The Titans might be wasting their one last ride with Arthur Smith
There once was a man named Arthur, born into wealth and privilege that most would not be able to comprehend. For him, that grand level of monetary status was simply a reality, as his very own father co-founded one of the most profitable companies in the world.
But for Arthur, wealth and privilege were not enough. Arthur needed more than the simple luxury of financial security– and instead, set out on a journey to do the impossible. To give the Tennessee Titans offense an overhaul, and turn one of the NFL’s most pedestrian groups into one of league-wide renown.
Men of greater football standing than Arthur had tried. A humble tight ends coach with the Tennessee Titans franchise since 2013, Arthur had been passed up time in and time again for offensive minds with flashier resumes.
Ken Whisenhunt tried to revamp the offense in 2014– but could manage no better than the league’s 28th ranked scoring offense with a 3-20 record as a head coach through one season and a half with the team. Then it was Mike Mularkey, who met a similar fate. Followed by Matt Lafluer, an offensive coordinator and first-time play-caller of legend sent straight from the sought after coaching tree of Sean McVay, but Lafluer as well was stimied by the forever-broken Tennessee Titans offense.
Until, after six years of waiting in the wings, when Arthur got his chance. The offensive coordinator and sole play-caller of one of the most broken groups in the league. Talented, sure. But while Tennessee was forced to watch high-flying offenses in their own conference in the Kansas City Chiefs, and even offenses in their own division in the Houston Texans, the Titans were sputtering to the finish line with consistently low scoring groups. In Arthur’s first year, he would be taking over a group that finished 25th in yards gained and 27th in scoring, all while the highly-touted Lafluer was in charge.
What followed, however, was a revolution. In 2019, the Tennessee Titans finished with their first top ten scoring offense in over a decade, since the final days of the great Steve McNair and Eddie George in two-toned blue. Arthur, a man of football destiny, had given the Tennessee Titans an offense with potential that fans hadn’t seen since the early days of the franchise being the Tennessee Titans. And in 2020, Arthur has worked his magic once more and has given the team an offense even better than last year’s.
Just how good is Arthur Smith?
In whatever metric you want to throw out, this Tennessee Titans offense is better than they’ve ever been since being relocated to Tennessee. The surface-level numbers are all strongly in Tennessee’s favor. With just one game left to play in the regular season, this Titans offense ranks in the top five in both scoring and total yards, the first time that’s happened since the days of Warren Moon and Jack Pardee.
The advanced numbers love Arthur’s offense just as much, maybe even more than the superficial ones. The Titans are a team ranked third in offensive DVOA, while quarterback Ryan Tannehill ranks fifth in QBR and eighth in EPA.
Suddenly, this completely broken offense, one that had suffered through sleepless days of Jake Locker, Matt Hasselbeck, Kerry Collins, and a host of other missed potential snap-takers over the last decade-plus, has flipped on its head. An offense that had finished in the top half of the NFL in yards and scoring just once since 2005 before Arthur’s arrival has transformed, practically overnight, into one of the strongest groups in the league.
A team that had only managed two 1,000-yard pass-catchers in that time is now on pace to have two on the same roster, with Corey Davis and AJ Brown both sitting within 76 yards of that mark. This, despite both players missing a handful of games, and despite the team also possessing one of the most potent rushing attacks in the league, with star running back Derrick Henry having a puncher’s chance to be the first running back to reach 2,000 yards on the ground since Adrian Peterson in his 2012 MVP season.
Playmakers on playmakers, all sitting within the comfy walls of Arthur’s potent offensive playcalling. The Titans have not seen an offense anywhere near this level in the 21st century, but it’s finally here, and it came at the perfect time.
Because while the Tennessee Titans have struggled on offense for decades past, the defense has not. The Tennessee Titans defense, while rarely ever an elite group through an entire 16-game schedule, has been strong enough to elevate a lagging team around them. Three consecutive years of winning seasons and playoff contention before Arthur’s arrival, all while trotting out average offensive groups at best, stand as a testament to the defense’s consistency.
In 2018, while the Titans offense struggled as a group bottoming out in most offensive categories, the team still managed a 9-7 finish with a Week 17 ‘Win and We’re In’ situation, thanks in large part to the effort of a defense ranked third in points allowed per game. The year before, while starting a quarterback who threw 13 touchdowns to 15 interceptions, a defense that allowed no more than 20 points in six of their final nine games helped propel the Titans to an AFC Wild Card appearance, and even an upset win over the Chiefs.
But now, that offense, a group that has always lagged behind, has finally caught up when they need to most. For someone like Arthur, someone who was able to pull off the impossible and reinvent a basement-dwelling offense into a top-tier group, the next step is coming. Arthur, realistically, will not be with the Titans for much longer. A head coaching offer is bound to come knocking sooner rather than later, and realistically, it will come by the end of this season.
So, with the strong possibility of one more season of Arthur running the offense, the Titans are bound to be a Super Bowl contender. The offense is elite, and the defense is bound to be just as good, seeing as how they’ve always been the strongest part of the Titans roster. With those two forces working in tandem, this has to be one of the best team’s in the league, right?
Right?
…Right?
Defense Is The New Offense
It’s entirely possible that the fable of Arthur doesn’t reach the ultimate happy ending. In the cruelest twist of fate, just as the Tennessee Titans offense has unlocked all new potential, the defense has regressed past the point of recognition. It could be the difference between Tennessee being a fun playoff team and a real-deal Super Bowl contender.
The two groups have swapped roles. The Titans’ offense, long the liability of the franchise, is now the side of the ball dragging their lagging defense to success. It’s a Tennessee defense that can’t get opposing offenses off the field, ranking dead last in third-down defense and allowing teams to convert on over half of their attempts. It’s a defense that can’t for the life of them get to the opposing quarterback, also ranking last in total sacks with just 15 in as many games.
The more you dig, the worse it gets for Tennessee. Giving up the second-most passing touchdowns, the ninth highest quarterback rating, the tenth most points allowed, and are a bottom-five group in defensive DVOA. They’re a team with numbers that look an awful lot like, well, like the Titans offense from any year between 2005 and 2018. Bottomed out, being carried by a much stronger group.
And that is where the Tennessee Titans find themselves in 2020, with just one game left to go in the regular season. One group performing at an elite level, the other often failing to hold up their end of the bargain. Only this time around, the roles have been reversed. In the span of one offseason, the Titans offense has managed to hit new heights– while the defense has collapsed entirely.
The Titans find themselves in uncharted territory, but even still, in a situation that feels all too familiar. A disappointing effort from one side of the ball could be the downfall of the team as a whole, despite an offense that props up the trouble spots that line the roster. With potentially just one final year of Arthur’s magic on offense– the Tennessee Titans might have put themselves on a fast track to throw it all away.
How did we get here?
But how? How did the defense, a group as steady as anyone could ask over the past few years, suddenly collapse? And overnight, from the looks of it. The roster has stayed intact, for the most part. Losing veteran cornerback Logan Ryan was a shot to a secondary with a handful of injuries, but one that should have been offset with the midseason addition of an All-Pro replacement in Desmond King. Star linebacker Jayon Brown being forced out with an injury was a blow to the group as well, but David Long has shown to be more than a suitable replacement.
So, again I ask, what gives? The talent that propelled the Tennessee defense over the past couple of seasons is all still there. Kevin Byard was a star in 2019. Harold Landry, Kenny Vaccaro, and Daquan Jones were all nice players. Jeffery Simmons was… well, actually, Simmons has been as good as his Year Two ceiling stretched in 2020. But across the board, with the exception of the aptly named ‘Big Jeff’ of course, players with positive impacts from previous teams have been non-factors this go-round.
For one final time, I ask, what has happened to the Tennessee Titans defense? It’s been one departure that has sunk the unit as a whole, and one vacancy that still remains as we approach the end of the 2020 regular season. It wasn’t the loss of a player, but rather, the loss of a defensive coordinator– and the lack of a replacement.
Arthur’s 2019 counterpart, his defensive partner in crime, Dean Pees, has left the building. A veteran of the NFL coaching game, a two-time Super Bowl winner as a defensive coach across two different teams had retired from the league and taken his talents away from the Titans. Replacing him with a new coordinator would prove to be a tall task, so naturally, the Tennessee Titans swung for the fences on their new hire and brought in… nobody! Nobody replaced Dean Pees!
Instead, the Titans settled on an amalgam ‘play-calling and defensive show running’ effort between Mike Vrabel, the head coach, and Shane Bowen, the team’s linebackers coach. And, in a personnel decision that contradicted the very essence of the Titans 2020 offseason– the offensive efforts of Arthur’s potential ‘One Last Ride’ might prove to be for naught.
After a run to the AFC Championship in 2019, the writing was on the wall for the Tennessee Titans. They had a championship window thrust upon them, but they had to act fast. Arthur is bound to take off sooner rather than later, Derrick ‘Destroyer of Souls’ Henry is bound to regress at some point soon, as all running backs do (unless Henry turns out to be a Terminator. I’m only 98% sure that he isn’t part murder robot), and the pieces that made up the magical Tennessee run from last season would more or less be gone. So, the Titans made their moves.
They knew Ryan Tannehill was key to what they did on offense in 2019, so they brought him back on a four-year contract. Same story for Derrick Henry. They knew they needed help in the pass-rush, so they brought in Jadaveon Clowney. They knew that right tackle Jack Conklin would be too expensive to bring back, so, they drafted Isiah Wilson in the first round to keep their potent rushing attack moving smoothly (look, not every offseason move was a winner).
But when it came to defensive coordinator, the Titans sat on their hands. Replacing someone like Dean Pees with a coordinator of a similar caliber might have been impossible, but to not even try, all while going all-in across the roster… it’s a move that might keep the Titans as the same team that they’ve been for years. Great on one side of the ball, with the other side holding them back.
The story of Arthur, the Titans’ great offensive mind, will likely end happily ever after. The NFL loves a show on offense, and teams from across the league will likely be tripping over themselves to bring the head of the Titans offense to a new franchise– this time as a head coach. And if he can take a perpetually broken offense like Tennessee’s and turn it into gold, there’s no reason to think that Arthur can’t do it somewhere else too.
But the story of the 2020 Tennessee Titans might not end the same way. Their offensive prowess gives them the chance to advance through the playoffs, so long as they can make every game look like that Patriots v Eagles Super Bowl– but they won’t be getting any favors from their defense. And with potent offenses like the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills capable of keeping pace, and strong defenses like those of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Indianapolis Colts capable of shutting the Titans down, who knows if this Tennessee season has a storybook ending?
For years it’s been the opposite. If the Titans could get their offense together, watch out, this will be a complete and powerful team from top to bottom. Well now, Arthur has the Tennessee offense running– and maybe for just one more season. After this, he could be gone, and who knows what will become of the Titans’ offense. Maybe they’ll just go back to being the group they’ve always been.
But for right now, the Titans don’t have to worry about that. Right now, they have a team capable of scoring at will. An offense that looks Super Bowl ready.
If only the defense could say the same.