3 Reasons Tennessee Titans alleged hole at wide receiver is overblown
By Will Lomas
3. The Tennessee Titans quarterback is better than advertised.
The aforementioned key question is this. How does the Tennessee Titans version of Ryan Tannehill compare to the 2017-2018 version of Marcus Mariota, and the 2017-2020 version of Jared Goff?
Again, the only real way to quantify this is the dive into the efficiency numbers, specifically adjusted yards per attempt or ‘AY/A’ to the stats community. After doing the math, these are the results:
2019-2020 Ryan Tannehill: 9.23 AY/A
2017-2020 Jared Goff: 7.4 AY/A
2017-2018 Marcus Mariota: 6.64 AY/A
You can conclude from this that the jump from Marcus Mariota to Ryan Tannehill was staggering with Tannehill adding 2.59 yards per attempt to the passing attack. However, the jump from Goff to Tannehill (1.83 yards per attempt) is still a massive leap.
For context, the 2020 leader in AY/A was the NFL’s MVP Aaron Rodgers with 9.57. If he would have been 1.83 yards lower, he would have fallen outside the top ten.
The conclusion you should take from this is that Jon Robinson and the Tennessee Titans front office agreed that they would rather have the cap space, the future compensatory draft pick, and Josh Reynolds rather than re-signing Corey Davis.
Looking at the two as players before being inserted into a Ryan Tannehill-led version of this offense, the two are nearly identical. While there isn’t quite as much upside upgrading from Jared Goff to Ryan Tannehill as there is in upgrading from Marcus Mariota to Ryan Tannehill, the growth potential is still evident and significant.
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Combining that positive projection with the nine percent role that the other’ starting wide receiver in this offense is expected to have, it becomes a lot easier to understand why the Tennessee Titans made the move that they did at the wide receiver position.
While another move could still be coming in the future, fans should understand that there are statistical reasons to suggest that this front office won’t make a move unless they believe that they are going to get someone who can make an impact equal or greater to what they got out of Corey Davis last year.