Reminder: The Tennessee Titans offense isn’t a cake walk to defend either
By Will Lomas
A.J. Brown
Not only has the rookie receiver set NFL records and rewritten the history books, but he has turned out to be the perfect opportunist on the Titans offense.
What I mean by that, is that when a team decides to send pressure or play specifically to stop Derrick Henry, it doesn’t take him five or six catches to show up. Instead, Brown has shown the freakish ability to be able to attack a defense horizontally or vertically in order to win and get big plays.
Whether you want him to do it before or after the catch, unless you have one of the best cornerbacks in the NFL shadowing him, you are in for a long day playing defense short handed against A.J. Brown.
In fact, the Titans have even shown looks with him getting the ball on screens, jet sweeps, reverses, or even lining up in the backfield as a running back behind Derrick Henry lining up at fullback.
The point is, if you dedicate yourself to stopping Henry then you better have outstanding tacklers on defense because even if you match your best cornerback on defense the Titans have still found ways to manufacture touches for Brown when they want to get him involved.
But, let’s say that you have an elite group of DBs that are excellent tacklers and can manage to pay attention to both Derrick Henry in the running game AND successfully cover A.J. Brown. What is the third option in this rock-paper-scissors game?