According to the NFL’s official player participation information, here’s how the Tennessee Titans lined up in last night’s loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers:
Offense (40 total)
QB: Zach Mettenberger 40
RB/FB: Bishop Sankey 23, Jackie Battle 9, Dexter McCluster 8, Leon Washington 6, Shonn Greene 4
TE: Chase Coffman 30, Richard Gordon 21, Brett Brackett 3
WR: Justin Hunter 37, Kendall Wright 31, Nate Washington 15
OL: Andy Levitre 40, Taylor Lewan 40, Michael Oher 40, Brian Schwenke 40, Chance Warmack 40, Byron Stingily 4
Other: Karl Klug 1
Defense (73 total)
DL: Jurrell Casey 58, Mike Martin 33, Ropati Pitoitua 25, Al Woods 17, Karl Klug 11
OLB: Derrick Morgan 65, Kamerion Wimbley 51, Quentin Groves 19, Shaun Phillips 9
ILB: Avery Williamson 70, Wesley Woodyard 54
CB: Jason McCourty 73, Coty Sensabaugh 50, Blidi Wreh-Wilson 48, Marqueston Huff 10, Brandon Ghee 2
S: Michael Griffin 73, George Wilson 60, Daimion Stafford 24
James Anderson, Beau Brinkley, Zaviar Gooden, and Chris Spencer each only appeared on special teams. Jake Locker was active but did not appear in the game.
News and notes:
1. I gave the yards per carry totals for the games in which Bishop Sankey has led Titans backs in carries and had at least 10 carries in last night’s recap post. Prefer success rate instead? In the past five games, it’s 40%, which is right there with the bottom five backs in the league. When you’re not gaining explosive plays (thus the poor ypc) and you’re not gaining consistent yardage, why do you keep trying what you’ve been trying?
2. The extraordinarily low snap count total makes it easy to go around and declare “Player X played his fewest snaps of the season.” I’ll avoid the temptation to do that, even though it’s really tempting.
3. The Titans averaged 1.35 TE snaps per play, a season high.
4. This was the first game Nate Washington failed to play at least half the snaps despite being active in the three seasons for which I have snap count data readily available. Yes, even when he came in hobbled against San Diego back in Week 2 of 2012 he played more than half the time (22 of 42 snaps). That included a slight up-tick in playing time for Derek Hagan, whose 8 snaps were his second-most of the season.
5. Last week I thought I had an answer to the Mike Martin-Ropati Pitoitua question, as Pitoitua played 44 snaps to Martin’s 13. This week, that rotation was much more balanced.
6. The Titans averaged fewer than two defensive linemen on the field on any given play, resulting in some generally skewed numbers for the D-line. That may have had something to do with the Pitoitua-Martin split. It also seems very curious against a team that gave a lot of snaps to their second tight end and a fullback, though I’d have to actually sit down and track the personnel matchups to say for sure if they had too many little guys on the field when Le’Veon Bell ran the ball down their throats. I don’t actually think they did, but the DL snap count does indicate a significant difference in how they played the Steelers versus how they played in the previous nine games.
7. Nineteen snaps last week, 9 this week. At this point it’s probably fair to say deciding to play Shaun Phillips less was an adjustment the Titans made over the bye week. Quentin Groves was the main beneficiary of that, as his 19 snaps were a season high.
8. With Blidi Wreh-Wilson’s injury, Titans CB3 vs. opposing WR3 snap watch is canceled. Then again, it would have been otherwise by Pittsburgh’s distribution of wide receiver snaps. Their WR2 Markus Wheaton only played a little over half the time (39 of 73).
9. Michael Griffin remains the only Titans to play every defensive snap.
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