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I rarely re-watch games, but it happened to be on I think 8 - 9 pm EST and piqued my interest since the Bills play them next Monday. Caught my wife (not much a football fan) by surprise as she wondered "is there a game on Wednesday now?"
Overall, my impression is that maybe those beat writers in the know are right: Monday will be a tighter game than the spread indicates. The Titans played a very sloppy game. Numerous drops especially on 3rd down. Henry looked rusty every bit of someone who hasn't played for a long while. Blown coverage we normally don't see from a Vrabel defense. But Tennerhill and Simmons were in mid-season forms. Simmons, in particular, might be playing at Aaron Donald's level (he hasn't got paid yet so I suspect he has strong motivation). If they are able to correct those sloppy ends which I expect a coach like Vrabel is able to do, they can put up a serious fight against the Bills.
Defensively, they are very similar to the Bills. Strong D line, great safeties. Right now their DBs probably rank above the Bills. The main thing is they have size - part of Vrabel's philosophy. They use the safeties as we do - don't give up big plays, making you drive down the field play after play and punish you along way with their size, hoping you make a mistake. We played them under McDermott last 4 years, other than last year which we lost but scored 31 points, we have scored 12, 14, 16 points in the past. The Giants benefitted from a big blown coverage by Fullerton and Barkley's huge day on the ground. Well you can't rely on opponent blowing coverage in game planning, and we don't have anyone with Barkley's explosiveness and speed to run away from their LBs. So expect it to be grind on offense. I think Allen's off-season goal of putting his eyes in the right place comes just the right time for the Titans game.
Offensively I do see the Titans suffer from AJ Brown not being there. Tennerhill played well but his receivers failed him. Looks to me that Henry was still in pre-season mode at the beginning of the game, not seeing the right holes, easy to be brought down etc., but as the game progressed, he got stronger, par for the course for him. The Giants were really physical with him, something the smallish Bills back 7 were never able to do in the past. The only guy we have size there is Edmunds, but we all know he's never played up to his size in run defense. I tend to think we should be able to play better against Tennerhill's play action game than the Giants did, but on the flip side of the coin, now the tape of our rookie CB is out, I feel teams like the Titans will try to scheme to exploit the weakness of the rookies. The one thing I want to say is in obvious passing downs, we have to and should be able to pressure Tennerhill, which is a sore point in the past where tennerhill - AJ Brown killed us.
Overall, my impression is that maybe those beat writers in the know are right: Monday will be a tighter game than the spread indicates. The Titans played a very sloppy game. Numerous drops especially on 3rd down. Henry looked rusty every bit of someone who hasn't played for a long while. Blown coverage we normally don't see from a Vrabel defense. But Tennerhill and Simmons were in mid-season forms. Simmons, in particular, might be playing at Aaron Donald's level (he hasn't got paid yet so I suspect he has strong motivation). If they are able to correct those sloppy ends which I expect a coach like Vrabel is able to do, they can put up a serious fight against the Bills.
Defensively, they are very similar to the Bills. Strong D line, great safeties. Right now their DBs probably rank above the Bills. The main thing is they have size - part of Vrabel's philosophy. They use the safeties as we do - don't give up big plays, making you drive down the field play after play and punish you along way with their size, hoping you make a mistake. We played them under McDermott last 4 years, other than last year which we lost but scored 31 points, we have scored 12, 14, 16 points in the past. The Giants benefitted from a big blown coverage by Fullerton and Barkley's huge day on the ground. Well you can't rely on opponent blowing coverage in game planning, and we don't have anyone with Barkley's explosiveness and speed to run away from their LBs. So expect it to be grind on offense. I think Allen's off-season goal of putting his eyes in the right place comes just the right time for the Titans game.
Offensively I do see the Titans suffer from AJ Brown not being there. Tennerhill played well but his receivers failed him. Looks to me that Henry was still in pre-season mode at the beginning of the game, not seeing the right holes, easy to be brought down etc., but as the game progressed, he got stronger, par for the course for him. The Giants were really physical with him, something the smallish Bills back 7 were never able to do in the past. The only guy we have size there is Edmunds, but we all know he's never played up to his size in run defense. I tend to think we should be able to play better against Tennerhill's play action game than the Giants did, but on the flip side of the coin, now the tape of our rookie CB is out, I feel teams like the Titans will try to scheme to exploit the weakness of the rookies. The one thing I want to say is in obvious passing downs, we have to and should be able to pressure Tennerhill, which is a sore point in the past where tennerhill - AJ Brown killed us.
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