Fish Out of Water?

I love analogies. I try to make analogies whenever I can, sometimes because they’re effective, sometimes to make the point I’m arguing against seem ridiculously extreme, and sometimes just because they’re fun. So bear with me here. The analogy I am about to propose is a little odd, but I think it holds water (pun intended, as you’ll see)…

The coming weeks of the Titans season is going to reveal to us whether the Tennessee coach is a Fish(er) out of water or an amphibian making the move from gills to lungs. If he is the former, the Titans are going to resemble a fish flopping on the deck. If he is the latter, the Titans could flourish. Let me explain (with help from some stats presented in a titansonline.com article).

Jeff Fisher has always preached controlling the clock. Across the first 15 seasons of Fisher’s tenure, ball control was everything; the Titans rank third in time of possession over that span. Fisher wants to run out the clock as soon as he gets the lead. It’s a reasonable philosophy. If you have the ball, the other team can’t score, your defense stays rested, and you wear down the opponent’s defense. With Eddie George, the Titans wore down opposing defenses all the way to the Super Bowl. This era corresponds to the Fish(er) living in the water, using its gills.

Fast forward to 2010. The Titans now boast an explosive running game with Chris Johnson and QB Vince Young is pretty good at slinging the ball down the field. They are not equipped to run out the clock. Chris Johnson is not the three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust running back that Eddie George was. And it shows: Titans’ time of possession has dropped each of the past three years, corresponding with the arrival of CJ and his increased prevalence in the offense. The Titans’ average time of possession is now over three minutes below the league average.

But this decline does not correspond to a lack of offensive production. Johnson ran for 2,006 yards last year, and the Titans current rank fifth in the NFL in scoring.  The metamorphosis is obvious: the Titans are no longer the pound-it-out team that Fisher has had for so long. The question is whether Fisher can adapt to the big-play offense he now has. In terms of the analogy, the Fish(er) has moved onto land. Will he develop lungs or stick with gills and just flop around?

In the Broncos game two weeks ago, Fisher tried to stick with his old Eddie George offense and it backfired. The Titans offense couldn’t stay on the field, and consequently, the defense wore down and allowed the Broncos to come back and win. The following week at Dallas, the Titans slung it around effectively, opening up room for CJ in the process. Titans win, 34-27.

It’s clear this team is built to be a much more aggressive offense than Fisher is used to, so whether or not this team is successful largely depends on whether Fisher is willing to utilize his new team’s strengths. If Fisher can make the adjustment, he will prove to be an amphibian (literally “on both sides of life”) in the football world. If not, he will prove to be just a Fish(er) out of water, the Titans will flop, and their 2010 season will die.