KC Chiefs Passing Attack Threat Alert: Tennessee Titans

The Kansas City Chiefs hope to extend their current home field advantage as they play host to the Tennessee Titans.  The Titans are coming off a 31-17 victory over the Houston Texans and look to spoil KC's bid to stay one game up on the San Diego Charges in the AFC West.

This week the Kansas City Chiefs Passing Attack Threat Alert has been set at:   LOW!

A lot of fans know about Chris Johnson and the Titan's running attack...but how potent is Tennessee's passing attack?

Kerry Collins has taken the helm for the Titans and last week recorded a 102.3 passer rating as he threw for 2 touchdowns and 1 interception.  Kerry's overall passer rating for 2010 however is at 81.4.

But we don't believe that the quarterback rating is the end all when evaluating a teams overall passing potency.  So we also look at 5+ targets.

The 5+ targets stat, article explaining 5+ targets here,  doesn't look very good for the Titans.  In fact, it looks pretty poor.  Tennessee frequently has games that only produce two 5+ targets.

That tells us a couple of things.

The first thing the low Tennessee 5+ targets tells us is that the Titans haven't distributed the ball around very much.  Simply watching a Titans game reveals that Tennessee likes to run the ball and then throw it deep (Tennessee is at the bottom of the league in short throw attempts).

The other thing the 5+ targets tells us is that the Titans haven't had enough top flight receivers that are getting open consistently.  Typically, the more high quality receivers a team has the more 5+ targets that show up every game.

So Kerry Collins has a passer rating of 81.4 which puts him on the 3rd level in the scaled score below.  The 5+ targets average is very low at 2.2 which puts the Titans on the 1st level in the scaled score.

3+1=4...which is Low on the Passing Attack Threat Alert.

Alert Recommendations: The Chiefs should be wary of the long ball.  It is true that the Titans rank in the bottom quarter of teams in short pass attempts.  However,  Tennessee ranks in the upper half in attempts when passing the ball long.