Malik Willis got a heaping serving of revenge against his old team the Tennessee Titans on Sunday, that much cannot be denied.

It's a feel-good story for a really good guy. As somebody who has watched Malik get battered in the narrative department for 2+ years, it's impossible not to smile watching him finally having his moment.

But there's a lot of talk today about how Malik Willis "diced the Titans up" in Week 3, and I'm here to push back on that.

Malik Willis didn't beat the Titans. The Green Bay Packers beat the Titans.

Now before you click away in a fit a rage, allow me to explain what I mean. I'm not trying to take anything away from Willis here; I'm trying to take away from the Titans defense as a whole.

The ultimate point I'm trying to drive home here is that this wasn't a QB simply slicing and dicing their way to a victory, it was actually worse than that for Tennessee.

A Total-Team Loss

Sometimes you face an unsuspecting passer who just has themselves a day. They pass the ball 35 times all over the yard and there's nothing you can do to stop them. And on days like that, in a way, you kind of have to just tip your cap to the guy. A world-beater QB is very difficult to stop.

But in Week 3, Malik Willis only completed 13 passes. He barely eclipsed 200 yards. Now, a couple of those passes were incredible balls! Again, all credit to him for those plays, which the Titans never got out of him during his time in Nashville. And I'm also not saying he couldn't have found more success passing in this game. My point is that he didn't need to.

This is what I find so concerning about this performance by the Titans defense. They weren't beat by a quarterback who caught fire, they were beat by all 11 players on the field and their head coach calling plays. This was an all-systems-failure performance.

Take a look at Willis' passing chart courtesy of Next Gen Stats. The three completions beyond 10 yards are the plays I want to emphasize my praise for. Those were all big time passes, mostly on pivotal downs, where he trusted his receiver to make a play and put the ball in the right place to enable them to make it. 10 out of 10, no notes. 

And many Titans fans are rightfully wondering where this version of Malik was the past two years. It's a testament to his development, and perhaps an indictment on his former coaching staffs.

Now take a look at the rest of the chart. Willis' CPOE (completion percentage over expectation) of -2.2% brings his performance down to earth a little bit. CPOE measures how much higher or lower a quarterback's completion percentage was relative to what we'd expect it to be based on the types of passes they attempted.

Most notably on this chart, Willis completed more passes at or behind the line of scrimmage than he did beyond it. Why? Because it kept working.

The Packers average over 5 yards per play on these completions. Willis got the ball into the hands of Jayden Reed, Luke Musgrave, Tucker Kraft, Josh Jacobs, and Emanuel Wilson in space and let them go to work.

All of then ate up the Titans defense. Missed tackles and first downs galore.

You can't point to any one phase of the defense as the main culprit. The front didn't do a great job setting the edge. Linebackers and took bad angles and got blocked out of the play. Defensive backs missed tackles they have to make. All 11 players in green out-played all 11 players in blue. This was a unit that came into Week 3 lauded as one of the top defenses in the entire league. And against a Packers team with a backup QB they know intimately, they turned into one of the most porous, worst tackling teams we've seen all year. That's very concerning for the Titans!

Willis Did What He's Good At

Another part of the reason he didn't need to pass any more than he did was how effective he was as a runner. The Titans defense was arguably embarrassed more by 
Willis' 6 carries than by his 13 completions. He led the Packers in rushing yards with 73, averaging 12.2 yards every time he decided to take off.

What he did with his legs wasn't surprising to Titans fans like his passing was. Everybody knows Willis is a very athletic player who is capable of winning with his legs. The most surprising part of his rushing performance was just how decisive he was when choosing to tuck and run. When he saw a lane, he took it. But the ability wasn't a shock, which is why it's particularly infuriating for Titans fans. The defense knew he could do this, and he still thrashed them. It was just another total team failure to execute by all 11 players in blue.

This is the point of this article. Not to take anything away from Malik Willis, not to cope for the Titans losing to their old backup. The point is to emphasize how complete this defensive failure was, and how repeatable this low-passing script could be for other teams they face.

Packers head coach Matt LaFleur put together a gameplan to maximize and set Malik Willis up for success, and Willis executed it beautifully. But it's a gameplan other teams can theoretically replicate: beating the Titans 11-on-11, without having to throw the ball all over the yard.