Exotic Smashmouth, is it for real?

It's preseason, but consider:

DeMarco Murray: 19 rushes, 159 yards, 2 TD. 8.37 yards per carry.
Derrick Henry: 27 rushes, 154 yards, 2 TD. 5.70 yards per carry.

Even if you took Murray's 71 yard run away, he'd still be averaging 4.89 yards per carry. Henry's longest carry has been for just 17 yards, which suggests remarkable consistency.

It's also worth noting that Tennessee has invested fairly heavily in the OL. They have three high-to-mid 1st round picks on the line, plus a free agent center that they signed for $17.5 million over four years. Their only open competition area is at LG.

Mariota's speed will help set up the read option, but they've suffered with terrible RBs the past few years.

Yeah it's preseason, but the ingredients for this run game are actually pretty good.

Possible sleeper team if those key kogs stay healthy? How's their Defense?

The world might end if a Mularkey coached team is successful.

Sports Hernia":3nv8lfi7 said:

Possible sleeper team if those key kogs stay healthy? How's their Defense?

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Don't care if it can hold up or not. It is fun to watch.

And exotic smash mouth really is pretty accurate.

They're my bonus team this year.

kearly":40tb8whd said:

It's preseason, but consider:

DeMarco Murray: 19 rushes, 159 yards, 2 TD. 8.37 yards per carry.
Derrick Henry: 27 rushes, 154 yards, 2 TD. 5.70 yards per carry.

Even if you took Murray's 71 yard run away, he'd still be averaging 4.89 yards per carry. Henry's longest carry has been for just 17 yards, which suggests remarkable consistency.

It's also worth noting that Tennessee has invested fairly heavily in the OL. They have three high-to-mid 1st round picks on the line, plus a free agent center that they signed for $17.5 million over four years. Their only open competition area is at LG.

Mariota's speed will help set up the read option, but they've suffered with terrible RBs the past few years.

Yeah it's preseason, but the ingredients for this run game are actually pretty good.

Click to expand...

I concur. Picked up Henry in R6 for the bolded reason. Just seems Tennessee has made the commitment to run, not unlike the week of the Cowboys game in 2011 for us when we just decided we were going to be a run team come hell or high water.

Titans seem well suited for committing to this style of play. Mariota isn't unlike Wilson in that he's pretty careful with the ball, with only a 2.7% INT rate as a rookie. Good QB rating in his first year. Just seems very Russell like in his approach.

If the Titans get a good D, they are going to be a damn good young team.

Attyla the Hawk":njwt5swq said:

Titans seem well suited for committing to this style of play. Mariota isn't unlike Wilson in that he's pretty careful with the ball, with only a 2.7% INT rate as a rookie. Good QB rating in his first year. Just seems very Russell like in his approach.

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Yep --

The differences are that he doesn't protect his body as well as Wilson, and last year the Titans went about "protecting" him as a young QB very differently from how the Hawks "protected" Wilson in his first few years (and still do to some extent).

Last year the Titans took an approach similar to the one that the Skins took with RGIII in his rookie year: changing the offense to be similar to what he had already done. It gave him less to process, but also exposed him to hits.

The Hawks, on the other hand, basically just took more tradiitional NFL passing concepts and stripped them down to the easy ones: a lot of one read plays and quick gadget throws to get the ball out of the box so that decision making wasn't as demanding on Wilson. More so than most teams the Hawks still have a ton of these plays in their offense. It actually works pretty well with Wilson's style (and oddly, propensity to freestyle -- those plays are so boilerplate they lull you to sleep which allows the crazy big broken plays to be even bigger), and also protected his body more (which TBF, once he passes the line of scrimmage he's as good at as anyone I can think of in the last 20 years that I've been seriously watching football).

EDIT: Also worth saying that so far "exotic smash mouth" looks to be pretty straightforward smash mouth football with a bit more misdirection and gadgetry happening behind the LOS. These crazy ****ers straight ran a FAKE statue of liberty last week (a misdirection on to of the misdirection). :lol:

It's a ton of fun to watch, but when that double misdirection doesn't work in a smash mouth style Mariota could end up getting absolutely clobbered (e.g. you're running a misdirection Status of Liberty and Marcus is trying to simulate being out of the play while a savvy DB who has slipped past the one-on-one blocking on the back side just friggin obliterates him -- hasn't happened yet, but it will).