The big story in the Chiefs’ Week 10 game against the Titans was supposed to be the return of Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes after the reigning NFL Most Valuable Player missed two games with a dislocated kneecap. Mahomes did his best upon his return, riddling Tennessee’s defense for 446 passing yards and three touchdown passes. But the quarterback on the winning side in this 35-32 contest was the other guy — Ryan Tannehill, starting his fourth straight game after the Titans’ coaching staff determined that Marcus Mariota wasn’t getting it done.
Tannehill didn’t blow anybody away with his statistics — he completed 13 of 19 passes for 181 yards, two touchdown passes and no interceptions, adding 37 rushing yards on three carries — but it was his 23-yard touchdown pass to receiver Adam Humphries with 29 seconds left that put the Titans ahead for good, aided as they were by a blocked Kansas City field goal attempt in the game’s final seconds.
Below, Humphries (No. 10) runs what starts out as a slot fade kind of thing, but turns back inside. Cornerback Rashad Fenton (No. 27) can’t keep up, and safety Tyrann Mathieu (No. 32) is leaning outside, so he can’t get there in time. Humphries has an easy play for the touchdown, and Tannehill does a nice job of not only hitting Humphries in stride, but using his head to drag Mathieu outside.
“They went 2-Man (coverage), and I knew if Ryan had time to throw it, I could wait on the seam, and it worked out for us,” Humphries said after the game.
“Well, I think that’s what it comes down to — the quarterback,” Tennessee head coach Mike Vrabel added of the touchdown pass, and Tannehill’s play overall — on the final drive, the Titans went 61 yards in 53 seconds, and Tannehill also scrambled for 18 yards and hit tight end Anthony Firkser for a 20-yard completion. “That’s what we see every week in this league, is those guys managing that drill, that two-minute drill, that tempo procedure. Getting guys where they want them to be. Making guys believe if they do their job, we’re going to score. If we protect, and if we run great routes, and that’s the quarterback’s job – they raise everybody’s level of performance.”
Running back Derrick Henry, who ran for 188 yards and two touchdowns on 23 carries, was all too happy to talk about how his quarterback performed in that crucial drive when Henry didn’t touch the ball.
“I think he knew that we would go down there and score. Receivers get open, he’d get it to them, and that’s what we did. I had a lot of confidence that we would, you know. And we did, so I’m happy we were able to get the win.”
“He was big time,” Humphries concluded. “He made plays with his legs, and he was just being poised. He stepped up in the pocket and made great throws, and it was great to see that.”
Traded from the Dolphins to the Titans on March 15 as part of Miami’s roster purge, Tannehill had completed 62.8% of his passes for 20,434 yards, 123 touchdowns, and 75 interceptions over six seasons for his old team. He was never grossly inefficient, but he was generally inconsistent — especially in the pocket, where he had a tendency to bail and run and leave things up to random chance. He had five different offensive coordinators in six seasons with the Dolphins, and for a guy who started only two seasons at quarterback at Texas A&M (he was a receiver in 2008 and 2009 before switching to QB for his junior and senior seasons), that’s a lot of noise to process.
Tannehill had a $17 million cap hit as part of the $77 million contract extension he signed with the Dolphins in 2015. Negotiations between Miami and Tennessee, as well as Tannehill and his team, created a one-year, $7 million deal that could perk up to $12 million with incentives. The Dolphins paid Tannehill’s $5 million signing bonus as part of the renegotiation, which left Tennessee on the hook for a 2019 cap hit of $1.875 million. The Titans also gave up a 2019 seventh-round pick and a fourth-round pick in 2020. In return, Miami sent a 2019 sixth-round pick.
The deal has turned into one of the best bargains of the season, and it’s turned the Titans’ season around. Tennessee was 2-4 when Tannehill replaced Mariota; the Titans are now 5-5. Through the first half of the season, they ranked 23rd in Football Outsiders’ opponent-adjusted metrics; they’re third behind only Baltimore and Dallas since.
And in the red zone, the Titans have become an unstoppable force with their new quarterback. They’ve scored touchdowns on all 10 of their excursions into the red zone. Vrabel has credited Tannehill’s quick release and decisiveness, two things Mariota struggled with before.
“Ryan has an undying belief that we are going to score every time we get down there, and he should,” quarterbacks coach Pat O’Hara concluded. “Every quarterback should. We started working hard on our red zone efficiency in the spring. It’s paying dividends now.”
It’s not just what he’s doing in the red zone, though. For weeks 7 through 10 (the Titans had a Week 11 bye), Tannehill ranks fourth in the NFL in yards per attempt at 8.5, he’s tied for third with eight touchdown passes and he has just three interceptions. He ranks eighth in passing yards with 1,017, and he’s fifth in passer rating at 107.5.
Moreover, Tannehill has added a much-needed deep passing element to the Titans’ offense. The following 54-yard pass to receiver Kalif Raymond against the Chiefs is a great example. Kansas City is in Cover-1; man coverage with a safety up top. Tennessee runs a “Yankee” concept, with A.J. Brown (No. 11) running the deep over route, and Raymond testing cornerback Charvarius Ward (No. 35) and safety Jordan Lucas (No. 24) on the deep post. Raymond smokes Ward on the post, Lucas is torn between the two receivers, and Tannehill nails the deep throw. This is in rhythm to Raymond, and past any Chiefs defender.
In Week 9 against the Panthers, Tannehill completed 27 of 39 passes for 331 yards, one touchdown pass and two interceptions. The first pick wasn’t Tannehill’s fault, as the ball he threw bounced off A.J. Brown’s hands into the awaiting arms of cornerback Donte Jackson. We’ll get to the second interception in a second. First, check out the perfect placement on this throw to Brown over Carolina cornerback James Bradberry (No. 24) for a 35-yard gain. It’s hard to ask a quarterback to hit his target more accurately than this.
What I liked about Tannehill’s composure was what happened on the next play; a 23-yard touchdown pass to running back Derrick Henry. Here, he’s got safety Eric Reid blowing up any ideas he may have about a deep pass with a blitz to his right side. Instead of squirming around in the pocket trying to make a ridiculous hero play that could just as easily end in disaster, Tannehill calmly pitches the ball to his running back, and lets the rest take care of itself.
Not that Tannehill has been perfect. Remember that other interceptions against the Panthers we discussed earlier? Here it is. Tannehill gets fooled by Panthers safety Tre Boston; he thinks he can fit this in to Raymond past cornerback Ross Cockrell (No. 47), and clearly he thinks Boston (No. 33) is going to stay high. But Boston does a brilliant job of timing and jumping the route. Tannehill may have thought this was a standard two-deep look because of the static safeties through his drop, but Boston played this more as a Quarters (Cover-4) responsibility by keying on the slot receiver’s release and driving down. Boston just delayed it to great effect. Tannehill may have also expected Raymond to play this more as an in-cut across Boston’s face.
By the end of Ryan Tannehill’s tenure in Miami, very few people thought of him as anything but a backup. It’s only been four weeks, but in a month as a starter, he’s done as much as he can to re-write that story and perhaps give himself another chance as a true starting quarterback. Perhaps with the Titans; perhaps somewhere else.
“I enjoy playing a lot,” Tannehill said on Wednesday, as the Titans prepared for Sunday’s game against the Jaguars. “It’s definitely a different aspect of just not taking the little things for granted, being on the field and just enjoying every second that I get in preparation and competing with the guys.
“[I’m] just trying to go out and play good football. We’ve got good players on this team and good weapons on the outside, so just trying to distribute the football and throw it to the open guy. … I think we’ve done a decent job at certain times of executing and being an efficient offense, and that’s what we’ll look to do.”
At the very least, Tannehill has cleaned up a lot of the inconsistencies that bedeviled him through his first six years in the league, without losing his big-play potential as both a passer and as a runner. It’s a fascinating second act, and it’ll be interesting to see if he can keep it up through the last six weeks of the regular season.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar has also covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”
