So, back before the regular season began, I wrote a bunch of things about the Tennessee Titans. Some of them ended up being relatively close to accurate. Others were quite inaccurate. Since it turned into a theme of sorts, I thought today I would look at my predictions for how the Titans would use their running backs versus how they actually did use their running backs.
I don’t think I specifically wrote about it, but one thing that was definitely on my mind in the preseason was the vast uncertainty over how many carries Titans running backs would get. If you looked at Ken Whisenhunt’s 2013 San Diego Chargers, you would expect a lot of carries-that team had something like 450 carries by running backs, up there as one of the highest totals in the league. If on the other hand you looked at Whisenhunt’s last season as a head coach, the 2012 Arizona Cardinals gave their backs roughly 300 carries, one of the fewest totals in the league. So, would the 2014 Titans have an awful lot of RB carries or very few? The 2013 Titans had a relatively average number of RB carries, around 370, and I thought a similar total was the likeliest outcome for 2014.
As things worked out, the 2014 Titans were mostly a factory of sadness on offense and Whisenhunt showed 2012-like levels of commitment to the run game. The result was the 2014 Titans ended up with only 304 RB carries, down there with the Arizona Cardinals. Individual carry totals therefore ended up somewhat depressed relative to expectations. Probably. We can’t be quite that definitive in saying “if the Titans had 75 extra RB carries, they would have gone to X or Y and not to Z.” But I can guess at things.
Beyond the top level question, next up was who would lead the team in carries. The two obvious choices were Shonn Greene and Bishop Sankey, by which I mean everybody picked Sankey. In the running backs preseason positional analysis, I noted Ruston Webster indicated it would be a running back by committee, and I expected a very heavy committee. In that post, I noted the average lead back had 59% of his team’s RB carries in 2013, and I expected Sankey to be under that total. My ultimate prediction in that post was Sankey would have between 120 and 250 carries and lead in the team in rushing attempts, including a roughly 6o/40 split with Greene. By the end of the preseason, I had a different tune, declaring that at even money I’d take Greene to lead the team in carries. As things worked out, I should have stuck with my original prediction. Sankey finished with 152 carries, precisely one half of the Titans’ 304 RB carries, and his split with Greene ended up being 62/38.
On Greene, I indicated in the RB positional analysis I felt like the most optimistic guy in town. Looking back, I feel relatively good about where I ended up. He finished with 94 carries in 14 games, so he did not end up in the 100-plus carry range I expected. Had the Titans had an average number of RB carries, though, I feel confident Greene would have gotten to triple digits (and might have seen an even greater share of the total).
I was very down on Dexter McCluster’s potential role, declaring I expected to end up with between 15 and 40 carries, while it seemed like others expected him to potentially approach triple digits and pass Shonn Greene. I ended up being right, but only barely-he finished with 40 carries, within my range. But he went to injured reserve for the final two games, plus the top line figure was smaller than I expected. I don’t think the latter ended up affecting him very much-I think if the Titans had 50 or 75 more carries, Greene and Sankey would have gotten the overwhelming majority of them. Still, a healthy McCluster on a team with more carries probably ends up around 50 carries.
In the RB positional analysis, and still in the 53-man roster look, I was very down on Leon Washington’s potential contribution on offense. Even in the later post, I put the over/under on Washington’s snaps on offense at 100 or maybe even lower. I was absolutely, clearly, and unequivocally wrong about that. He finished second among the backs with 235 snaps, narrowly ahead of McCluster and well ahead of Greene. He didn’t have many carries, only 13, but he finished second among backs with 22 catches. That definitely impacted my projections for other players. Jim Wyatt predicted 24 catches for Sankey; based on Whisenhunt’s 2013 Chargers, I thought he could have a more, a lot more. He finished with only 18. Though I noted before 2013 only one Whisenhunt-coached back had had more than 35 catches, I predicted 40 for McCluster; he had only 26, and missing two games isn’t enough to make up for that miss. Take away Washington’s workload, and my Sankey and McCluster predictions look somewhat better. There’s no way to get around this was a major miss on my part, though, and I really should have done a better job of adjusting to what Ken Whisenhunt did on the field with Washington, regardless of what I thought would have been best for the team.
Later this week, probably, I’ll take a look at how the Titans threw to other players versus how I expected them to target other players.
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