What a terrible game from the Tennessee Titans on Monday Night Football. I just sat down to watch the game tape last night and it just pissed me off even more than it did on Monday night. The Titans had two things going against them from the jump on Monday night – the Bills were flying around the field unafraid of the run, and the offensive line was atrocious. The coaches didn’t adjust to the personnel change when Taylor Lewan left the game, and the entire game unraveled out of that. I vented a lot about personnel failures on the game recap show, so I won’t get into that again. But, the Bills defensive front was relentless.
They were getting around the edges in NO TIME. Ryan Tannehill was having to be decisive as soon as the ball was snapped because he had no real time to go through progressions. The Bills were rushing all night – EVERY FUCKING PLAY! They were right there! Not only does that sort of relentless pass rush fluster Tannehill, but it doesn’t give anything the chance to develop down the field. It causes the offense to cave in on itself. It also seemed like the Bills smelled blood in the water and just started adding bodies at the line of scrimmage as the game went on.
And, as the game went on, it just kept getting worse. Tannehill was being moved back out of the pocket. It’s like the Titans conceded that he was just going to have to drop back 15 yards behind the line of scrimmage to have any shot of getting the ball out. And, by the time it did, he’s completing passes to Robert Woods and Hassan Haskins five to 10 yards behind the line of scrimmage to begin with. You would think the Bills had 50 men on the field the way they were in the backfield and around the edges on every play. To be fair, I don’t know what the Titans coaches could have done to neutralize this issue, but I’m confident that calling plays like a handoff to Haskins on 2nd & long behind Dennis Daley ain’t it. Let’s take those toss plays, for instance. We’re having a field day with the memes about those toss plays this week.
Namely, they didn’t work because the Bills were ready for them and weren’t afraid at all of the Titans passing the ball. They just crowded the line of scrimmage on every play. On the first toss play of the game, the Bills had three defenders on the left side of the play, matched up on Cody Hollister and Daley.

As you can see, the play was immediately blown up. Hollister was blocked into Daley, and Daley couldn’t get out in space to take on the third guy. The Bills saw it coming and just outnumbered ‘em. Matt Milano gets in there to eat up one of the blocks and it frees up Benford to make that tackle. The Bills played great, don’t get me wrong – but the Titans made it easy on them with plays like this. I don’t know shit fuck about an NFL playbook. I don’t know who was responsible for what, but that just seems like a bad decision. Why run that play towards your back-up left tackle and WR5 in the red zone?
You put a few of those plays out there when you can’t sustain a drive and give your defense a breather, and well, that’s one way to end up getting your shit kicked in on Monday Night Football. It feels like this type of stuff is how the game got away from the Titans so quickly. The defense played well enough to hang around in the first quarter, but the more they were asked to play a perfect game, the more tired they got and then the dam burst.
On that second toss play, Milano identifies it, and signals that to the rest of the defense. They knew it was coming, they sent one more guy than the Titans could block, and Edmunds cleaned it up. Easy peasy.

I’m not chopping up film to run on this website because I don’t want the NFL taking me to court, but if you fire up the game film yourself on the 2nd toss, which is pictured above, you’ll notice Milano looks at the formation, and turns and tips off his teammates and then just runs straight to the backfield like a missile. They didn’t feel threatened that anything else was going to happen on this play. Hats off to Milano – that dude played his ass off on Monday night.
I would not be surprised if Mike Vrabel tries out Cody Hollister at left tackle the way they kept trying to run the ball behind him. Can’t let this keep happening or else it’s going to be a long season.
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Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.
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