2023 Stats (Rank)
Points per game: 17.9 (27th)
Total yards per game: 289 (28th)
Plays per game: 58.9 (31st)
Pass Attempts + Sacks per game: 30.5 (31st)
Dropback EPA per play: 0.014 (20th)
Rush attempts per game: 26 (21st)
Rush EPA per play: -0.078 (13th)
Coaching
The Titans are finally, at long last, being dragged into the 21st century after six years of Mike Vrabel trying (and most failing) to play throwback football, with a heavy, outdated reliance on the running game and a stout defense. Vrabel’s stubbornly outmoded approach to the game was so repellent to the modern NFL that the once-ballyhooed coach didn’t get a sniff at a head coaching gig after getting the pink slip in Tennessee.
Brian Callahan, Bengals offensive coordinator over the past five seasons and the son of longtime NFL coach Bill Callahan, will be the one dragging the Titans into the game’s modern era. The Titans did what most teams do these days when they’re looking to fill a head coaching spot: They hired someone from the Sean McVay coaching tree.
The Bengals under Callahan were among the league’s pass heaviest teams and were top-seven in offensive points in 2021 and 2022, with Joe Burrow (mostly) at full health. Callahan’s offense even scraped by in 2023 with Jake Browning under center for much of the season, ranking 15th in pass yards. Browning, in Callahan’s QB-friendly offense, had a top-10 drop back EPA during his seven starts last year.
Callahan’s Cincinnati offense last season was third in three-wideout usage (70 percent) and second in shotgun usage (66 percent). That stands in stark contrast to Vrabel’s backward Titans offense, which used shotgun at the league’s fourth lowest rate and had three receivers on the field on just 36 percent of their plays. Vrabel’s heinous run-run-pass offensive formula last year led to the Titans being 3 percent below their expected pass rate on first down. Callahan’s Bengals were 7 percent over expected.
A modernized offensive look and a scheme based on quick-hitting, high-percentage passes will make the 2024 Titans unrecognizable compared to Vrabel’s retro-wannabe team.
The Rotoworld Fantasy Football Draft Guide is now available exclusively through a new partnership with Matthew Berry’s Fantasy Life. Buy a FantasyLife+ subscription and get the Rotoworld Draft Guides, along with award-winning Fantasy, Betting & DFS tools. Use ROTOWORLD10 at checkout to save 10%!
Passing Offense
QB: Will Levis, Mason Rudolph, Malik Willis
WR: DeAndre Hopkins, Treylon Burks
WR: Calvin Ridley, Nick Westbrook-Ikhine
WR: Tyler Boyd, Kyle Phillips
TE: Chig Okonkwo, Josh Whyle
Levis’ immense rookie year struggles on intermediate throws doesn’t inspire much confidence that he’s the long-term solution in Callahan’s offensive system. Levis was 24th out of 44 qualifying QBs in adjusted net yards per attempt on throws of 10-19 yards with a 43 percent completion rate on those attempts. His completion rate over expected (-11.3 percent) was 41st out of 44 QBs on these attempts.
Among the NFL’s most aggressive downfield passers in 2023, Levis is going to have to improve quite a bit on the short and medium-length throws — the kind of passes on which Burrow and Browning had great success under Callahan in Cincinnati.
The big-armed Levis has reportedly worked hard this offseason to improve on his intermediate throws, especially toward the middle of the field, where he’ll throw quite often in Callahan’s offense. If Levis can’t get (much) better with those attempts — he was also a bad intermediate thrower in college — he won’t be long for the starting job in Tennessee. Mason Rudolph did quite well with short, quick throws last year in Pittsburgh, and should make for a solid short-term fit with Callahan.
Calvin Ridley fled Jacksonville at his first opportunity after a nightmare 2023 campaign in which he and Trevor Lawrence were not only on different pages, but different books, perhaps different libraries. Ridley was misused by the Jaguars as a boundary receiver who saw much of his opportunity downfield and near the sideline. He ran just 18 percent of his routes from the slot, a criminal deployment of a shifty, smallish wideout like Ridley.
The first thing Ridley did when he arrived in Tennessee? He begged the Titans to use him across the formation, not strictly on the outside. “I want to run all the routes,” Ridley said after signing a four-year deal worth up to $92 million. “Let me run across the field. Across the field I’m a 4.1 guy.” If Callahan listens to Ridley’s request -- and I think he will -- Ridley’s fantasy profile should be very different than it was in Jacksonville. He should see far more easy targets to go along with the occasional downfield look: The platonic ideal of a high-upside fantasy wideout.
DeAndre Hopkins, entering his age-32 season, still profiles as Tennessee’s top wideout, though proper usage for Ridley could make these two 1A-1B options in Callahan’s pass-first offense. In the disastrous, dysfunctional Titans offense of a year ago, Hopkins posted a yards per route run (2.09) above his career average and somehow exceeded 1,000 receiving yards. Demonstrating a connection with the big-armed Levis, Hopkins in 2023 saw 49 percent of the Titans’ targets of over 20 yards and led the team with 430 receiving yards on those looks.
Hopkins managed solid production in an offense that was 5.3 percent below its expected pass rate, the third lowest in the league. More pass volume (and play volume) makes Hopkins a PPR league steal at his current ADP.
The deeply inefficient Tyler Boyd is and should continue to be an afterthought in the Tennessee offense. As he was in Cincinnati, Boyd will be firmly behind two high-end receivers. Perhaps Boyd’s familiarity with Callahan’s offense could lead to some unforeseen opportunities. I doubt it though.
Callahan recently poured a barrel of arctic water on any excitement fantasy managers may have had for the ultra-athletic tight end Chig Okonkwo, saying no one tight end would dominate the position in the Titans new-look offense. This could mean Okonkwo still sees most of the tight end route-running opportunities but not enough to make him a reliable starting option in 12-team formats. It doesn’t help that Okonkwo last year was targeted on just 18.6 percent of his pass routes, a big drop off from 26.7 percent rate in 2022. Even so, if Okonkwo’s early season usage includes 70-80 percent of the team’s routes, he should have enough volume to make him interesting for fantasy purposes.
Rushing Offense
RB: Tony Pollard, Tyjae Spears, Hassan Haskins
OL (L-R): JC Latham, Peter Skoronski, Lloyd Cushenberry, Saahdiq Charles, Nicholas Petit-Frere
No one knows why the Titans aggressively pursued and landed former Cowboys RB Tony Pollard this spring in free agency. The team’s front office and coaching staff has been clear that Pollard and Tyjae Spears — coming off an impressive rookie campaign — are interchangeable, that both backs bring the same strengths and weaknesses to the Tennessee backfield. Perhaps they signed Pollard because he played college ball at Memphis. This reasoning would be something short of analytics.
Us fantasy heads must stop scratching our heads and gnashing our teeth and figure out how to play this Titans backfield. There’s the incumbent, Spears, who had 52 receptions on 67 targets and notched the 14th highest yards per route run among NFL running backs as a rookie, and there’s Pollard, whose long-awaited starting role with the Cowboys went as badly as any in recent NFL memory and who received zero interest from Dallas before he hit free agency. The Cowboys (and fantasy managers) seemed to forget the horrifying leg injury Pollard suffered in January 2023 that limited his agility and speed for most of the 2023 campaign, according to Pollard himself. Injuries matter, apparently.
Training camp reports have been positive for Spears. Titans beat writers have posted online about the “oo’s and ah’s” Spears has elicited with his sudden movements and quickness and speed. That checks out after Spears — fifth best in PFF’s 2023 elusive rating — showed off his quicks and play making ability behind Derrick Henry last year.
Callahan, meanwhile, has played coy with who might emerge as the lead guy in a Spears-Pollard backfield.
“Maybe they both play at the same time, maybe one gets hot and you let him run, maybe we just rotate back and forth,” Callahan said in a quote designed in a lab to drive fantasy managers mad. “They are both going to play quite a bit of football for us, and I don’t view either one of them as a starter or a back-up.”
With similar redraft ADPs, I would lean toward Spears as the younger, more efficient back who has plenty of pass-catching chops in what should be a pass-first Titans offense. Pollard, another year removed from his leg break, strikes me as a back who would be very useful for fantasy purposes should Spears miss time in 2024.
Win Total
The Titans, according to its opponents’ projected win total (137), have the NFL’s seventh easiest schedule this season. That soft schedule plus a more aggressive, pass-first offense and the addition of Ridley should be enough to push Tennessee beyond its 6.5 win total in 2024. Unless the AFC South gets considerably better this year, I could see the Titans winning nine games and pushing for a postseason berth.