The Titans and field position at midseason

One of the things I try to look at regularly here is the effect of things most people don’t think about that much, or don’t explicitly incorporate into their analysis. One of those things is field position. With the Titans at the midway point, I thought it would be useful to take a look at where the Titans are starting drives compared to last year and how well they are doing when it comes to driving the field.

First up, the offense. Chart? Chart!

Methodology is the same as normal-touchdowns are worth 7 points, made field goals worth 3, missed field goals 2, all other drives 0. Drives ending in a kneeldown are all excluded, as are drives without a realistic chance of scoring that made include a short gain or two (briefly, drives with a minute to go or less where the team doesn’t try that hard; yes, this is subjective, but my post, my rules).

Even 16 games do not provide what I consider a sufficient sample size for good conclusions, so take all of those numbers you see with a very large grain of salt. But that does not mean we cannot say anything about those numbers.

One thing that stands out is just how awful the Titans are at driving the field when starting inside their own 20. Anything under 1.0 points per possession is pretty dismal. Oh, and that 0.74 figure includes both Zach Mettenberger touchdown drives against the Texans. Up until those drives (including the intervening 3-and-out), the Titans had started 20 possessions inside their own 20 yard line and gotten one field goal out of it. My attempt to keep this blog family-friendly prevents me from giving my full assessment of that performance, so I will just declare it pathetic.

The second thing that stands out is just how many drives are starting at or inside the 20 yard line-over sixty percent. The offense has done reasonably from drives starting at the 20, but it’s non-trivial for any offense to have to reliably go 80 yards for a score, let alone a trouble one like Tennessee has.  To me, this more granular approach is a more useful way of looking at it than average starting field position, where the Titans rank a reasonable 19th.

I’ll defray discussion of the causes of starting field position to a future post, which will probably not be written until the offseason.

Now the defense. Defensive chart? Defensive chart!

The Titans are being outscored by 1.5 (okay, fine, 1.46) points per possession on drives starting inside the own 20. Not to go all John McClain on you, but the only family-friendly way I can describe how the defense is doing on those long fields as pathetic. Perhaps they’re trying to make the offense feel better? I know, they’re doing okay on drives from the 20 and the 21-49, but still…

Oh, and the performance on drives starting in Titans territory? One of reasons I pointed out Horton’s 2013 Browns defense was worse than it appeared was dismal red zone performance. I noted the 2013 Titans also did poorly in the red zone, and this seemed like a thing to be concerned about heading into 2014. Well, it is. The Titans are giving up 5.30 points per red zone possession, 25th in the NFL. That’s actually a tick better than last year (5.38, 31st), but it’s still not good.

Once again, I’ll defray discussion of where the field position comes from. But plenty of it comes from a below-average offense and a below-average defense compounding the effect of each other, while special teams has not been as great a factor as it has been in the past.