Teaching Tape: The exotic smashmouth Titans

You’ve probably heard that the NFL is a copycat league. Check that, you’ve definitely heard that because people literally won’t stop saying it every offseason. But for as much as teams want to conform to what’s trendy, originality is still ultimately rewarded around the league. Offenses everywhere are incorporating more spread concepts and yet we’ve still seen teams like the 49ers and Panthers make Super Bowl runs in recent years featuring two tight ends and a full back.

Without elite talent at quarterback or wide receiver, it’s a fool’s errand to copy what the Patriots, Packers, or Saints do. This perfectly described the Tennessee Titans‘ conundrum heading into last season. Without a dynamic set of receivers and a young Marcus Mariota still getting up to speed in the pros, Tennessee had to look elsewhere. Over the course of the offseason they traded for running back DeMarco Murray and drafted right tackle Jack Conklin and running back Derrick Henry with a their first and one of their second round picks in an effort to zig while the rest of the league zagged. New head coach Mike Mularkey was bringing the Exotic Smashmouth offense to Nashville – although no one quite knew what that meant.

Over the 17 weeks of the regular season the general public finally got to witness the new offense and the results were drastic. The Titans went from 29^th to 10^th in points per drive and 31^st to 12^th in yards per drive. Like almost every scheme in the NFL, Tennessee wasn’t inventing anything new that caught the league off guard. Rather, they were tailoring their scheme to their personnel strengths – a staple of the Teaching Tape series. They didn’t have a veteran quarterback. They didn’t have talented receivers. They did, however, have a talented group of tackles, tight ends, and running backs, so they generated an offense that featured all three.

If I had to break down the Exotic Smashmouth to its core tenets, they would be as follows:

1. Formational unpredictability
2. Run-heavy play calling
3. Simple pass attack with emphasis on avoiding pressure

The second tenet is obvious. Last season the Titans ran 438 running plays not including sneaks/trick plays/kneels/full back runs – the most in the NFL. The other two tenets are a bit more subtle. Both revolve heavily around their creative usage of tight ends.

The Titans tight ends played a total of 1,575 snaps a season ago, the fourth most in the NFL. That only tells part of the story though. Delanie Walker, Anthony Fasano, and Phillip Supernaw weren’t simply bookending the line of scrimmage. Rather, they were deployed all over the offensive formation in order to fully utilize their dual-threat (run block/pass catch) nature. Whether it be through overloading one side or via actual unbalanced formations (of which they ran the second most in the league, 58 times), teams often struggled to effectively adjust to the formations the Titans presented. Motioning tight ends across a formation or placing a bunch outside of a tackle creates massive run fit issues. That’s because it’s often defenders not used to providing run support, safeties or corners, who have to fill those gaps. It’s also attacking where the defense is most vulnerable to big plays, on the edge.

Take this 75-yard touchdown run on the very first play from scrimmage against the Packers in Week 10.

They used motion on 56.8% of snaps. 2nd most in NFL. Led to many bad run fits from opposition pic.twitter.com/Bo0mdKCACu

— Mike Renner (@PFF_Mike) July 26, 2017

It’s not poorly blocked by any means, but for an untouched run of this length, you’d expect a little more dominant blocking. What the Titans did have though was incredible window dressing. At its heart, this is a basic zone run. To the defense it looks like so much more. What the gif cuts off is the fact that the tight end off the left tackle (Anthony Fasano) moved from on the line of scrimmage to off before the full back (Jalston Fowler) went in motion. This is key because it allows him and Tajae Sharp to work to the backside of the play. That split flow was at the heart of the Titans running game and they utilized it the seventh most in the NFL (73 runs). This completely screws up the Packers run fits. Three playside defenders – outside linebacker Julius Peppers, inside linebacker Blake Martinez, and cornerback Ladarius Gunter – completely take themselves out of the play leaving far too much space for Mike Daniels to defend versus a double team. All it takes is two well-timed cuts from DeMarco Murray and it’s an explosive play.

This is where core tenet number one – formational unpredictability – is the most evident. Here’s what the Titans looked like pre-snap on their next three longest runs of the season.

67 yards

41 yards

36 yards

It should come as no surprise that all three feature pre-snap motion as well. Their use of motion was imperative to their run game because it forces defenses to make calls immediately before the snap. A miscommunication at that point turns into a blown assignment and a possible big play. In fact, the Titans used pre-snap motion on 56.8 percent of their offensive plays. That’s 16.3 percentage points above the league average and trailed only the Falcons last year.

While the run game was their calling card, the Exotic Smashmouth’s third tenet was just as important. While Marcus Mariota is a very accurate quarterback with supreme athleticism, he’s also young player hailing from a very ‘collegey’ Oregon scheme still getting up to speed in the NFL. Because of that, the structure of the Titans offense did a lot of things to force ball control upon the young signal caller. They chipped pass rushers with tight ends and backs as much as anyone in the league, leading to Mariota being pressured on only 29.6 percent of his dropbacks, the seventh lowest rate in the league. They utilized play action on 20.2 percent of their passes, the 11^th highest rate in the league. And finally they kept Mariota’s reads simple with things like half-field reads and run-pass options (they averaged three RPOs a game).

The play below optimizes those efforts. It’s a third down and seven in their own territory from their Week 8 matchup with the Jaguars.

Pass attack prioritized clean pockets over complex concepts. Chips/max protects/play action/half field reads all common pic.twitter.com/6YxU9uyol9

— Mike Renner (@PFF_Mike) July 26, 2017

The first thing you’ll notice is the max protection. Only three men go out in a route, and one of those three – Delanie Walker at right tight end – chips on his way out. Many teams in the NFL would never even think of doing this. On top of that, all three work the same side of the field. Mariota isn’t having to diagnose the coverage at the snap to figure out which side of the field to work. With only half the defense to worry about, and a squeaky-clean pocket for 3.8 seconds, Mariota can calmly work from the post to the dig to the wheel route and pick up a big gain.

As I said in the introduction, the Titans weren’t inventing a new brand of football. This wasn’t Chip Kelly taking the league by storm. This was a calculated effort to tailor scheme to personnel, just the personnel and scheme didn’t happen to match the majority of what we see around the league. With the additions of receivers Corey Davis, Taywan Taylor, and Eric Decker this offseason, it’s exciting to think what the 2017 version of the Exotic Smashmouth has in store.