Out of touch CBS writer drops Tennessee Titans in power rankings
By Will Lomas
Pete Prisco may rival Jason La Canfora in terms of lack of knowledge about the Tennessee Titans.
I rarely write articles like this, but sometimes it is clear that someone is out of touch with a particular team that it needs some spotlight shown on it. For example, Pete Prisco seems to have a real lack of understanding of the Tennessee Titans.
In his latest power rankings, Prisco moved the Tennessee Titans down 5 spots to 17 overall using this as an excuse:
“New coach Mike Vrabel is a good choice to take over running this team. Marcus Mariota needs to play better.”
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First of all, not a lot of insight there. Not sure it even really counts as analysis to state who the new coach is and talk about a QB who had a down year statistically.
But, alright. Let’s pretend that he is trying to make a point here. Marcus Mariota does need to play better, but at the same time when you doom him to a predictable scheme and you attach him to a bad play caller what was he supposed to do?
If you are going to compliment Vrabel, then you are basically saying you expect him to do better than Mike Mularkey or else you wouldn’t phrase it like that. So if you expect this team to be better run (and we all know they upgraded at OC) then why drop them at all, much less five positions.
Alright, maybe he is just ranking the teams how he thinks they will be next year and the ups and downs don’t really relate to the analysis they are just thoughts right? Maybe he knows more about the Titans than he let’s on.
Oh, wait- Nope, this was the guy that mocked a center to the Titans in the first round nevermind.
That is right, Prisco had the Titans choose junior Iowa center James Daniel in the first round of his latest mock draft. From all indications the Titans are more than happy with Ben Jones even though he played through several injuries last year.
On top of that, center isn’t a terrible important position in a ZBS. Sure if you have someone like Alex Mack or Nick Mangold in his prime you would love to have him to reach 1-techs and get up to the second level, but those players are very rare.
So not only did he have the Titans draft a player at a position they are happy with and which doesn’t have a huge impact on the game if you have an average/above average player there, but he also ignored players of need or BPAs.
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Here are some players he could have drafted instead:
-Harold Landry, EDGE
-Isaiah Wynn, G/T
-Rashaan Evans, ILB
-Roquan Smith, ILB
-Joshua Jackson, CB
-Sony Michel, RB
-Darius Guice, RB
-Mo Hurst, DL
I mean all of those players would have either been BPA, a position of need, or even both.
It is misinformation like this that really bugs me. I don’t have inside sources or anything like that telling me they absolutely won’t take a center in the first, but Jon Robinson has had three 1st round picks.
He has used those picks to draft: OT, CB and WR.
If you have read my positional value list (which is really important to smart GMs) then you will those are 3 of the top-6 positions in terms of positional value. If OL was changed to OT it would probably be closer to 3 of the top 4.
What positional value at center really drags down the rest of the OL’s value and would probably rank somewhere near the bottom-5 in terms of PV.
The point is that it is a position of low value and not a position of need. On top of that, he probably won’t be the top player on the Titans board because they value long term starters.
Daniels only started for two years and missed time in each of those years due to injury. It just isn’t a resume that blows you away enough to ignore everything that Robinson has looked at.
This is all a long way of saying some power rankings and mock drafts just aren’t worth reading for every team. In Prisco’s final mock from last year he had the Titans taking Jonathan Allen and Mike Williams (the Titans passed on Allen and didn’t address DL at all in that draft, and took Corey Davis over Mike Williams straight up).
Prisco doesn’t have the understanding or connections to the Titans that others do. While his mock drafts and his info might be great for other teams, Titans fans probably shouldn’t bother too much with it.