Friday: Following the game at Green Bay on Thursday night, Mike Vrabel had a press conference to talk about his first preseason fame as a head coach. Vrabel was impressed by the play of Harold Landry including his strip sack. Cameron Batson’s aggressiveness while returning kicks also stuck out to the head coach. What Vrabel harped on mainly was the 14 penalties for 124 yards by his team. He said especially the penalties of lining up offsides are just “ridiculous.” With some more attention to detail and focusing on “the little things” Vrabel things the Titans can avoid more turnover ridden games in the future.
Saturday: Saturday was an absolute scorcher, and the heat was causing issues for just about everyone. Being that it was the first practice after the Green Bay game, much of the day was spent working on correcting the small details with a lot of walk throughs. After a solid game, Nick Williams was getting noticeably more reps. Marcus Mariota didn’t have the best of days, throwing a really poor interception to Jayon Brown. However, he was able to make a really nice connection with Darius Jennings on the sideline, one of a number of highlights for Jennings on the day. He was also able to reel in a red zone touchdown. The most electric play of the day was when Kendrick Lewis picked off Blaine Gabbert in red zone drills, and ran it all the way back 95 yards, being chased by Logan Ryan and Coach Vrabel himself.
Later, things reached a boiling point when Taylor Lewan and Derrick Morgan got into a heated scrap. Them being two of the biggest players on the team, a whole dogpile formed as everyone tried to separate them. After they finally were separated, their day was cut short and they were sent to the locker room.
The last play of note from the day was when Corey Davis, who returned to practice after a few days out, met Kevin Byard on the goal line, resulting in an intense push and pull as Davis tried to break the plane and Byard was having none of it.
Sunday: The team came out with a certain sense of excitement today as they chanted and cheered during the stretch period. All the comotion seemed to be lead by Julius Warmsley who put together another solid practice himself.
The first period of the day was a team period that did not bode well for the first team offense. Marcus Mariota missed behind Darius Jennings on a crossing route and the ball fell right into the hands of Logan Ryan for the pick. When the second teams came out, new defensive back Steven Terrell received the majority of reps at safety. Cameron Batson burnt Damon Webb on a fly route down the sideline and scored easily after receiving the pass from Blaine Gabbert. Batson continued to impress all day long.
With Michael Campanaro still out, Nick Williams took a lot of first team reps in the slot receiver position following his good showing at Green Bay. Williams has shown inconsistency catching the ball during camp, but when he catches the ball in the open field he is incredibly illusive. During most team drills when the first team offense went with three wide receivers, we saw Corey Davis and Taywan Taylor lining up outside with Williams in the slot and Delanie Walker at tight end.
Derrick Henry and Dion Lewis strung together some solid runs during team play, with Henry taking back to back zone reads to the left for first down pickups and change, and Dion taking a toss left for about a 20 yard gain.
During two minute drills, the team had to march down the field and get into field goal position, playing in a situation with no timeouts. After starting off with two incompletions, things looked bleak. However, Mariota was able to hit Corey Davis on the sideline to both move the chains and stop the clock. A few plays later and they were in the same situation… clock ticking with under 10 left, still well out of field goal range. Mariota linked up with Tajae Sharpe for a beautiful catch on the sideline with 1 second left, and Ryan Succop was able to nail the field goal on the next play. Succop had himself a day, nailing a 60 yarder to draw applause from the fans during another team period.
The Titans have practice tomorrow that will be closed to the fans, and then a day off Tuesday before they have a couple joint practices with the Buccaneers later in the week, leading up to the game on Saturday.
