Titans coach Mike McCoy is not a man given to great detail when it comes to explaining the performances of his team or its individual players.<\/p>\n
But McCoy had no hesitation in naming one of the areas his staff spent considerable amounts of time self-scouting during the Titans\u2019 open week.<\/p>\n
He said he needs to see marked improvement in the Titans\u2019 ability to convert third-down opportunities on offense.<\/p>\n
The Titans\u2019 shortcomings in that department were apparent in Tennessee\u2019s 27-20 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers on Nov. 2, as the offense converted just 1-of-9 of their third-down chances for a season-worst 11.1 percent.<\/p>\n
That performance was hardly an outlier, however, as the Titans sit dead last in the league at third-down conversions (28.5 percent) this year, the only team in the NFL with a success rate of less than 30 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to be better on third down offensively,\u201d McCoy said Monday, as the 1-8 Titans began preparing for the Houston Texans on Sunday at Nissan Stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou talk about scoring more points \u2026 but when you\u2019re in the high 20\u2019s on third-down conversion rates, it\u2019s tough to score a lot of points. You\u2019ve got to sustain drives, whether it\u2019s in the red [zone], where you talk about those four-point plays \u2014 you\u2019re kicking field goals or you\u2019re extending the drive \u2014 or is it somewhere else on the field where you want to get another opportunity? That\u2019s a huge focus for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Struggling on third downs has plagued the Titans for years under different coaching staffs, as Tennessee has ranked 20th or below at the end of the previous three seasons \u2014 36.5 percent in 2022 (23rd), 33.5 percent in 2023 (28th) and 37.7 percent in 2024 (20th) \u2014 in that department.<\/p>\n
Short-yardage rushing has been a small part of the problem this season.<\/p>\n
The Titans have run a combined nine times on either third-and-2 or third-and-3, and have picked up only four first downs on those attempts.<\/p>\n
But more often than not, the Titans have needed to pick up longer distances on third downs, forcing the team to pass. That was the case against the Chargers, when Tennessee needed to gain an average of 8.2 yards on third down, and failed in the face of long-distance situations such as third-and-12, third-and-16, and third-and-17.<\/p>\n
Trying to convert third downs of more than four yards via the passing game has posed a significant challenge for rookie quarterback Cam Ward and the Tennessee offense.<\/p>\n
A couple of eye-opening examples: The Titans have gone 0-for-6 when trying to convert third-and-5 situations through the passing game, and Tennessee has gone 0-for-8 on third-and-8 situations when passing.<\/p>\n
The consistent inability to move the chains on third down is why the Titans not only rank last in the NFL in points per game (14.4), but also last in the league in percentage of gaining at least a single first down on each series (57 percent).<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a big part of [failing to turn drives into points], when you don\u2019t capitalize on opportunities,\u201d McCoy said. \u201cNot just on third down, but there\u2019s other plays you look at in the game, too, where maybe there\u2019s an opportunity for an explosive play or a big run. There\u2019s a number of opportunities that get you to cross [midfield], but we haven\u2019t done that consistently enough this year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Titans coach Mike McCoy is not a man given to great detail when it comes to explaining the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2061],"tags":[127,7,15397,122,6,8875,5592,526,394,2411,527,82111],"class_list":{"0":"post-515513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennessee-titans","8":"tag-cam-ward","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-mike-mccoy","11":"tag-national-football-league","12":"tag-nfl","13":"tag-nissan-stadium","14":"tag-rookie-quarterback","15":"tag-tennessee","16":"tag-tennessee-titans","17":"tag-tennesseetitans","18":"tag-titans","19":"tag-titans-coach"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115527517793611577","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}