Shocking metric shows Titans were let down in Week 1 by even their most trustworthy phase of the game: Special Teams
How do you know that the Titans’ Week 1 performance was a full-blown disaster? By the fact that Bones Fassel’s special teams unit was the worst in the entire NFL by advanced metrics.
In the Tennessee Titans’ wildly embarrassing loss to the New York Jets in Week 1, the fact that the offense was clunky is probably the least surprising takeaway. The fact that the defense was as lifeless as it was came as more of a shock given Robert Saleh’s track record and the number of proven players on the defensive front.
But perhaps the biggest indicator that the Jets game was a five-alarm fire for the Titans is the fact that their special teams unit was a massive problem alongside the other two phases of the game.
Tennessee’s special teams EPA for Week 1 came in at -8.6, dead last in the NFL at 32 out of 32. The Titans weren’t just bad. They were in a category of their own. The next closest were the Panthers at -6.9 and the Dolphins at -6.2. No other team besides those three had worse than -3.0 special teams EPA in Week 1.
How did the Titans get here?
Well-known and respected special teams coordinator John “Bones” Fassel came to Nashville in Brian Callahan’s second and final year, and he turned the Titans’ special teams from a liability into an active strength. He took rookie return man Chimere Dike and helped him become an All-Pro. I’m a players-over-coaches guy, so I’m giving Dike the majority of that credit. But where Fassel really deserves praise for the turnaround last year is the way he took largely the same foot soldiers on special teams and coached them into a unit that was strong in almost all phases of the game.
This past Sunday, none of that carried over. The opening kickoff from kicker Joey Slye took a bad bounce and went out of bounds, putting the Jets on the 40-yard line to start. New York scored a touchdown on that drive. My colleague JT Ruhnke on the A to Z Sports Morning Show this week compared it to the classic Family Guy clip about his beloved New York Mets, where the announcer says, “Welcome to opening day. Here’s the first pitch, aaand the season’s over.”
That was the canary in the coal mine for the Titans at the very top of the game, because it only got worse from there.
New punter Tommy Townsend had three pretty-looking punts take giant bounds forward once they landed inside the 10 for touchbacks. The field was never flipped in an effective way, which made the (in my opinion) too-conservative decision to punt in those situations look even worse because Tennessee didn’t win the field position battle. Townsend also shanked one of his punts. A dreadful start to his Titans career.
Chimere Dike’s rough outing
Dike, the All-Pro rookie from last year, fielded a kickoff after the Jets led a full 15-minute drive that stole an entire quarter’s worth of game clock in the first half. The Titans’ defense bowed up in the end and forced a field goal. But on the ensuing kickoff return, Dike fumbled it and gave the Jets the ball right back in Tennessee territory. That was a big step back for the promising second-year player.
Later, while Dike tried to field a punt, a Jets player successfully shoved cornerback Micah Robinson back into Dike, blowing him up as a defenseless player. Dike was shaken up on the play and went into the blue medical tent.
That’s a cavalcade of issues for a unit that, under Fassel’s direction and with a player like Dike in the fold, is supposed to be something you can count on each week! I trust Bones to get things turned around, and I trust Dike to not look as bad as he did in what was easily his worst outing as a special teamer. But it is worth noting that in conversations with both of them the week before the game, I essentially asked: when you have such an awesome debut season in the NFL, what are the coaching points? How do you go into Year 2 from a mindset standpoint? Fassel said his primary coaching point to Dike was simple: don’t try to force it. Don’t hold yourself to that standard. Just do you and take it one play at a time.
You couldn’t help but watch that game on Sunday and feel like Dike was trying to force some things. He acknowledged as much in the locker room afterwards.
The roster construction question
This also raises questions about personnel decision-making. While Fossil is the special teams coordinator and gets a lot of say in the back end of the roster on cutdown day, it is still a new coaching regime around him. He doesn’t have as much say in final roster decisions as Saleh or GM Mike Borgonzi. When guys like wide receiver Bryce Oliver, at one point considered a core special teamer for this team, get cut… it makes you wonder if the roster decision-making from a special teams standpoint was too offense-and-defense focused.
I’m not ready to make that claim yet. But if the special teams starts to put together a trend of being a liability, it’s going to force some serious questions. Fassel has enough rapport as a coach that I don’t think anybody is going to point fingers at him anytime soon. So there’s going to be a different thing that fingers are pointed at, and I’m not quite sure what that would be.
The bottom line is the Titans have enough issues as a team on offense and defense. They cannot afford to have special teams be something they have to worry about on Sundays. That needs to be turned around in a hurry, because it’s the one thing they’re supposed to be able to rely on, and it let them down in a massive way.
