NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Former Titans center Ben Jones got a viral clip Oct. 6 out of his description of offensive play calling by Terry Robiskie in the 2017 playoffs.
But a check of the details indicates he at least embellished one key ingredient that made his comments on The Buck Reising Show on 104.5 The Zone on Oct. 6 so compelling.
And Jones said he feels badly about that.
"That's the last thing I want to do is take credit away from any coach," he told me. "That was my fault because they work their ass off. They work harder than any person involved. It came off totally wrong. I've lost sleep over it and I feel terrible about it."
Jones said that in 2-minute under Robiskie, Mike Mularkey’s offensive coordinator basically turned off his microphone and left rookie quarterback Marcus Mariota on his own to call plays with Jones’ aid.
"When we had Terry Robiskie, he literally said, 'Y'all go play,'" Jones said in the clip that's been seen at least 1.8 million times on Twitter/X. "Me and Marcus would have the whole game plan."
But another person familiar with the working of things at the time who agreed with Jones that the Titans operation overstretched Mariota and that he could have used additional guidance said the scope was much smaller.
“It wasn’t 75 plays," the source said. "It wasn’t the entire play book. There was no sheet. It was bread and butter plays, answers for the majority of what a defense would do.”
In the viral clip, Jones then suggested the Titans were in that mode for the entire second half of their Wild Card playoff upset of the Chiefs on Jan, 6, 2018 leaving he and Mariota piecing things together in a dramatic second half rally for the team’s first playoff win in 14 seasons.
When I revisted the game with Jones, he said it was for three second quarter drives and a third quarter drive – they totaled 28 plays -- and then sprinkled it in for two other TD drives.
Two other accounts I got of how the Titans' no huddle and 2-minute offenses worked and how much of the playbook Mariota was asked to access as he made decisions said it was much less than Jones indicated.
The 2-minute system relied on 10 numbered plays, I was told. If Mularkey didn’t call those directly, he batched them for Robiskie to choose from.
I spent a lot of time going back and forth with people, including Jones, on this. I didn't want to make a federal issue out of a guy's loose conversation on the radio. There were plenty of issues with the offense run by Mularkey and Robiskie, who were fired after the Titans lost in the divisional round to New England following the win in Kansas City.
At the same time, Jones was critical of how it was put into use in the second half of the Titans' first playoff win in 14 seasons, when the team scored three touchdowns.
Jones blended 2-minute and no huddle -- he told me it was the same thing - while others others said they were different. The weekly no huddle package was composed of a short list of calls that used three digits to get to core plays and the 2-minute was based on 10 numbered plays that might have been called directly by Mularkey, or were at least batched by him for Robiskie to choose from.
There was no question Mariota was using the muddle huddle and making calls at the line over the course of the Chiefs game.
“Mariota back to the no huddle offense,” color analyst Jon Gruden said shortly after intermission. “It looks like he’s calling a lot of these plays with no help from the sideline.”
