Back at the beginning of the year, I reported on my breakdown of each Titans’ offensive play against the Jagaurs. Due to that pesky “life” thing, I got behind quickly, which is why you haven’t gotten weekly reports on future Titans opponents, but I’ve been slowly catching up and have for you a report on the Titans’ performance last Sunday against Oakland in the 13-9 win.
For comments on every play, check out full PBP breakdown over at my own site. The question I’m going to focus on here, though, is the big one going forward? Vince Young ended up 6 of 14 for 42 yards in his return from injury, but suffered from several notable drops and completions that didn’t count. So, how’d he do really?
Significantly better than I expected, to be honest. Breakdown by category:
Dead On: 1
Catcahable: 11
Inaccurate: 3
Bad Read: 1
Pressure: 1
Scramble: 2
The single most notable throw is the incompletion for Troupe in the end zone. I’ve changed my mind on the play about 5 times, and decided that was almost all Troupe’s fault, mitigated slightly by VY’s accuracy problems-this is actually the Dead On pass, though in the overall picture, both that pass and the TD pass Roydell dropped in the fourth quarter should be split .5 DO, .5 CA.
I thought VY’s worst sequence was the drive at the start of the fourth quarter-he has a scramble to pick up a third down (note: quick look and not apparent pass option after that), then on the ensuing second down really airmails a short pass, and on third down underthrows the dumpoff.
I hope to discuss this issue in detail as part of a midseason review next week, but VY’s performance against the Raiders looked like it was infected by the same disease that has plagued the Titans before-“we don’t need our QB to win, so we won’t try to use our QB to win.” To what extent this is a reflection of VY’s ability as a QB and to what extent it reflects the preferences of Coach Fisher (um, just maybe) and/or OC Norm Chow is a question to which I do not have a good answer. Even a dominating defense like the Titans have shown thus far can’t stop every team every week-the overall offensive performance must improve if the Titans want to be sure they make the postseason.
While I have your attention, i’d also like to direct you to two other pieces of analysis on this past Sunday’s game. First, Football Outsiders’ Michael David Smith’s Every Play Counts column this week was on “The Twilight of Warren Sapp”, looking at how the former Bucs’ star has become a run-stopping liability. I don’t tend to focus on the opposing defensive players unless they do something notably well in my UFR breakdown, and you may have noticed you didn’t see Sapp’s name much on running plays if you clicked through to my full breakdown. See also this analysis from a Raider fan, addressing both some of the Raiders’ problems in general and expressing a worry that the Raiders’ pass offense next year could look like the Titans’ pass offense this year. When the Raiders fans are feeling sorry for you… Oh, and LenDale White still isn’t very good. I hadn’t mentioned that yet this post, and I can’t really be the broken record I feel like I am if I don’t mention it every time.
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