I didn’t really do a proper “evaluating the 2015 Titans in hindsight piece” like I might have at the end of a normal season, one where the Titans weren’t looking at replacing several of their key decision-makers. I think this can be a useful exercise, since it tells you what I thought of the nonsense we just saw, especially given my reduced in-season blogging schedule, and serves as a useful backgrounder for the offseason posts to come. Plus, I like the symmetry given my post mid-season 2014 on why largely the same Titans team that went 7-9 was 2-6 (and the same reasons largely held up for the eventual 2-14 mark).
Back in September, in my season preview post, I noted that while other observers saw the Titans as likely to be the worst or one of the worst teams in the league, I was not quite so pessimistic. I put them in the group of the eight worst teams in the league, but didn’t see any clear separation among that grouping enough that I felt comfortable declaring that one or a couple teams in particular were likely to be the worst, and gave the Titans a projected record of 6-10. Four months later, the Titans were 3-13, tied for the worst record in the NFL for the second consecutive season, and were on the clock in the 2016 NFL draft. So, where did I go wrong? Here are some of the reasons I see as the most important.
1. Injuries-Quarterback. In the 12 games Marcus Mariota started, the Titans went 3-9. They lost all four games he missed. In one of those, they lost 10-7 to the Atlanta Falcons, with their only touchdown coming on a drive that started in the red zone, and with Zach Mettenberger putting up a miserable performance against a decidedly non-elite defense. If the Titans get just a decent performance from the quarterback that game, they win. It’s easy to see Mariota’s presence flipping the result of that game. Ditto the 30-24 loss to the Colts in Week 17, where Mettenberger was lousy and had a pick-6. My best guess is that if Mariota plays all 16 games the Titans go 5-11 and I feel no need to write this post.
2. Bad Roster Construction Meets Imperfect Health. In that season preview post, I identified three positions of particular vulnerability for the 2015 Titans-wide receiver, cornerback, and outside linebacker. While I thought the Titans were probably better off at wideout and corner than they had been the previous season, they were still weak there, and outside linebacker was insanely thin. I wrote in that post “Any sort of injury to Orakpo or Morgan would be devastating.” Sometimes, I hate being right-in the games Derrick Morgan played, the Titans ranked 12th in defensive DVOA and had the best adjusted sack rate in the league (I write for Football Outsiders perma-disclaimer). In the games he missed, they were 31st in defensive DVOA and 31st in adjusted sack rate. Injuries at receiver and cornerback exacerbated the problems for the offense and the defense.
But blaming injuries, like Steve Underwood did, is the wrong issue here. We haven’t published adjusted games lost numbers at Football Outsiders yet, but the Titans did not lose very many man-games to injuries in 2015. One methodology I saw rated them as the fourth-healthiest team in the league. If you enter into the season needing absolutely everybody to stay healthy to be non-terrible, the blame lies not with your injuries but with your roster construction.
3. Turnovers. One reason I was moderately bullish about the 2015 Tennessee Titans was turnovers had been a big key to their results the past couple seasons, and I expected Mariota to be a big improvement over what Mettenberger and Jake Locker had done in 2014. In 2013, the Titans were 5-1 when they won the turnover battle and 0-7 when they lost it. In 2014, they were 2-0 when they finished at least +2 in turnover margin and 0-14 otherwise. In 2015, they were 2-1 when they won the turnover battle and 1-7 when they lost it. So, turnovers were still important to their fate, but they didn’t improve as much as I thought they would.
There were a couple reasons the Titans didn’t do as well in turnovers as I expected them to. Mariota was okay when it came to interceptions, throwing one on 2.7% of his passes, fairly close to the league average of 2.2%. Mettenberger was not as good, of course (4.2%). I expected more of a rebound in the defensive interception rate, closer to league average. Instead, that stayed at 2.2% despite what I saw as a relatively favorable slate of opposing quarterbacks. Yes, I probably should have considered more related to cornerback ball skills in setting my expectations. Additionally, the Titans were a little unlucky when it came to recovering fumbles. I don’t want to oversell this point-this isn’t 2013, when it was easy to flip several games by changing ball security results-but if this team had stretches of recovering almost every fumble like that one did (18 recoveries on 20 total fumbles in their seven wins), they could have a record more like 6-10 (Bills, Falcons, Jaguars 1) even with all that other stuff.
4. Bad Personnel Management. Not to re-hash everything Ken Whisenhunt did or re-write my advice for Mike Mularkey after he was named interim head coach, but the Jeremiah Poutasi at right tackle experiment never made any sense, and failing to even try to compensate for any of it was a bigger sin. Sometimes, there’s value in consistency and letting players work together and trying to let them do what they do best. I didn’t go into it in yesterday’s post because it’s indistinguishable from the cliches most people spout, but adapting to players is one of the things Mularkey make noises about doing (but see Mike Tanier, every coach will say this before going back and doing what they’ve always done). The line between this point and flipping game results isn’t nearly as straightforward as some of the other ones, especially because Mularkey didn’t come close to Whisenhunt in this area, but by then the die had already been largely cast.
In writing this post, I don’t mean to suggest the 2015 Tennessee Titans were anything other than what they were, a bad team that deserved to have very bad record and a very high draft pick. But it’s easy to see how some not that difficult improvements to make could push the 2016 Titans much closer, or maybe even to, the .500 record I’ve already gone on record as seeing as possible.
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