Tennessee Titans vs Pittsburgh Steelers: biggest thing to watch
By Will Lomas
Something the Tennessee Titans can attack against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The NFL preseason isn’t about scheming and planning as much as it is about adapting and matchups, but in Week 3 everything changes for teams like the Tennessee Titans.
With a new offensive coordinator in place, the Tennessee Titans have already said that they are going to pay more attention to the other team than they did in the first two weeks.
Where this gets interesting is that the Pittsburgh Steelers have a clear tendency so far this preseason on defense: they blitz.
"The Steelers have blitzed 69 times so far this preseason, 32 more times than any other team. Unsurprisingly, given the volume, they rank first among teams in total pressures (35), total knockdowns (18) and pass-rush grade (91.1) on blitzes."
With this clear plan and with the weapons on the field, the Titans have to be ready to call a lot of quick passes and screens.
So far we have seen the Titans do very little of this with the first team offense. There were two plays last week that matched this mindset.
First was the screen pass to Jeremy McNichols which was blown up at the LOS because the running back got held in the backfield.
The second was a pass out of an empty look to Jeremy McNichols again who motioned out of the backfield and into trips on the left side.
Going into Sunday, the plan of attack has to be to heavily feature McNichols and Dion Lewis as receiving threats. Passes to the RB aren’t really sexy, but what you never go broke taking a profit and this should help ease the pressure on the Titans OL down the road.
Throw in some play action, max protection chunks to Corey Davis and A.J. Brown but if they are insisting on blitzing a lot then make them pay for it.
If that is “Plan A” then Arthur Smith also has to be ready to counter punch if they decide to swerve away from this tendency. The Steelers clearly know they are blitzing a lot, so they may want to try to see how their coverage holds up without the added pressure from the front seven.
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If this happens, my suggestion would be to really feature the mid-range game of the Titans. Guys like Adam Humphries and Delanie Walker should be able to win their matchup against those linebackers and safeties, but Brown and Davis can obviously still be factors here.
This game shouldn’t be about bombs and deep passes, it should be about death by a thousand cuts. Surgical, precise attacking for an entire drive taking what the defense gives you.
Again, everyone is going to run to their keyboards and say “Marcus Mariota didn’t even throw a deep ball, why would they start him!?1!” Ignore those people.
light. Related Story. Titans vs. Steelers preview: Will Derrick Henry play?
If the Titans hit some deep shots or if they want to try some big passes, cool. But this isn’t a game where you should expect to see an ultra aggressive offense.