The Tennessee Titans Have Undergone a Special Teams Makeover

The Tennessee Titans special teams unit is much improved.

“Complimentary football” is a term that is overused in all levels of football these days. It’s a bit of a cop-out answer for coaches being asked questions by the media that they don’t feel like coming up with a legitimate answer to. Nevertheless, it is an important aspect of the game.

That term, complimentary football, refers to the idea of all three parts of a team—offense, defense and special teams—working cohesively. An offensive drive stalls, the special teams unit executes a good punt, the defense gets a quick stop, the special teams unit comes back on the field to give their offense good field position, and the offense is able to score.

For the past two seasons, the Tennessee Titans have struggled mightily to play true complimentary football. Even last season, which saw the team make great strides on offense and defense, they never achieved complimentary football. Why? Because the game’s often forgotten third phase, special teams, was still a major issue.

Even before Mike Mularkey took over as the Titans’ head coach last year, the team was really bad at playing special teams. They could barely catch a kickoff, much less field it. If a punt returner had decent speed, you could count on them evading multiple tackles. Quite frankly, the only aspects of the Titans’ special teams that weren’t horrible from 2015-2016 were their kicking specialists, thanks to the consistency of Ryan Succop and Brett Kern.

In his introductory press conference last January, Mularkey addressed the special teams errors and vowed to fix them. He promised that there would be a “major overhaul” in that department. That didn’t exactly happen in year one for the new head coach.

Tennessee Titans

2016 was another bad year for the Tennessee special teams group. In the return game, former Pro Bowler Marc Mariani looked like his feet were made of bricks anytime he fielded a kick. He made good decisions and caught every kick that came his way, but he showed zero explosiveness.

In kick coverage, things were even worse. Opponents were able to gain an average of 9.6 yards per punt return against the Titans, which included two returns for touchdown by Will Fuller of the Houston Texans and Jakeem Grant of the Miami Dolphins.

Following the game against the Texans that yielded Fuller’s return TD, the team parted ways with special teams coordinator Bobby April. Mularkey’s reasoning was that he wasn’t seeing any progress with the special teams. The coaching change clearly didn’t help as the Titans allowed Grant’s punt return touchdown in the very next game, the first under interim coordinator Steve Hoffman.

During this past offseason, the interim tag was ripped off of Hoffman, as he was named the full-time special teams coordinator. Thankfully, considering that the unit didn’t improve in the least under his guidance the year before, he was given a good bit of help in the personnel department by general manager Jon Robinson.

To aid in kick coverage, the Titans signed a handful of known special teams aces, such as Brynden Trawick, Daren Bates, and Eric Weems. They also acquired cornerback Adoree’ Jackson, who was one of the most explosive players with the ball in his hands throughout all of college football during his time at USC, through the draft.

The acquisitions have already made a tremendous difference. Preseason games can, in a lot of senses, be meaningless. But in the Titans’ first two games, the special teams have looked pristine, particularly against the Carolina Panthers.

Jackson looked incredibly fast as he blew by the Panthers to return a punt for a touchdown. Unfortunately, penalties caused the play to be called back. Weems looked like a man on a mission in kick coverage, assisting in multiple nice stops on returners. Trawick also looked very good covering kicks, making a great tackle inside the ten on the Titans’ first kickoff.

On five kickoff returns, the Panthers averaged a measly 15.8 yards per return, with a long of only 20. Additionally, they averaged only 5.3 yards per punt return (four punts, three returns, one fair catch).

A lot of things need to happen for the Titans to be contenders in 2017. Marcus Mariota needs to become more consistent, the young pass rushers need to provide the veterans with some help, the secondary must hold up, and the offensive line must be as dominant as they were in 2016.

Also on the list is the need for vast improvement on special teams. The Titans took an old-school approach to free agency by mostly targeting players for that purpose. If those players continue to have success, the approach will pay tremendous dividends in 2017.