Moreover, Tannehill has added a much-needed deep passing element to the Titans’ offense. The following 54-yard pass to receiver Kalif Raymond against the Chiefs is a great example. Kansas City is in Cover-1; man coverage with a safety up top. Tennessee runs a “Yankee” concept, with A.J. Brown (No. 11) running the deep over route, and Raymond testing cornerback Charvarius Ward (No. 35) and safety Jordan Lucas (No. 24) on the deep post. Raymond smokes Ward on the post, Lucas is torn between the two receivers, and Tannehill nails the deep throw. This is in rhythm to Raymond, and past any Chiefs defender.
In Week 9 against the Panthers, Tannehill completed 27 of 39 passes for 331 yards, one touchdown pass and two interceptions. The first pick wasn’t Tannehill’s fault, as the ball he threw bounced off A.J. Brown’s hands into the awaiting arms of cornerback Donte Jackson. We’ll get to the second interception in a second. First, check out the perfect placement on this throw to Brown over Carolina cornerback James Bradberry (No. 24) for a 35-yard gain. It’s hard to ask a quarterback to hit his target more accurately than this.
What I liked about Tannehill’s composure was what happened on the next play; a 23-yard touchdown pass to running back Derrick Henry. Here, he’s got safety Eric Reid blowing up any ideas he may have about a deep pass with a blitz to his right side. Instead of squirming around in the pocket trying to make a ridiculous hero play that could just as easily end in disaster, Tannehill calmly pitches the ball to his running back, and lets the rest take care of itself.
Not that Tannehill has been perfect. Remember that other interceptions against the Panthers we discussed earlier? Here it is. Tannehill gets fooled by Panthers safety Tre Boston; he thinks he can fit this in to Raymond past cornerback Ross Cockrell (No. 47), and clearly he thinks Boston (No. 33) is going to stay high. But Boston does a brilliant job of timing and jumping the route. Tannehill may have thought this was a standard two-deep look because of the static safeties through his drop, but Boston played this more as a Quarters (Cover-4) responsibility by keying on the slot receiver’s release and driving down. Boston just delayed it to great effect. Tannehill may have also expected Raymond to play this more as an in-cut across Boston’s face.
By the end of Ryan Tannehill’s tenure in Miami, very few people thought of him as anything but a backup. It’s only been four weeks, but in a month as a starter, he’s done as much as he can to re-write that story and perhaps give himself another chance as a true starting quarterback. Perhaps with the Titans; perhaps somewhere else.
“I enjoy playing a lot,” Tannehill said on Wednesday, as the Titans prepared for Sunday’s game against the Jaguars. “It’s definitely a different aspect of just not taking the little things for granted, being on the field and just enjoying every second that I get in preparation and competing with the guys.
“[I’m] just trying to go out and play good football. We’ve got good players on this team and good weapons on the outside, so just trying to distribute the football and throw it to the open guy. … I think we’ve done a decent job at certain times of executing and being an efficient offense, and that’s what we’ll look to do.”
At the very least, Tannehill has cleaned up a lot of the inconsistencies that bedeviled him through his first six years in the league, without losing his big-play potential as both a passer and as a runner. It’s a fascinating second act, and it’ll be interesting to see if he can keep it up through the last six weeks of the regular season.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar has also covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”