Tim Kelly will elevate Tennessee Titans offense in 2023

Tim Kelly consistently overachieved with the Houston Texans’ offense

When you look at some of the base statistics of the Texans’ offense under Kelly, you might be less than excited about what he is going to bring to the Titans.

Don’t let those numbers freak you out. When you dig deeper and look at what he was given to work with, you will realize that he consistently got the best out of what he had.

The best roster Kelly ever had at his disposal with the Texans was Deshaun Watson, prime DeAndre Hopkins, and not much else. Their only other receiving threat was often injured Will Fuller, they had a subpar offensive line, and they had virtually no threat in the running game.

It would get even worse for their offense, as Hopkins was traded in 2020 and pretty much replaced by Brandin Cooks. Watson would not even play the next season, and it forced the Texans to go into 2021 with an uninspiring quarterback duo of Tyrod Taylor and Davis Mills.

Despite the deficiencies Kelly faced, he would only succeed in maximizing the talent in his offense. In fact, you could argue that as the Texans got worse from a personnel standpoint, he got better as an offensive coordinator.

In all three seasons that Kelly had on the Texans, they were in the top half of the league in third down conversion rate.

From a purely statistical standpoint, Watson had his best season in 2020, which was of course without Hopkins. He led the entire league in passing yards, had a 33 to 7 touchdown to interception ratio, just over a 70% completion rate, and just over a 112 passer rating.

All of that was good enough to leave the Texans at first in net yards per pass attempt, fourth in passing yards, and eighth in passing touchdowns. Once again, just astounding given that they had a subpar roster and were an overall disaster in 2020.