Bonus continuity
Derrick Henry and A.J. Brown
Most first-year OC’s go into their first season expecting to run the offense a certain way and then adapting to what is actually working vs what they thought might work. I think it is fair to say that Arthur Smith fell into that trope as well.
Last year Smith started off trying to get a lot more out of Dion Lewis and (to a lesser extent) Corey Davis than he should have. In retrospect, if the Titans had trusted Henry and Brown a little more early, maybe the team wouldn’t have gone 2-4.
Instead of going down the rabbit hole of what would have happened if the Titans win vs the Indianapolis Colts with Marcus Mariota, let’s talk about what the benefit of that hindsight is.
With Henry, Tannehill and Brown all under contract for 3+ years, the Titans should be pouring over playbooks and tape right now figuring out how to run the triangle offense with this team.
Now, I know that isn’t what this is called, but the marriage of stretch runs, bootlegs, and play action passes between these three doesn’t have a better nickname so I will stick with that.
Semantics aside, the offensive plan going forward should be to get Henry 20+ touches and A.J. Brown 8+ targets and that is the knowledge that only comes from making the mistake of trusting a game plan over the players themselves. That is a mistake that I don’t think Smith will make again.