Let’s see, if I get ILB up now, CB up Monday night, S up Tuesday during the day, and ST up Tuesday night, I could write my two pre-draft posts. That works.
After defensive line and outside linebacker, our next stop around the defensive half of the Tennessee Titans as we head deeper into the 2015 offseason is a look at the inside linebackers.
So, through Football Outsiders one of the things I got to do was some blurbs for ESPN Insider’s team draft preview section. One of ESPN’s requests was to identify a position that was not a need for that team. Sometimes (I did the AFC South and NFC North, so I did it for eight teams), that wasn’t too hard, and other times it was like looking at the Titans roster, going through each position and saying “I could justify a draft pick there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, there, yeah I guess there, there, and there.” As you might guess from my relating this anecdote in this post, I eventually settled on inside linebacker as the Titans’ not-a-need position.
The arguments in favor of inside linebacker as the not-a-need position are fairly straightforward. For one, every player who took a snap on defense at the position last season is still on the roster. The only other position that’s true is defensive line, and given the Titans’ need for an impact player at the position and the possibility of Leonard Williams with the second overall pick, there’s no way I could list defensive line. Second, it’s easy to come up with a coherent internal argument for why inside linebacker should be even better in 2015, given that the one starter was lost for the season after playing only four plays and a rookie ended up playing a significant role, performing well there but still having the expected rookie moments. Third, and I think this may be where my opinion diverges from other people, I didn’t see inside linebacker as a position of relative weakness for the Tennessee Titans in 2014.
Whether you agree with me on that point probably depends on your opinion of Wesley Woodyard‘s performance. He led the grouping with 879 snaps (77.0%), playing all sixteen games. He was about 90% of the player I thought he’d be when the Titans added him in the offseason, so perhaps a slight disappointment in space at times but otherwise about what I expected. By the team’s totals, he led the Titans in tackles. By Football Outsiders numbers using the official tackles stats, he led the team in tackles that prevented a success by the offense both against the run and overall. Our charting coverage work at Football Outsiders had him with some pretty solid numbers. He wasn’t close to a star, or a high-impact player by any means, but if you were expecting him to be, you didn’t know who Wesley Woodyard was. On the whole, I thought he had a pretty solid season. In my preseason positional analysis, I wrote “I’m not worried about Woodyard as a starter. There’s no guarantee he’ll be as effective as you or I want him to be, but I don’t think it will be primarily his fault if he is not.” Sometimes, what I wrote in the preseason ends up looking silly when I do the offseason positional analysis, but I think that held up okay.
Macro-level question I ignored in the introduction because I liked my intro too much: how much will the inside linebacker roles and responsibilities change from the old Ray Horton 3-4 to the new Dick LeBeau 3-4? My general feeling is not that much, and the Titans will be content to put the same players into holes that may differ only slightly from the holes they were placed in last year. Either way, I’m expecting to see a step forward from Avery Williamson in his second season. I’d hoped to do a deep dive into his performance, but my reduced blogging schedule has meant that hasn’t happened yet and may not; I’d still really like to get to it, since highlighting what he did well and what I’d like to see him do better would be a very useful exercise I haven’t seen anyone else do yet (if you’ve done it, please send it my way, I really would like to read it). After playing only special teams the first two games, he got into a time share in Week 3 and by Week 7 was the unquestioned starter next to Woodyard. On the whole, he finished with 813 snaps (71.3% of total, 81.0% Weeks 3-17) and was third on the team in tackles per the coaches. I named him the Titans’ rookie of the year and also the biggest surprise, given my modest expectations if he was thrust into the lineup.
The early Week 1 injury to Zach Brown was the first of what forced Williamson into the lineup. It’s difficult to say anything about players that missed the entire season with an injury. Heading into the final season of his rookie contract, Brown’s eventual NFL career remains highly uncertain. He’s a highly talented athlete who has flashed great potential but still needs to show he can be a consistent quality NFL player. Given Williamson’s emergence and their relative strengths and weaknesses, Brown’s best shot for 2015 playing time on defense is to show he’s a good enough player he can unseat Woodyard as a starter. That should be a good challenge for a player of his sort, especially when the man doing the judging is a coach who’s shown a strong preference for experienced and assignment-sound players who may not be able to move well (LeBeau). Otherwise, he’ll be a special teams player and probably get some articles next April about how he could be an under-the-radar impact signing for his new team.
When Brown first went down, Zaviar Gooden took over for him. I mentioned in the preseason positional analysis I’ve struggled with him since the Titans drafted him and have never seen him as an impact player. Watching him on the field for those 155 snaps (13.6% of total, 36.7% Weeks 1-5 and 22 snaps thereafter) didn’t really change my mind. He should have a shot to return for another season as the fourth inside linebacker and seeing primarily special teams duty, unless the Titans decide they want a more physical player at that spot instead of a third space player (Woodyard, Brown).
Colin McCarthy spent the entire season on injured reserve and is still looking for another team as of this writing; I would not expect him to see more than a veteran minimum deal with an injury split. James Anderson was signed after Brown went to injured reserve and played exclusively special teams in seven of the next eight games (inactive) until he was cut after the Week 11 Steelers game. Justin Staples was signed after Anderson was released and played mostly special teams (1 snap in Week 16 against the Jaguars). I have nothing interesting, even to me, to say about him. Yawin Smallwood was signed to a futures contract after joining the practice squad when Staples earned his call-up to the active roster. He was a nice player at UConn and a seventh-round pick of the Falcons. Staples and Smallwood are both candidates for the fourth inside linebacker spot, because why not.
Conclusion-Type Things
An overall solid position where I don’t see the Titans as having any strong needs, but nor is it necessarily a high-impact one that will have a major effect on the rest of the defense. A more complete team could use a high pick on an inside linebacker with the expectation he steps in in 2016 and becomes a high-impact player. On the 2015 Tennessee Titans, just being solid and having the potential to improve makes inside linebacker perhaps the team’s best position.
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