The inactives are out for today’s game at Nissan Stadium between the Tennessee Titans and the Miami Dolphins, and here they are:
MIAMI DOLPHINS: C Sam Brenner, S Jonathan Dowling, DT A.J. Francis, WR Matt Hazel, CB Tony Lippett, LB Chris McCain
TENNESSEE TITANS: TE Chase Coffman, NT Sammie Hill, DE Ropati Pitoitua, G Quinton Spain, RB Terrance West, QB Charlie Whitehurst, ILB Avery Williamson
A couple decisions the Titans had to make this morning, and they ended up split. Perrish Cox is up after testing his hamstring injury out, though Cody Riggs is also up for special teams and just in case. Avery Williamson’s hamstring did not let him go, so Zach Brown moves back into the starting lineup this week, this time next to Wesley Woodyard.
Coming off the bye week, the Dolphins are pretty healthy. Their most important decisions were with cornerback Brent Grimes and left tackle Branden Albert, both of whom are playing.
This is a difficult game for me to predict. On the whole, I think the Dolphins are more talented than the Titans, but they sure haven’t played like it this year. Albert’s return should help the offense a fair amount, since Jason Fox was playing left tackle for him and he is not a starting-caliber tackle. Miami has been overwhelmingly an 11 personnel offense this year, leading the league in the amount of time they spend there. They’ve gotten away from the run game a little bit, partly because of the line and seemingly partly because they hate Lamar Miller, a talented back with some boom-or-bust attributes they seem to believe will break if he gets the ball too much. My guess is the Titans are expecting more of the same looks, thus Mike Martin up with Pitoitua down. But if Miami does come out and try to run the ball a lot, from either 11 or 12 personnel, I’m still not a fan of Martin’s run defense.
Defensively is where you could see more changes from Miami. With Ndamukong Suh, Cameron Wake, and company, they had a defensive front I thought could really help out some coverage units I thought could be exploited. Hasn’t worked out this year, to the extent where they fired DC Kevin Coyle along with head coach Joe Philbin. You are of course limited in just how much you could change what a team does in one game, but the Dolphins defense seemed like it might be a “there’s low-hanging fruit available here” situation. Jay Glazer’s report about the state of the team this morning was suitably optimistic; whether that remains so will be determined by today’s game. But Philbin seemed overmatched and not in control, so the standard report might have more truth to it than normal.
Really, though, I have no idea what’s going to happen. No result, from a Dolphins blowout win to a Titans blowout win, would really surprise me. The current line is the Titans by 2.5 points, or around the home-field edge, which is exactly where I would have put it. So, um, maybe a Titans win in a close game where Miami’s mistakes are worse, but really, I don’t know and it all depends on how well Miami plays.
Snap report Monday, and I’ll try to finally get off my duff and say something interesting about the Titans this week.
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