New England Patriots vs. Tennessee Titans Preview & Prediction | PFF

New England Patriots vs. Tennessee Titans Preview & Prediction | PFF

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They ran him out the door and the guy that they got to replace Mike Vrabel is now no longer even there to face him in this matchup. There’s a lot of things that go on to why the Titans are dysfunctional. I think that Brian Callahan was an issue, but I don’t think that he was the only issue. All of that to say, Dalton, I don’t think there is any letup at all whatsoever from the Patriots this week. I think the Titans are going to get their best. What do you want to talk about here though? You want to talk about the Patriots side of things or you want to talk about how the Titans are going to defend that onslaught? Talk about this Patriots offense because it’s a very, very hot topic and you still have a Titans team who, especially with Jeffrey Simmons on the inside, can be a threat in the pass rush. Now, we’ve talked a lot about Drake May and how great he’s playing. He’s been fantastic. Last week against the Saints, we talked about the receivers and how Stefon Diggs, Kahan Booty, Pop Douglas, Hunter Henry, all these guys are producing on the outside for him, which is great stuff. But I got to give credit to this pass protection. This was one of the worst offensive lines in the league last year. They turned it over with four new starters. And in pass protection, they look fantastic. Third best pass blocking grade in the league. Fourth in presser pressure pressure percentage, only 10th in knockdown percentage. Now, Drake May has been sacked 18 times this year, but a lot of those are on him. Actually, we’ve charged seven of those to him, and there’s some others where it’s just an unblocked player, you know, overload blitzes and things like that. So, the offensive line has actually been better than you might think with Drake May’s sack total. And one thing I do like that uh Josh McDaniels is doing is giving Drake May spots with extra protectors in there. Six and seven pass protectors to give him more time to just allow a young quarterback to feel comfortable in the pocket. The Patriots run the fourth most plays this year in the NFL with extra protection set in the back field. So, I I really think the again the combination of McDaniels and May has been fantastic. But I also want to credit Will Campbell and Garrett Bradberry, Michael Wenu, these guys on the offensive line, have been outstanding in pass protection so far this year. Generally, when Drake May is sacked, it’s because he’s holding the ball too long and he wants to break outside the pocket and make plays. And that’s fine. He’s an athlete. He should be allowed to go out there and make plays. A lot of times it’s going to work. Here and there it’s not going to, but he’s playing great football. So, I’m not going to complain about Drake May holding the ball to make a play. This offensive line really has been a huge reason and underrated reason this Patriots team is on this hot streak right now. Yeah. Yeah. And and I think that it’s a really good point by you talking about overall sack numbers versus what’s actually on the offensive line versus what’s actually on the quarterback because I don’t think that a lot of people really think about that. Like when they think about sacks, they think about, oh, okay, well, the offensive line was beat. Well, if if they were beat to the quarterback, you know, three, four, four and a half seconds into a play, that’s not really on the offensive line. It’s not really their job to block a defender for four, five, six seconds. I mean, it’s unrealistic to think that that would happen at the pro level. And so, you have to have all these things in context. And so, where there might be a good amount of sacks for the Patriots this season, you really have to watch them to understand who might actually be at fault. And for a good amount of them, it is Drake May holding on to the ball a little bit too long, trying to make a play. But, like you said, you’re okay with that. I think that people sometimes look at sacks and they just go, “Oh my gosh, like it it’s a horrendous play. You can’t have that.” Obviously, you don’t want sacks. But again, a theme of this show here today seems to be context and clearing things up. You can live with some extra sacks on Drake May knowing how good he is when he holds on to the ball a little bit longer and when he has those opportunities to pass the ball deep down the field. That goes straight into what I was going to talk about here. 97.9 passing grade from Drake May when he is throwing more than 20 yards down the field. That is second best in the NFL. He has been phenomenal at that. And in order to throw the ball deep down the field, guess what you got to do, Dalton? You got to hang on to it a little bit longer. And so, you live and die by the sword a little bit. But when you have those sacks that he takes, you live with it. Especially if the rest of everything is going well. You’re playing complimentary football. The defense is playing well enough. It can allow you to hold on to the ball and search for those bigger plays. The Titans on the other side of things, 26th in coverage grade on passive 20 or more yards. They have a 27.0 coverage grade. again that was 26th in the NFL and they’ve given up the 15th most 20 yard receptions at eight this season. So it’s just not a good script. I don’t know how else to say it. The only thing that I really have going for the Titans is Mike McCoy who’s their interim head coach. He’s been a head coach before. He’s implementing it sounds like you know some more practice structure in there. Exactly. you know, when the position coaches are meeting with the rest of the team and the offensive, defensive coordinators and the head coach and then when they’re meeting with the players and it feels like it’s just a little bit more of a structured thing uh just because of that head coaching experience. So maybe they feel a lot less flat as uh Jeffrey Simmons and Cam Ward said last week as they went into the game, they felt like they had a flat week of practice and they came out flat during the game. I think it’s going to be less of that, but ultimately I just think that the the dam is going to break and the water is going to flow and the Patriots are going to win this one big. I’ve got the Patriots 31 and the Titans a little bit more competitive. I got them scoring 17, but I I don’t know how they stop the Patriots outside of maybe Drake May having a handful of turnover worthy plays in this game. No, I I agree. And one more thing I want to throw about Drake May and the sacks and the protection. So, obviously we talk so much on this show about average time to throw, right? But we also, you know, it’s on here on uh if you have a PFF plus subscription, you can look at it in the passing reports. We have a time inpocket report. Average time to sack, right? When these quarterbacks are getting sacked, how long is that taking? Drake May, 4.44 seconds on average. Second highest of any current starter behind Jackson Dart right now. So, when he does get sacked, again, it is generally because he’s trying to create outside the pocket or step up into the pocket late in plays, which I get it. He’s a playmaker. he should be allowed to make plays and that’s going to come with more sacks. But that that just tells me even further that the offensive line has been outstanding and he has not taken a single sack this season on a play that went under two and a half seconds. So I think you look at that and you go, “Okay, you can live with that because the overall pressure rate is pretty consistently low, especially when it it comes to being charged to the offensive line.” So I I’m with you. The Patriots have a lot of advantages in this game. They’re really rolling on offense right now. I’ve got them 27 to 13. They’re just a better football team. And the Titans, you know, I I gave them 13 points in this game out of respect really, but it wouldn’t shock me if they scored less than that because we have no idea what their offense is going to look like. They are going to score a little more than 13. I do. I do. I do. I think I think they will look a little bit better this week. You get the Do you get the interim head coach bump? You got to account for that, Dalton. It’s a real thing. But it’s But it’s it’s the Mike Varel revenge game, too. Now, you know, we love a good revenge game. I didn’t say they were going to stop the Patriots. I just said that they might score a little bit more points than uh you would you would naturally expect for a team that has not been playing very well so far this

PFF’s Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema preview the matchup between The New England Patriots and The Tennessee Titans.

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