3 takeaways from the Tennessee Titans loss to Buffalo Bills
Vrabel’s decision-making is a major problem
To say that Mike Vrabel is a risk taker would be a massive understatement. Throughout his young head coaching career, he has not been afraid to do something out of the norm if he thinks it’s beneficial for the team.
To be fair, there have been times when his risk-taking has worked and we all loved him for it. No better example than the Philadelphia Eagles game last year. Rather than go for the tie, he consistently chose to go for the win and ended up being successful in doing so.
Then there are the other 98 percent of the times when Titans fans are left confused, frustrated, and everything in between.
Making bad game management decisions isn’t really a new thing for Vrabel unfortunately. @edjsports had him ranked 5th worst among coaches when it came to critical calls based on their model last year. Guessing it’s probably not trending in a great direction this year either.
— Mike Herndon (@MikeHerndonNFL) October 7, 2019
He has had severe moments of complete negligence in the past, such as the London game against the Los Angeles Chargers last season when he went for two and the win, and got neither.
In the Week 3 game against the Jaguars, Mike Vrabel once again outsmarted himself. Down 14, the Titans finally began to show some life on a drive in the third quarter. The drive ultimately stalled out near the end-zone, and rather than take the easy three points, he decided to send his stagnant offense back out there to attempt a fourth-and-6.
The fact that he would trust an offense that was severely struggling to convert at that time is nothing short of complete negligence and/or delusion.
However, none of these coaching blunders were arguably as bad as his decision to send kicker Cairo Santos out there for his eventual fourth miss of the day. The Titans offense was starting to move the ball before they stalled out just past midfield.
Rather than let his offense try and convert an extremely manageable fourth down, he decided to let his kicker, who had been missing everything all day, attempt a kick that was nearly his career long. To no one’s surprise, the kick sailed wide and the Titans once again ended the drive with no points.
Even if the Titans had to settle for three points on that drive, you have to get your struggling kicker closer than that. As much as Santos’ struggles hurt the team yesterday, you could make a strong case that Mike Vrabel’s decision-making hurt the team just as much, if not more.
Coach Vrabel preached all offseason about getting this team to go from “good to great”.
Thus far, you could make more of an argument that they’ve taken a step back as opposed to that step towards greatness. If this team is going to take that next step, he needs to find a way to put an end to his overly-aggressive mindset and shaky decision-making as soon as possible.