TAMPA, Fla. – In a post-game locker road after a road game, players, equipment men and media need to tread carefully. Scattered chairs, equipment bags and shoes can make for a bit of a minefield.
But that’s not all the Titans were tip-toeing around Sunday in the bowels of Raymond James Stadium after a halfhearted 20-6 loss to the Bucs that dropped them to 3-6.
“Effort is not about execution,” Mike Vrabel said. “We don’t want to confuse those two when I talk about this here.”
If the Titans are prepared and playing hard, then how can the execution be as poor as it was in this game, when the team managed 3.5 yards per offensive play, got just nine yards per pass on three completions to DeAndre Hopkins while Mike Evans torched them for 23.8 on his six and allowed four sacks, nine additional hits and constant pressure on rookie Will Levis?
“I think it’s just guys really being locked in, focusing on what we really need to do, not having self-inflicted wounds, just being precise in our play, especially in the red zone, when we get down there,” said Derrick Henry, who averaged 2.2 yards a carry, his lowest mark since Week 3 in Cleveland (1.8). “We’ve just got to 
be grown men about it and be able to lock and make the plays that need to be made and focus when we need to focus.”
Why haven’t they been able to do that?
Henry said he didn’t know.
But I know.
They aren’t talented enough. And nobody can say that, so they've got to be careful.
Andre Dillard got destroyed by Vita Vea on an early sack. The Titans had a first-and-goal from the 9-yard line. Henry lost 2 yards, Vea’s sack moved them back 9 more and on fourth-and-20 from the 20 they took 3 points on Nick Folk’s 38-yard field goal.
VITA VEA 😤
— Tampa Bay Buccaneers (@Buccaneers) November 12, 2023
📺: #TENvsTB on CBS pic.twitter.com/5woOtzwaxr
Dillard simply can’t handle someone like Vea pass rushing against him and not too long later he was being checked for a concussion and never re-emerged. Dillon Radunz shifted from right guard, where he’d been filling in the Daniel Brunskill (ankle), and Andrew Rupcich, a practice squad call-up, took over at right guard in his first NFL action.
Overall those two along with Peter Skoronski, Aaron Brewer and Chris Hubbard watched Levis get treated like an overmatched fighter. Radunz got in there and undid a drive with consecutive false starts.
Jon Robinson’s been gone a while. Vrabel may have had a hand in the former GM’s trail of failures on the offensive line (Isaiah Wilson in the first round, Radunz in the second, Dennis Daley in exchange for a fifth-round pick), but JRob had the final say on those moves from which the team has not recovered. Vrabel and Ran Carthon saw fit to enter the season with Dillard as the starting left tackle and he’s done something truly remarkable, matching Daley’s (in)competence level.
Dillard was demoted a couple of weeks ago, also a remarkable feat on this team. He’s back in the lineup because Nicholas Petit-Frere is on IR and likely finished for the season after shoulder surgery and, probably, because Radunz was needed inside.
Now Levis, the franchise’s hope for the future has to survive and grow behind the mess of a line for eight more games. I thought his ruggedness and ability to evade and make arm-only throws would make him safer than Ryan Tannehill was. But he’s been hit 23 times in the last two games, a simply unacceptable number. Levis was already on last week’s injury report with a foot injury though he didn’t miss any work.
#GetLive45 🤠
— Tampa Bay Buccaneers (@Buccaneers) November 12, 2023
📺: #TENvsTB on CBS pic.twitter.com/IhFh1UzK9G
“It’s tough because if you’re prepared, and we had a good week, and guys played hard,” Skoronski said. “If that’s communication, if that’s just technique – that can be a problem too. It’s our job to figure that out. Obviously, that hasn’t been happening so far and didn’t today.”
Said Hubbard: “We’ve got to get better.”
But as I wrote leading up to this game, very few of the Titans' young players are getting better. Is their mindset, their skill set or their coaching got to change all of the sudden to change that now?
The Falcons, Steelers and Buccaneers are all very average to below average teams. The Titans beat Atlanta at home and lost to low-scoring Pittsburgh and Tampa Bay on the road.
With an inexperienced but big-armed QB and the protection that can’t hold up, Tim Kelly needed an inventive and creative game plan with some wrinkles to help alleviate the pressure.
When I asked Vrabel if they had that, he cited the first two of 59 plays and “some other things.”
Did #Titans come in with inventive, creative plan on offense? pic.twitter.com/OyAuKAZtqs
— Paul Kuharsky (@PaulKuharskyNFL) November 12, 2023
A play-action pass is no clever wrinkle, it’s the Titans’ bread and butter.
Vrabel is so deep in it, that maybe he’s lost a feel for what inventive and creative offense looks like. I don’t know. But there was no real evidence of it in this game.
I’m not at ground level to judge the effort most fairly and it’s dangerous territory.
The talent’s been in question for a good while now.
The coach fielded a question about moving nickel back Roger McCreary outside with Sean Murphy-Bunting out with a thumb injury and he said, "We had no choice."
That’s a long way from the mantra of all 48 active guys always being ready to go and play a role every week that he’s leaned on for most of his head coaching career. The magical plug-and-play he used to be capable of in his first three seasons is gone.
That says Tre Avery and Kendall Jackson were defensively useless -- and neither played a snap on defense. I don't want them forced in, I just want us, here, to be honest about it.
That’s the thin roster rearing its head again, something the Titans just have to deal with until they draft and get to spend some of that $100 million in salary cap room.
Until then, we’ve seen what they can – and can’t – get out of the “talent” they have. It's severely limiting. It's the reason for the problems. They can't work around it. And nobody on the inside can say it.
You are not authorised to post comments.