up stacking up. He probably had a pretty normal safety number game, but the nickel reps I think picked that number up for him as the game went along. But really a credit to him. He's only been here for two or three weeks and to be able to jump in and play safety and then go play nickel in the same game as pretty impressive. So, you know, happy that we have him, and he did a nice job shown up for us and two different roles where we needed him.
Why has he been able to be so productive here in this defense specifically, Well, he.
Played it in Baltimore, you know, that's part of it. There's some familiarity with the scheme into an art and and what's asked of him, and that was one of the reasons why signing him when we did and we needed some depth and some pieces. Was was a part of bringing him in is that he could probably function pretty quickly and didn't have to get up to speed, if you will. He already had most of the things down pat and so you see that from him. And on top of that, he's played a lot of football.
You know, he's played corner in the league, he's played safety in the league. He's he's sort of done everything, and and you see that from him when you when you when he goes and plays like that.
Let's flip over to offense a little bit. You mentioned earlier that it felt like this team could never actually play because of the deficit that started so early in the game. Does it also make it hard for you to evaluate the performance of the offense because they never could just play yes and.
No, I mean yes and the terms like yes because it became a drop back passing game, which we didn't want to do obviously, and that's but there's things that evaluate within that. And then but there's we didn't never
really get to like get to them the plan. You know, we kind of got knocked out of it so fast that we didn't have a chance to actually do some of the things that that we liked in the game plan, especially in the run game, in the play actions, and you know, we looked up and it was like we had run ten plays on offense, which is again is partly our fault offensively, we didn't convert. You know, I think two third downs there we don't convert, and then we turn the ball over on the third series, and
then that was that. And there's twenty one nothing, twenty eight nothing before even I mean, I feel like I hadn't even gotten into the opening plays yet and then we're in that spot. So that was disappointing that we couldn't see what the game plan was going to look like. But but there's also plenty of things to evaluate from how we did play and the things we did in the passing game over the course of the game.
Take it further with will Levis, how do you evaluate him and consider him to have stacked another good performance when the game was just so out of out of hand so quickly.
He kept fighting in there, you know, that was one of the things. He kept finding ways to move the team and we you know, we score a touchdown at the at the end of the half. In the two minute drill, we come out and we put ourselves into two field goal spots. Again, those are those are moments though that have we gotten touchdowns in those spots? You know, maybe we got a whole different second half on our hands, you know, instead of kicking two field goals in those drives.
But there was a lot of good things. I mean, there's it's the most probably dropped back passing that he's been put through in a course of a game. And didn't you know, we dropped some balls, which was disappointing. And you know, the protection's hard when you're just dropping back and you know you got to get guys out in the pattern, and so we had some protection issues as well. But just to see the way he fought, he found complete, he's playing on time, He created a
couple of plays. Still working on that part is you know, the feel in the pocket and getting out and creating more when you have opportunities. But I just I thought it was another solid game for him just doing the things that you just want to see a quarterback do. Wasn't a winning effort overall, But just if you're just talking evaluation of growth, I think there was more of that again this.
Week thirty nine drop backs, only two sacks for a total of minus two yards. That would tell us on paper, the offensive lines protection was pretty good.
It was it was okay, it was okay, it was you know, I think We'll did a good job a couple of times. One of the things we've been talking about is the early down sacks. You know, that's why some of the sack totals are high in some of these games. And it's just about just throw the ball away and let us live for second and ten, not second and seventeen. And he did that two or three times. You know, he threw the ball away a few times, and so it's going to hurt his completion percentage, but
it's going to help our offense overall. And just to see that happen, I think, what two or three times he just threw it away. It's like, great, that's good. That's good's that's growth. And so it helped us not take four or five more sacks in the game because he just threw two or three of them away. And
that's great. It's what we're hoping for. And he's learning every game he goes out there, you know, more and more about how to efficiently play the position, and then making some big throws and making some big plays when he had to.
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Tighten Up Holm is at the forefront of all that we do. It's why we're so committed to caring for the places and spaces in which we work and live. Ashley, the official furniture provider of the Tennessee Titans. We continue with Titans head coach Brian Callahan. So let's now turn to this week's opponent, the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Their quarterback Truck Lawrence, suffered a concussion in Sunday's game against Houston, So yet again, the Tennessee Titans are not sure what quarterback they're going to be seeing on Sunday in the event that he can't go against the Titans. Mac Jones came in and played pretty well against Houston Texans. All things considered, what does mac Jones bring to the Jags offense?
Maybe he's a first round pick. You know, he played quite a bit of football over over his first couple of years. And you see that. You see a guy he's got some skills and some talent, and he's played good college football. He had some good you know, he's had a really good what first year I think in New England. There's just there's some things about him that
you know that he's not a throwaway. He's not just you know, he's not some bum off the street like Mac can play football, and they got good weapons there, they got good talent in Jacksonville, and they haven't put theirs together for whatever reason. But the records similar to ours, probably for a lot of the same reasons that ours is not great either, And so we're gonna have to We're gonna have to fight like hell to be able to go try to get a win at home here
against a divisional opponent. And Mac is certainly he's respectable. I mean, we should be respectful of his ability to move the team and score touchdowns because he's done that before.
Rookie first round pick Brian Thomas has also been playing great lately. On Sunday, he added four more catches for seventy six yards and a touchdown and that includes a fifty six yard reception. What is he doing so well that's allowing him to have such a strong rookie season.
Yeah, you could. You see he was prepared and ready when he came in. And you know, guy that we looked in the draft as well, and in one of those guys like this guy's going to be a good player. And guy has all the requisite skills set. He can run, he can catch, he's strong, he's fast, and then they've put him in positions to let him showcase those skills and he continues to make the plays when when he's
been called upon. So good player, come on, really strong for a rookie receiver, I think he's up there with rookie players for sure in terms of production. Got her hands full with him. I mean, he's he's proven that he's capable of being a upper echelon receiver in the league.
Does he essentially and I mean Brian Thomas, does he essentially play the role that Calvin Ridley did for Jacksonville a year ago?
There's probably some similarities, you know, without without really studying all of it, there's also probably things that he does this different style player than than Calvin is, So I'm sure they use him differently, route treewise and maybe some things they try to do for him than they did with Calvin. I'm not saying it's dramatically different, but there's probably some differences because they're both different style players.
It's turned to defense. How about Trayvon Walker.
Would love to and mean, he's had a great year three and he had another sack on Sunday, So why is he becoming such a problem for opposing offenses?
Well, I think edge rushers in general, very few come in and make immediate, big time impacts. You know, you look over over time, it takes him two or three years. Because college they're usually just bigger, faster, and stronger than
the competition and they let that win form. When you get up here, you realize that you have to have rush plans and rush counters, and you have to you see all different styles of tackles, and you see all different styles of good players, and you have to develop a repertoire and a pass rush toolbox, if you will.
And so I think what you're seeing is the benefit of playing over over time, now that you're starting to see him come into his own and I would say, usually that year three four for pass rushers is when they tend to really show up because they've gotten the experience behind them and they understand how to play the game and how to rush over over time, you know, as opposed to just running fast and being big and strong.
Ryan Nielsen is the defensive coordinator. He's just come over from Atlanta. How would you characterize the Jags defensive style since we haven't seen him yet this year? Yeah, they got it.
They got an aggressive style and the secondary they'll press. They like to play a lot of you know, you call it man coverage if you will. It's got a very loose term, but they do a lot of things where they're they're trying to challenge receivers and and they got good talent on defense. I mean, they played pretty
good yesterday against Houston as well. And those that collection of players, the rushers and then the scheme is one that going into the year, I felt like was going to be a really good pairing between him and that scheme and the players that they had there. And so I think they've had ups and downs, just like everybody does during the year. But there's a lot of things about the aggressiveness of the scheme, the coverage aggressiveness that that is good and it's it's hard to play against.
I mean, we had a hard time playing against them in Atlanta, you know, a couple years, even in the preseason, just the aggressiveness of the scheme. So I think it's a pretty good pairing. And again they've had their ups and downs too, but they got talent. It's a it's a good scheme.
So Sunday is might cause my cleats for the Tennessee Titans. Why do players love that game so much?
Oh?
Some of these guys do so much work out in the community, and they have things that they're very passionate about causes, foundations, charities that really mean something to them, and it's just a chance to be able to highlight the work that they do. I think it's a great initiative that the league does, and it allows guys to show a little bit of their personality and then show the things that they support and what's important to them.
And they do a nice job of highlighting all the things these guys do and the impact that they make in communities, and I think it's really cool. I love seeing all the stuff that they do to wherever their heart is and what they support. I think it's pretty awesome.
It's December now, and a lot of things happen in December. One of those things is some tweaks and changes to the practice schedule or practice routine. Sometimes, are you going to be switching anything up this week given that your defense specifically was on the field for over forty minutes and played something like seventy seven snaps.
Yeah, those are things that we look at, and then we got all the folks down on the performance side of it with the you know we do all we track everything over time and all the different GPS tracking and player metrics and accelerations and decelerations and all the thing. There's things that go into a game, and so they usually come up with some pretty good recommendations about you know, hey,
you need to back down here. We can ramp up here, but you still want to make sure you're getting working and you're still practicing, and there's there's still a flow to get ready for a game where you want to they get a little bit of time, but you still want to work and ramp into it, and you sort of back down by the end of the week and
you try to keep that consistent. I think we've done a really good job of the schedule management for the players, and so that's something that we'll definitely look at, especially as you get late in this season, of where you can pick and choose your times to recover some versus work. And it's a delicate balance because you need both. He needs to still need to work, you need to practice, but you also need to make sure you're ready to go on Sunday.
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Visit snickers dot com slash Rookie Mistakes for details. One more for you two point conversion success this year is down nearly twenty percent from last year. Wow, actually came up after this weekend's games. It's thirty seven percent.
That's low.
Why do you think it's been harder for teams to convert two point conversions this season at such a dramatically reduced rate.
It's a really good question. I've did some research on this a couple weeks back, when you know, there was all those couple of games where everybody had opportunities to try to go for a win, similar maybe what Indy did against New England this weekend, but that going for the win spot you know, at the end of regulation and you just look at what the numbers are and they're kind of jarring. I mean, you're conversing success rate right now in two points, as I said, is very low.
It's not good. It used to be about fifty percent. Why that is is, I'd have to study that, I have to really look AT's. My guess would be that there's some the teams in the low red zone. I think if some of the defenses down there have gotten pretty good, they kind of are aware of all the different schemes. Some of these teams are really aggressive, but
they can match and they pass things off. There's just the defenses I think are really right now in the league, and the low red zone are good, and they're making it really difficult to score and convert when you're when you're scoring position. That would be my general hypothesis, if you will.
Did the analytics of that, knowing that the numbers have been reduced so dramatically this year, the success rate is so much lower. Did that impact your decision to go ahead and go for two at thirty five to nineteen.
No, No, that was more. That was strictly more of a score differential for us, and that's just getting to put us in position to cut the score possessions down. You know, we're only gonna have so many more possessions left in that game anyway, and trying to go for two to put us in a spot where at least we get to the end potentially and know what we needed and where we needed to be at. So that was less. That was less related to taking any chance
necessarily or numbers on conversions. It was more about we need this to for the next three possessions, to know where we're gonna be at, and just sort of a numbers game.
For that part, we always appreciate you. Thanks for ticketing time you got to coach Brian Callahan joining us every week