Tennessee Titans should be encouraged by Ryan Tannehill so far.
Look, most of you know that I was/am pro Marcus Mariota but it is hard to deny that Ryan Tannehill isn’t playing at a high level for the Tennessee Titans.
You may have realized it or seen the graph I am about to show below, but with a limited sample size there are few QBs who have been as consistently productive as Tannehill has for the Titans these last two games.
While I still believe the obvious answer is to find a way to keep Tannehill for a year and find his replacement this offseason, the fact is that right now the focus might be shifting from “rebuilding” to “improving” this offseason.
Check out this from Jason OTC (by the way, OTC will come up a lot this offseason as it always does because I think they are the best resource for salary cap info in the NFL):
Fooling around with some numbers with QBs and here are each players XComp% (per @NextGenStats) vs how many passing yards at 500 attempts.
— Jason_OTC (@Jason_OTC) October 31, 2019
Top right- Safer but productive
Top left- Aggressive and productive
Bottom left- Probably too aggressive
Bottom right- Needs some fixing pic.twitter.com/alu8XobJze
As you can see, Ryan Tannehill is in the top left quadrant of this graph meaning that he is “Aggressive and productive”.
Interestingly enough, there are 12 QBs in that quadrant. The ones closest to Tannehill are:
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All of those QBs are either having career years or they are continuing to play at a high level.
This is an extremely encouraging sign for the Titans and it is giving fans exactly what they wanted when they were asking for a QB change. That being that Tannehill is being aggressive and letting his skill players make plays, hence the “aggressive” part of his labeling.
In turn, the receivers and tight ends are helping out, which is why aggressive is paired with “productive” in that top left area.
That is kinda all Tennessee really needs Tannehill to be at this point and while he is forcing some things and making his skill players make plays instead of finding easy open targets, that is more of a function of the “offensive coordinator” Arthur Smith’s offense.
While these schedule clearly gets harder from here on out, the fact remains that over his time as a starter (and even that bad half against the Denver Broncos) he is getting the job done.
Like it or not, three or maybe even all four of the names I mentioned earlier that are in the same boat as him are among the QBs playing at an elite level this season. Maybe Tannehill is more Matt Hasselbeck than Blaine Gabbert, though he has a full half of a season to prove that right or wrong.