Titans ‘pick your poison’ offense will be a nightmare for defenses

Opposing defenses will have to pick their poison against the Titans’ offense in 2021.

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Ever since the Tennessee Titans made the blockbuster deal for All-Pro wide receiver Julio Jones, their stock on offense has been soaring.

Before the trade, most people expected the Titans to be a good, competitive team in 2021. But now that Jones is in the mix, everyone from fans to the national media is talking about a potential Super Bowl for Tennessee — and for good reason.

The Titans’ explosive offense from a season ago is adding two bona fide stars into a lineup that averaged over 30 points per game without them.

On top of the addition of Jones, left tackle Taylor Lewan returns to anchor an offensive line that allowed only 25 sacks last year (T-6th fewest), while also helping Derrick Henry rush for 2,027 yards and 17 touchdowns.

Lewan and Jones join an offense that has suddenly become loaded with Pro Bowl-caliber players all across the starting lineup.

Allowing a talented and productive quarterback like Ryan Tannehill to have this type of weaponry at his disposal is something that will be a nightmare for opposing defensive coordinators to game plan for.

The phrase “pick your poison” is often thrown around loosely, but there isn’t a better use of the phrase than when applied to Tennessee’s offense this season.

Should opposing defenses decide they are going to respect the two superstars out wide — Jones and A.J. Brown — with six-man fronts, Henry is likely going to dominate.

Over the last two years, Henry has averaged 5.3 yards per carry against that type of front. The problem is he only saw that defensive look an average of 4.3 times per game, a number that is bound to go up with Jones and Brown on the same offense.

If opposing defensive coordinators decide to put another man in the box, they are now playing into the defensive front for which Brown has had more success against than anyone in the league since his arrival.

Over the last two years, Brown is averaging a league-high 4.3 receiving yards per route run against seven-man boxes. Jones is second with 4.1 receiving yards per route run against seven-man fronts.

However, it’s the eight-man looks that opposing defenses used against the Titans more than anyone in the league last year, mostly because opposing defenses didn’t respect the team’s receivers enough outside of Brown to prevent them from loading up.

Last season, Tennessee faced eight-man fronts an average of 23.1 percent of the time, the most in the NFL.

In fact, on several occasions since 2019, Henry himself has seen anywhere from 40 to 75 percent of his offensive snaps against seven or more defenders in the box, a very clear indicator that defenses prioritize making someone other than Henry beat them.

Unfortunately for opposing defenses, Henry has led the NFL in rushing yards the past two years despite defensive coordinators’ obvious attempts to slow down Tennessee’s efficient rushing attack with overloaded fronts.

Henry tallied 571 yards against stacked boxes (at least seven defenders) in 2019 and a jaw-dropping 702 yards against eight-man fronts in 2020 (5.9 yards per carry).

In addition to being a back-to-back rushing champion, the Alabama legend has also led the league with 92 broken tackles since the start of 2019.

As productive as the King is against heavy fronts, stacking the box remains the best way to stop him, or at least keep him in check.

In their playoff loss to Baltimore, the Ravens put a minimum of eight defenders in the box on 72 percent of Henry’s runs.

The reigning Offensive Player of the Year totaled 24 yards on 13 carries (1.8 YPC) against those defensive fronts and finished the game with only 40 yards on 18 carries (2.2 YPC), easily his worst performance of the season.

This offseason, Tennessee clearly made it a priority to prevent this from happening again going forward.

The Titans now have historically the best wide receiver against eight-man boxes — over the last five years, Jones has the most receiving yards against eight or more defenders in the box despite being one of the receivers to see those looks the fewest — to pair with Brown in hopes of forcing defenses to respect the pass as much as they do the run. Jones tends to feast against single coverage, which is why he rarely sees it.

Jones has averaged 4.7 yards per route run against that defensive look over the last five years, the best out of all wide receivers who have ran at least 100 routes against that type of defense over that span.

Translation for all this: defenses are going to have some tough decisions to make this fall when playing against the Titans.

As of right now, there’s no way of telling exactly how opposing defenses are going to try and slow down this balanced behemoth of an offense. This article didn’t even touch on the impact that Anthony Firkser and Josh Reynolds are likely going to make in their complementary roles.

With all that said, you can pretty much guarantee that defensive coordinators will not be getting much sleep any time Tennessee is up next on their schedule.

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