NFL Playoffs: Hindsight Is 20/20 For Bad Coaching Decisions

[Maithanet]

Just now, DMC said:

Yeah I didn't think Henry until these past three weeks.  Nor Thomas until I remembered he had 149 catches, which is ridiculous.  Both those accomplishments are hard to ignore.

I think we're letting the recent sample size bias us a bit too much.  Henry is a good bruising back and Tennessee has built a strong running attack around him, but on most teams Henry would be much less of a problem.  I would never take Henry over Kittle, IMO it isn't even close. 

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I would never take Henry over Kittle, IMO it isn't even close. 

Oh yeah.  I certainly would take Kittle over Henry or Thomas.  And probably McCaffery.  I'm just saying there are valid arguments for all four.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Yeah I didn't think Henry until these past three weeks.  Nor Thomas until I remembered he had 149 catches, which is ridiculous.  Both those accomplishments are hard to ignore.

Those receptions are misleading. It’s just a bunch of short garbage. I’d still rather have Hopkins, OBJ and Jones over him.

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

I think we're letting the recent sample size bias us a bit too much.  Henry is a good bruising back and Tennessee has built a strong running attack around him, but on most teams Henry would be much less of a problem.  I would never take Henry over Kittle, IMO it isn't even close. 

Tell Henry that when he knocks KC out this weekend.

[Maithanet]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Tell Henry that when he knocks KC out this weekend. 

I'll believe it when I see it. 

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Those receptions are misleading. It’s just a bunch of short garbage. I’d still rather have Hopkins, OBJ and Jones over him.

The 11.6 average is fairly anemic, sure, but he's still 7th all time in receiving yards for a season.  I'd take Jones over him in a vacuum.  Definitely wouldn't take OBJ.  Haven't seen enough of Hopkins to have an opinion.

[Jaime L]

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

I think we're letting the recent sample size bias us a bit too much.  Henry is a good bruising back and Tennessee has built a strong running attack around him, but on most teams Henry would be much less of a problem.  I would never take Henry over Kittle, IMO it isn't even close. 

Eh I wouldn't go that far. There's two possible comparisons: 1) their overall longterm value  2) their value to the team this year. In terms of 1), Kittle blows Henry out of the water. In terms of 2) Henry blows Kittle (and virtually any non-QB) out of the water. 

There's only so much any non-QB can singlehandedly impact a game. That said, I'd argue no non-QB has done more to will his team to this point as much as Henry, both in terms of making the playoffs and then beating the two most feared teams in the playoffs while his QB throws for 80 yards a game. What he's done is basically unprecedented. Yes, Titans D has been fantastic Yes, Titans O-line has been wrecking people. They still don't remotely get to this point if they sub in Dion Lewis (or any other RB) for Henry. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I'll believe it when I see it. 

It’s the last thing I want to see, but it’s strength on weakness and Henry has a good chance of controlling the game.

Please god do not let the Titans win!

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 minutes ago, DMC said:

The 11.6 average is fairly anemic, sure, but he's still 7th all time in receiving yards for a season.  I'd take Jones over him in a vacuum.  Definitely wouldn't take OBJ.  Haven't seen enough of Hopkins to have an opinion.

He’s an elite possession receiver, but he’s not much of a deep threat. Maybe that’s a byproduct of Brees, but the other top tier receivers all offer that.

The reason I’m high on Hopkins is he had something like 116 catches last year without a single drop.

[Maithanet]

11 minutes ago, Jaime L said:

Eh I wouldn't go that far. There's two possible comparisons: 1) their overall longterm value  2) their value to the team this year. In terms of 1), Kittle blows Henry out of the water. In terms of 2) Henry blows Kittle (and virtually any non-QB) out of the water. 

There's only so much any non-QB can singlehandedly impact a game. That said, I'd argue no non-QB has done more to will his team to this point as much as Henry, both in terms of making the playoffs and then beating the two most feared teams in the playoffs while his QB throws for 80 yards a game. What he's done is basically unprecedented. Yes, Titans D has been fantastic Yes, Titans O-line has been wrecking people. They still don't remotely get to this point if they sub in Dion Lewis (or any other RB) for Henry. 

I think that Henry is more just the face of the Titans win streak, rather than the actual cause.  Henry ran all over the Patriots and they still only scored 14 points, and needed the Titans defense to pitch a second half shutout to preserve the win.  Henry ran for almost 200 yards against the Ravens, but the Titans won because the defense got 3 turnovers, 4 stops of 4th down and handed the offense a bunch of short fields.  That is both unsustainable and very much not in Henry's control.  I would even go so far as to say that in BOTH the playoff wins there was a single dropped pass (Edelman in the 4th, Mark Andrews tipped int), that if caught, the Titans probably lose the game. 

I'm not saying Henry isn't a big part of them winning, but that's because the Titans have built an offense around feeding him the ball.  I think if you substitute any other top 5 back in Henry's spot and the result is more or less the same. 

I think if the Titans played the Ravens 10 times the Titans win no more than two of them.  Possibly only one.  But they only play once, and the Titans won it. 

[Kalbear]

Henry helps in that he reduces the total number of possessions, which in general favors the luckier/worse team (as more possessions means more likely regression to the mean, which favors the better team). He's very good, mind you, and I doubt they win if they don't have that kind of performance - but that's mostly because they had to shorten the game to get a chance.

Note that this is not particularly a good sign for KC, given how fast they are. 

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

the Titans won because the defense got 3 turnovers, 4 stops of 4th down

Random thing that's always bothered me.  And I mean since I was a kid, not in some analytic way - why in the usual vernacular aren't turnovers on downs considered turnovers?  It's right there in the name!

[Maithanet]

11 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Note that this is not particularly a good sign for KC, given how fast they are. 

I mean, I am hesitant to completely count out the Titans, since I didn't think they'd beat NE or BAL.  But I stand firm that they had an unusual amount of luck in that Baltimore game, and KC is a completely different (and probably greater) challenge than Baltimore.  When the Ravens fell behind by two touchdowns, they (stupidly, IMO) abandoned a lot of the run game that had brought them so much success this year.  Jackson threw it 59 times in that game, when his previous high for the year was 43, and second highest was 37.  Basically the Titans were able to make Baltimore play offense in a totally different way than they had the entire year when they were the #1 offense in the league.

In contrast, that is exactly how KC wants to play offense.  So TEN isn't going to be able to take Mahomes out of his game.  Now, I fully expect Henry to have some success on the ground vs KC.  It's just I also expect Mahomes to carve up the Titans secondary.  If the Titans get ahead, KC will just keep attacking, like they did vs HOU.  In contrast, if the Chiefs get ahead by 14+ points, it is going to be really hard to keep feeding the ball to Henry over and over. 

[dbunting]

3 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

Ye gods, unwind your panties. It was a joke. Obviously he deserves credit for making the most of those picks. Too bad his talent evaluation skills didn't hold up in Miami, though.

If you think JJ gets short schrift, deploy the caps lock against your team's owner, who famously said anyone could have led that team to the Super Bowl.

Actually he was right and in 1995 anyone did take them to the SB~!  And I have ranted about Jones numerous times, especially back then but there were no forums to post them on!

However, you seemed to have missed the part of the post where he did get talent in Miami. In three seasons he drafted Zach Thomas 7x pro bowler, Sam Madison, 4x pro bowler, Jason Taylor HOF, and Patrick Surtain 3x pro bowler. The bad part was his 1st round drafting, they all sucked!  

And I did start the post with, this is the one thing that gets me going, so I did warn ahead of time that my panties would be in a bunch!

[dbunting]

6 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I mean, I am hesitant to completely count out the Titans, since I didn't think they'd beat NE or BAL.  But I stand firm that they had an unusual amount of luck in that Baltimore game, and KC is a completely different (and probably greater) challenge than Baltimore.  When the Ravens fell behind by two touchdowns, they (stupidly, IMO) abandoned a lot of the run game that had brought them so much success this year.  Jackson threw it 59 times in that game, when his previous high for the year was 43, and second highest was 37.  Basically the Titans were able to make Baltimore play offense in a totally different way than they had the entire year when they were the #1 offense in the league.

In contrast, that is exactly how KC wants to play offense.  So TEN isn't going to be able to take Mahomes out of his game.  Now, I fully expect Henry to have some success on the ground vs KC.  It's just I also expect Mahomes to carve up the Titans secondary.  If the Titans get ahead, KC will just keep attacking, like they did vs HOU.  In contrast, if the Chiefs get ahead by 14+ points, it is going to be really hard to keep feeding the ball to Henry over and over. 

Do you think the TItans will adjust their defense to be ready for the passing attack though, I mean they did it to the #1 rushing offense? Vrabel seems to have learned the important things from Belechik, take away their strength and see what happens.

I fully expect to see KC win but would not be surprised to see the Titans come out with a def specifically designed for this game. Something like 2 athletic rotating down lineman, 2 sure tackling LB and the rest DB's and safeties. Then make the 23rd rushing team beat them?

[Maithanet]

Just now, dbunting said:

Do you think the TItans will adjust their defense to be ready for the passing attack though, I mean they did it to the #1 rushing offense? Vrabel seems to have learned the important things from Belechik, take away their strength and see what happens.

I fully expect to see KC win but would not be surprised to see the Titans come out with a def specifically designed for this game. Something like 2 athletic rotating down lineman, 2 sure tackling LB and the rest DB's and safeties. Then make the 23rd rushing team beat them?

I'm sure they will try.  But not a lot of teams have successfully slowed the KC attack, and the Titans aren't an overwhelmingly talented defense.  I think they combined a good game plan with a lot of luck to stop Baltimore, but I'm very skeptical they'll be able to do it again. 

[dbunting]

3 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I'm sure they will try.  But not a lot of teams have successfully slowed the KC attack, and the Titans aren't an overwhelmingly talented defense.  I think they combined a good game plan with a lot of luck to stop Baltimore, but I'm very skeptical they'll be able to do it again. 

They did beat KC already once this year so they can at least go into the game with a little confidence!

Man, watching that game I thought shit it's gonna be Houston and Tennessee, then KC woke up and spanked Houston the rest of the way and seemed to be toying with them. Be interesting to see which KC team shows up Sunday.

[Kalbear]

9 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I'm sure they will try.  But not a lot of teams have successfully slowed the KC attack, and the Titans aren't an overwhelmingly talented defense.  I think they combined a good game plan with a lot of luck to stop Baltimore, but I'm very skeptical they'll be able to do it again. 

The flip side of this is that the Pats and Baltimore both had significantly better defenses than KC does, which likely means we'll see less of Henry and more Air Tannehill. 

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, dbunting said:

They did beat KC already once this year so they can at least go into the game with a little confidence!

 

There are some gotchas about that game though. It was at Tennessee, it was right after Mahomes got back from injury, and it was won on essentially two special teams miscues. That doesn't mean Tennessee can't win, mind you - it was a close game, so you don't need a lot of change to make it another close game. But it probably isn't going to go quite like it did.

[Maithanet]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

The flip side of this is that the Pats and Baltimore both had significantly better defenses than KC does, which likely means we'll see less of Henry and more Air Tannehill. 

Do you really think Tannehill is going to outduel Mahomes in KC?  That seems even less likely than Henry running them to victory. Even in the TEN win over KC this year Tannehill passed for less than 200 yards. 

 

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, Maithanet said:

Do you really think Tannehill is going to outduel Mahomes in KC?  That seems even less likely than Henry running them to victory. Even in the TEN win over KC this year Tannehill passed for less than 200 yards. 

I don't think anyone will outduel Mahomes, but I do think that he'll be a bigger factor in the win. And in that aforementioned win, while Henry ran for a ton Tannehill was basically instrumental in getting big plays, right?