Broadway Breakdowns: Analyzing red zone touchdowns by Titans and Jaguars

An NFL football game is often decided by a few key plays that hold particular significance throughout the contest. Broadway Breakdowns is a weekly series that will analyze one or two of these key plays, isolating the concepts and impacts on the game at large.

For this week’s Broadway Breakdowns, we’ll focus on two red zone plays that were well drawn up and perfectly executed, one by each team.

“And One”

Towards the end of the third quarter, Ryan Tannehill made perhaps his best pass as a Tennessee Titan when he stood tall in the pocket with Josh Allen bearing down and lofted an arching rainbow of a pass that arrived perfectly for Adam Humphries to pluck out of the air between two defenders.

It’s not the first outstanding throw Tannehill has made for the Titans, but something about this one was special, the way he hung in the pocket and delivered a dime for his fourth touchdown of the day. Especially in a game where the defense managed to bottle up Derrick Henry, Tannehill’s performance was vital to the team’s victorious effort.

Let’s take a look at the play itself:

I broke out the (new) whiteboard to assess why this play was successful:

Great offense beats great defense

The Titans defense wasn’t necessarily great in this game, but it wasn’t as bad as the numbers may indicate, either. The Jaguars offense played extremely well, made very few mistakes, and executed at a high level.

Gardner Minshew led the Jaguars to 10 conversions on 14 third down tries, including this touchdown halfway through the 4th quarter. The Titans have man-to-man defense with a 5-man pressure called. The blitz works to free up Jadeveon Clowney on the rush, but Minshew dropped a perfect pass in the bucket for Chris Thompson, tying the game for Jacksonville.

Author: Justin GraverPerhaps best known as @titansfilmroom on Twitter, Justin Graver has been writing and creating content about the NFL and the Tennessee Titans for nearly a decade as a longtime staff writer (and social media manager) for the SB Nation site Music City Miracles. Although JG no longer writes for Broadway Sports, his Music City Audible podcast with co-host Justin Melo continues.