The Tennessee Titans aren’t what they once were.
No longer do they have an anemic offense run by former No. 2 pick Marcus Mariota. Instead, Lubbock native Ryan Tannehill is steering the ship of an offense that has scored 30-plus in each of the last four games. His 8-5 Titans will face the 8-5 Houston Texans on Sunday in Nashville.
For the Texans, limiting the Texas A&M product is far from an easy task. Though once considered a backup and stopgap starter in Tennessee, Tannehill is playing the best football of his career in 2019, and some of the best in the league.
In seven starts, Tannehill is 6-1. He has thrown for 1,993 yards, 15 touchdowns, five interceptions and a league-high 118.5 passer rating on a 73.4% completion rate.
“I think that he’s just playing very well,” said Texans coach Bill O’Brien on Wednesday. “He’s a very accurate passer, very calm, good poise and he’s very athletic. He can run, he’s got really good speed, he can escape, he’s doing a lot of things well.”
As O’Brien alludes to, Tannehill is more dual-threat than pocket passer. A former wide receiver in College Station, the 31-year-old has 147 yards and three touchdowns on 34 attempts.
In a sense, Tannehill is a triple-option quarterback. He is thriving in Nashville as a play-action passer.
With running back Derrick Henry running to the tune of 1,243 yards and 13 touchdowns, defenses are stacking the box against Tennessee — 12th highest in the NFL runs against a stacked box rate (23.2%), per PlayerProfiler — which Tannehill has benefited from.
810 of Tannehill’s passing yards come on play-action, per Pro Football Reference. According to PlayerProfiler, he leads the NFL in play-action completion rate (75.8%). That should be alarming for Houston.
The Texans struggle to defend the play-action. That showed in Week 14’s loss to the Denver Broncos. Per Pro Football Focus, via Aaron Reiss of The Athletic, Broncos rookie quarterback Drew Lock went 7 of 8 for 130 yards on play-action against Houston.
Houston cannot afford for their play-action defense to struggle against the Titans. Tannehill and offensive coordinator Arthur Smith will exploit that.
O’Brien won’t understate the importance of practicing for a play-action happy offense, which ranks first in the NFL in that category. First, they need to stop the run, then they need to figure out ball fakes and, finally, put both together.
“I think it’s just working in practice and continuing to kind of make sure we are teaching it the right way, how we want to react, whether it’s zone or man, and then making sure our players do it in practice,” said O’Brien. “Our players doing it in practice is a big deal.”
If the Texans want to win the AFC South, they will have to face Tannehill and the Titans twice in the next three weeks. In doing so, they must solve their play-action demons against a team that finds a strength, offensively, in the same category.