The Tennessee Titans’ offense exploded in the second half of last season, performing as one of the best units in the NFL down the stretch.
After a 2-4 start that saw Tennessee score 16.3 points per contest, the switch was made from Marcus Mariota to Ryan Tannehill in Week 7, leading to the Titans scoring 30.4 points per game in their last 10 contests, the third-best mark in the NFL in that span.
As a result, Tennessee went on a 7-3 run, which ultimately helped land the team in the playoffs and allowed it to make an eventual postseason run all the way to the AFC Championship Game.
Things are looking good for the Titans to post similar numbers in 2020, as 10 of the team’s 11 offensive starters will return, with the lone exception being right tackle Jack Conklin.
Sheil Kapadia of The Athletic recently ranked every offensive unit in the NFL, and the Titans landed at No. 9 on the list.
If offensive coordinator Arthur Smith coached in a bigger market, owners likely would have been falling all over themselves to hire him as a head coach in the offseason. Smith was one of the most creative play-callers in the NFL in 2019. The Titans return 10 of 11 starters, including Ryan Tannehill, Derrick Henry and A.J. Brown, who averaged 2.98 yards per route run as a rookie — tops among all wide receivers. The questions with Tennessee are: How much will Tannehill regress? And how productive can Henry be after last year’s workload? Tannehill became the second player in NFL history (Joe Montana was the first) to complete over 70 percent of his passes and average over 9 yards per attempt. The chances of him repeating that performance are slim. If Tannehill regresses slightly and is still a top-10 quarterback, the Titans will be in good shape. If it’s more than that, they’re in trouble. Henry, meanwhile, is coming off a season in which he had 409 touches. Will he look like the guy we saw bowling over defenders in the postseason, or will he show signs of being worn down?
Here’s a look at the eight teams that landed in front of the Titans.
- Kansas City Chiefs
- Baltimore Ravens
- New Orleans Saints
- Dallas Cowboys
- Seattle Seahawks
- San Francisco 49ers
- Arizona Cardinals
- Indianapolis Colts
Of those eight teams, the Titans finished with more points per game (25.1) than two of them — the Cardinals (22.6) and the Colts (22.6) — so we can certainly make the case they should be at least two spots higher.
Whether or not the Titans can match or better their 2019 success will depend upon Tannehill, who is almost universally expected to regress after posting an elite season.
The good news for Tennessee is that nothing has really changed to make you think that will happen — or at least not to the lengths some are expecting.
Sure, Tannehill doesn’t have a track record of elite play to bank on, but he remains at the helm of a run-heavy, quarterback-friendly offense that runs through Derrick Henry and utilizes the play-action, something Tannehill excelled at last season.
And that’s an identity that offensive coordinator Arthur Smith embraces, so expect more of the same approach in the coming campaign.
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