Programming Note: ICYMI, I’m quitting Total Titans effective, with a last posting date of March 9.
After quarterback, running back, and fullback, the next stop on our trip around the Tennessee Titans position by position as we head into the 2016 offseason is a look at the wide receivers.
In the conclusion to the preseason positional analysis, I wrote “[t]he position group almost has to be better than it was last year.” Yeah, about that…
A season after they struggled with major depth issues at wide receiver, the Titans decided to voluntarily go into the season with just two semi-reliable wide receivers and rely on an underachieving and highly unpolished player and a rookie who didn’t play his final season as their third and fourth receivers. This went about how you’d guess it would, especially when the three receivers who’d actually played in the NFL before all got hurt at various times. Well, Ruston Webster has now been fired, so at least we’ll get to see if the Titans can screw up the receiver position in a different way in 2016.
Related to the fullback usage questions I noted in that positional analysis, the first question is how many receivers the Titans will use. Mike Mularkey’s early Atlanta teams ranked 25th, 30th, and 28th in the percentage of time they had three receivers on the field. This was another one of my suggestions about how Mularkey might change things up, and this was an area where Mularkey did change things up.
According to some numbers I have, under Ken Whisenhunt, the Titans used three receiver sets on about 39% of snaps. Under Mularkey, that figure was just 25%. To put that in perspective, the NFL as a whole was in 3WR sets 57% of the time in 2015. Additional perspective: no other team was under 40% of snaps in 3WR, so under Whisenhunt the Titans used 3WR sets about as infrequently as any team in the league. Mularkey then spent 37% less time in 3WR sets because it didn’t make any sense for the Titans to spend so much time in 3WR sets (also, new injury). And Ruston Webster was so fired, and Jon Robinson has a great blueprint of how not to handle a position or selecting a 53-man roster (relevant Miracle scene).
I’ll try to contain my exasperation and anger from here on out, so let’s discuss the reliable parts of the Titans receiving corps. Whee, that was fun. Now for the rest of them.
Now semi-obligatory note for positional analyses of great uncertainty: I discuss players in semi-depth chart order. Easy in some positions (spoiler alert: Jurrell Casey will be the first defensive lineman I discuss), much harder in others (see running backs the other day). I’m probably just over-complicating things here, as any selection for who to discuss first other than Kendall Wright would require too much explanation.
Remember 2013, when Kendall Wright looked like a really good up-and-coming receiver and maybe a guy who could become the league’s best slot receiver? I think we all miss that Kendall Wright. The past two seasons haven’t been kind to him, and 2015 was unkinder than 2014. Injuries limited him to just 10 games and 413 snaps (39.8% of total, 69.7% under Whisenhunt, just 14.8% under Mularkey as he missed 6 of 9 games and only had 9 snaps another game). His numbers, both conventional and advanced, were pretty blah-36 catches on 60 targets, 408 yards (11.3 ypc), 3 touchdowns, DVOA of -8.1% (66th among the 87 receivers with 50 passes; I write for Football Outsiders perma-disclaimer). He did his best work catching short passes from Mariota, most notably the big plays against the Buccaneers in Week 1 but at other times as well. He was less impressive doing other things; Mariota had no more ease locating him downfield than Jake Locker did (1 completion on 9 “deep” targets), and I’m not going to go into any Zach Mettenberger splits.
Wright is heading into the option fifth year of his rookie deal. Given the state of the depth chart and the likely state of the free agency receiving class, there’s zero reason to expect the Titans to part ways with him. Whether he is a Titan beyond 2016 is a big open question, depending on how much he improves (and Mularkey mentioned there’s still room for him to improve) and how the group around him rounds into form.
The player I almost led the discussion with is Dorial Green-Beckham. That would have been pretty odd considering my take on him, which I’ve already noted matches Mike Mularkey’s, is “He needs to learn how to play football.” Mularkey quotes, not necessarily verbatim: “He’s got a long way to go … Not sure he knows right now how to actually be a pro … Weight was an issue all year.”
Why potentially mention him first, then? For one, for a guy who doesn’t know how to play football and didn’t step onto the playing field in 2014, he had a pretty decent season: 32 catches on 67 targets for 549 yards (17.2 ypc), 4 touchdowns, DVOA of 1.8% (47th of 87) tops among the receivers with 50 or more targets. Plus, if the Titans are going to be a team that runs a lot of two receiver sets, they absolutely have to have an outside receiver who can win one-on-one matchups. If I had to bet on a player currently on the Titans to be that guy, DGB gets my vote. But Bob Bratkowski, new receivers coach, will have to do a lot of work with him, and Green-Beckham will have to want to do the work to be great. That’s not a place everybody wants to be all the time (see the top of this post if you need a reminder), but it’s the place the Titans need him to be.
More misplaced optimism on my part: I thought Harry Douglas would fit smoothly into Nate Washington’s shoes as the reliable veteran option. But I didn’t think he matched Washington’s shoes when it came to getting open or winning at the catch point as often as Nate did (again, these are comparative, not absolute standards here). It showed in his numbers-36 targets on 72 receptions, 411 yards (11.4 ypc), 2 touchdowns, -17.4% DVOA (81st of 87) in 720 snaps over 14 games (69.4% of total, 65.2% when active under Whisenhunt, 85.9% under Mularkey), and DVOA gives him credit for all those penalties he drew in that Jacksonville game because he wasn’t separating well enough. He even managed the surprising feat of doing just as poorly with Mariota as he did with Mettenberger (-18.8% DVOA on 58 Mariota targets, -17.3% on 16 Mettenberger throws, and I’ll force myself to ignore the 73 v. 74 distinction for now). Given the state of the position group (see above), I expect him to be with the Titans in 2016. But he’s due a roster bonus in mid-March, so we’ll probably know then if he will or not.
I’ve spent most of the past three seasons ripping Justin Hunter for being terrible, because I think he has been. But he was actually pretty productive in 2015! Until he broke his ankle against the Panthers, he was having by far the best season of his career. I know, 22 catches for 264 yards and 1 touchdown aren’t big numbers (378 snaps, 36.4% of total, 64.2% when active), but those came on 31 targets rather than 51 so his DVOA was a team-leading 16.9% (small sample size, so not ranked). One of the keys to his success: the Titans stopped trying to throw him the ball down the field all the time. Of his 23 targets from Marcus Mariota, only 5 were those deep throws where Mariota struggled and where Hunter has seemed to struggle to separate and to track and catch the ball when he’s had the chance to. Maybe that was just a small sample size fluke-one of the reasons I was so pessimistic on Hunter is he was lousy on short throws as well as deep ones-but then again Mariota is of a separate character from past Hunter-era Titans quarterbacks on short throws. Taking an in-depth look at Hunter to see how the Titans used him last year and if it was more than just a small sample size fluke would be a great summer project, if I still planned to write here in June. Alas.
Where does Hunter fit in the receiving corps heading into the last year of his rookie deal? Good question. Part of it depends on how much last year’s numbers mean and his usage-without rewatching all his plays, I still don’t think he is or likely to be that sort of outside winning receiver I mentioned the Titans need, and I’m not sure he’s the right sort of player for other roles. Because of his injury, we barely got to see him play under Mularkey, and I haven’t heard Jon Robinson comment on him specifically, so we really don’t know. He could play a lot, or he could not make the team.
A lot of the draft people I pay attention to were high on Tre McBride coming out of William & Mary. He began the season on the practice squad and was elevated off that when Hunter went to injured reserve. He ended up playing 55 snaps in the last seven games and got his first career touchdown pass to end the shutout in Week 16 (4 targets, 2 catches, 8 yards (4 ypc), 1 touchdown). He was also part of the kick return committee, something I’ve avoided talking about in these positional analyses but something that could definitely affect his or any other marginal’s chances of making the roster. I don’t know how he’ll fit into the 2016 Titans’ receiver mix aside from that he’ll be there in training camp.
Rico Richardson played 41 snaps when first Wright, then Douglas were out, then got cut; I thought he was largely a slot receiver and there wasn’t much need to keep three of them around. Andrew Turzilli played 23 snaps in Weeks 14, 15, and 17 and caught both of his targets, against the Jets in Week 14, for 25 yards. That he was then a healthy scratch in Week 16 and only played 1 snap in Week 17 tells me McBride is probably ahead of him on the depth chart, though depth chart is a really interesting question. I really doubt he makes the roster. Damaris Johnson was inactive all three games after the Titans claimed him off waivers when the Patriots waived him the week before they played the Titans; if Ruston Webster did this just to troll the Patriots because of their habit of doing similar things, it’s my favorite thing he ever did but see above re Webster’s overall performance. I’ve never valued Johnson as a player, and that he didn’t crack the lineup in the final three games while McBride and Turzilli did tells me the Titans aren’t that high on him. Practice squadder Nick Harwell was signed to a futures contract after the season ended, while Gavin Lutman was not.
Conclusion-Type Things
The good news is everybody is poised to be back. The bad news is this group was nowhere near good enough. Bob Bratkowski has his work cut out for him.
The big question Jon Robinson has to answer is just how much work this group needs, and it’s a fairly open question. One possibility is the Titans look to play a lot of 2WR sets, in which case they could get by going into the season with the same top four they went into last year with and better competition at the back end of the roster. If they plan to play more like an average amount of 3WR sets, then they should probably look to dive into the veteran part of the free agency pool and find a player capable of playing 500-plus snaps at an acceptable level in 2016.
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