Derrick Morgan, the quiet superstar
By Will Lomas
The Tennessee Titans have gotten a lot of attention this far, but mostly for offense. Marcus Mariota is making some great passes and should be giving fans a lot of hope. Suddenly the Tennessee Titans running game is something to watch as the team is 4th in the league with 4.7 YPC.
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However, the defense has been nearly as dominant. Despite playing backups in the first game of the season, the Tennessee Titans are still tied for 8th in the league in YPC with 3.7. Against the pass, through two games the Tennessee Titans defense has six sacks, which is just two off from the 2nd place rank.
While Brian Orakpo, Jurrell Casey, Al Woods, and others are important in all of these stats, the man standing out the most is Derrick Morgan.
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Through two games this season, Derrick Morgan sits tied with J.J. Watt, Justin Houston and Chandler Jones tied for 2nd in sacks with three. He 11 tackles, and has looked good dropping back into pass coverage for what it is worth.
It looks like Derrick Morgan has finally turned a corner, and he showed a little of this at the end of last year too. According to Jim Wyatt of the Tennessee Titans, Derrick Morgan has six sacks, and two forced fumbles in his last five games.
Morgan could be in for a pretty big year in 2015. With Brian Orakpo drawing extra help on the left side, Morgan should get to attack some pretty bad right tackles. Excluding the Patriots who have one of the best tackles in football, Derrick Morgan will face offensive tackles who average a pressure 5% of the time which is a really high number.
To put this into perspective, Michael Oher who is a train wreck in pass protection, allows pressure 7.6% of the time. So these offensive tackles are on average just a little bit more efficient in pass protection.
Derrick Morgan’s year should only get better, and if he gets into a grove against some bad OTs in the division, this could be a career year for him. He is already halfway towards that number and that is after playing a full game against a great offensive line and only playing half of a game against the Bucs offensive line.