 Welcome to Egan, Minnesota and the Twin Cities Orthopedics Performance Center home of the Minnesota Vikings. This is Titans Camp Rewind. I'm Mike Keith. This is Coach Dave McGinnis and this incredible massive complex, just a little history lesson, used to be the world headquarters of Northwest Airlines. Now it's where the Vikings train and it's easy for them to host another team like the Titans. This facility is unreal. It's so well thought out and everything that you would want as a head football coach or as an organization is right here. Massive footprint and it's very, very impressive. Ideal setup because of the hotel that, you know, the team also owns that's right here for joint practices. Ideal setup, Mike. Titans and the Vikings with a couple of joint practices before the Saturday night preseason game. Coach Mack, just overall, what are the benefits of joint practices for NFL teams? You get, first of all, when you're evaluating players, you want to put them under pressure situations. You've got to find out how they're going to respond to pressure. Sooner or later, you get very, very familiar with working against your own team. This is invaluable, especially now with only three preseason games for your team, the young and your veteran players to work against somebody else in a competitive type situation. It'll be controlled, but the one-on-ones and the team stuff will be very, very competitive. It's invaluable. There will be a lot of tape grinded on this because it's important. These guys are under pressure. They feel it when they come out here. This is why these are so, so beneficial, especially if both teams and both coaching staffs work well together and you get work. You get work rather than just, you know, turning it into, I've been to some of these Mike where it's turned into Braveheart. You don't want that to happen. Coach Dave McGinnis has that to say from Egan, Minnesota. Let's see what the Titans are saying. Bying into what Mike Rable wants us to be in the style of football he wants to have on the team. Seeing how we block different players and seeing how we cover different players and making sure that we're practicing to our standards and our tempo. I thought it was a great day overall for the defense, but you know, we're going to watch the film and find some things to correct. It's great work because we're seeing different looks that we see against our own team on a daily basis and we're going to play teams that they do this type of stuff. So it's good work for us and we'll learn from it. Anytime you get to go against somebody fresh for camp, it's always fun and gives you another boost of energy and it's it allows you to really see where you're at halfway through camp. So you can know what your weaknesses are and what your strengths are heading into the last two weeks of camp to clean them up before we get into the real thing. I think it's definitely big to come out here and start fast, bring our own energy. And I felt like we was able to do that today. It's time to talk about what they're doing at a couple of position groups. Let's talk about the quarterbacks right now as one of our positions of focus today. Ryan Tannehill is off to a great start in this new offense. Coordinator Tim Kelly says it's almost as if Ryan Tannehill created the offense himself. Coach Mack, how can that be? Got a veteran quarterback and and and as we've seen throughout the spring and going into training camp now, there's a there's a lot of motion, a lot of personnel groups with this, a lot of change, a lot of Mike points. There's a lot of things that go on for a veteran quarterback that has experienced a lot throughout his time. This is perfect. It's not overwhelming to him. It's welcoming to him because now he can control the offense and also let's just let me just say this for the first ball game out of the jump, you and I get to see practice every day. Tim Kelly's did a great job of layering the calls on this offense and when I say layer the calls, I'm talking about personnel groups, different looks, setting calls up. I can understand exactly why he would say that but only that can happen with a veteran quarterback. Ryan Tannehill did not play in Chicago. We don't know if he's going to play much in the pre-season game against the Vikings. We certainly will see Malik Willis and Will Levis who did some good things in Chicago and did some bad things in Chicago. A chance now to visit with quarterback coach Charles London to discuss what he's looking for from Willis and Levis. A week of work since you had a chance to see your two quarterbacks play against Chicago. Let's start with Malik Willis. What do you want to see from him against Minnesota? Yeah, I just want to see him to continue to grow from what he did for the first week against Chicago. Continue to command the huddle, speed up our operation a little bit, understand when it's time to go, when it's time to stay in the pocket. I think he did a good job of that in Chicago. Just wanting to continue to grow in those areas. It's interesting with him because a lot of talk from Grant Carthon, from Mike Vrable about hey, we want to see him play quarterback. We want to see him run the show clearly improved in that area, right? Yeah, no doubt. He's got a pretty good grasp of what we're trying to do here. I know he puts in the work, he studies and I just think he's a lot more confident and has a better feel for what we're asking to do and he goes out there and he tries to execute it. Flip to Will Levis. What do you want to see from him against the Vikings? Kind of the same thing from Will. Now he's got his feet wet. He's got his first NFL game experience. Now I expect him to be able to pick up the operation, getting it out of the huddle. Now he understands a little bit more of like what the rush is like in the NFL. So he's not going to have as much time as sometimes he thinks, but I want him to continue to grow. I thought he was decisive in what he was trying to do with his reads, but now with the game under his belt and understanding the speed of the game and what it takes to play quarterback in this level. For both of the quarterbacks, the internal clock and getting that ball out on time, how big is that in pre-season game number two? You know, I think it's huge for both though. That's an area that we've asked him to approve on this week and I expect both of them to take a huge step. You know, there's one time, there's one thing to be able to do it out here in practice when you can't get hit, but then when you got to go out there in the live bullets, everything is going to pick up the pace they've got to pick up and they've got to be able to adjust. The tight end position is also a big area of focus for the Tennessee Titans. Working in the new guys and some veterans who are also new to the system, that's the task for tight end coach Tony Dues. We had the veteran coach wired for sound as we take a look. They're on a line. Here we go. Footwork. Yeah. Breaking them hands with you. Hit. Attack his leverage without losing leverage. This Jeff Simmons out here. Boom. Rock and roll. What up, hey son? Rest the ball. Get it up. Get it up. Yep. Make it a habit. Boy, look at here. Stretch them out. All day long. All day long. Why are you sweating like that already? Huh? Let's go. Little ball security. Eyes up. To hit. Don't let it out. Don't let it move. To hit. Eyes up. Eyes up. Eyes up. Oh, that thing loose. Fall back. Fall back. Fall back. Fall back. Let's go. There. That's it. You got to hold the ball tight. You get into it here. Bang it so that when he comes I can get vertical. Be violent with your snaps. Don't be in a hurry to come off on the second level. Be violent in the jig. Work the outside hand. There you go. Come on. Get there. Get the outside hat. Take a level man reach. One of the tight ends that we're watching closely here in Minnesota is rookie Josh Wiley. Fifth round pick out of Cincinnati. Coach Dave McGinnis, your thumbnail on Josh Wiley. Big target. Big tall athlete. Is a smooth runner. Covers a lot of ground. Can eat up stripes. And it's going to be asked to block quite a bit. This is going to be a multiple tight end offense. We've already saw that in the first ball game. Tight ends moving to different spots. Being full backs. Offset strong. Offset weak. Spread out. Split out. This guy is tailor made for this. The blocking aspect of it is something that he will need to improve on. But just a base to work with. Big tall smooth athlete. Very excited to watch him develop. Six seven two hundred forty eight pounder Josh Wiley. Missed some practice time early in camp. Got back to work last week. The preseason game at Chicago didn't go exactly how he wanted. And so he's looking for more Saturday against the Vikings. Josh what are the things that you've been working on during the course of this week? Really it's just like coming together as an offense. Making sure we're all on the same page and doing our assignments. I think that I still have a lot to improve on so just looking to do that a little bit better. How glad are you that the first preseason game is out of the way and now you've done it? Yeah the first preseason game didn't go as well as I planned. Like I said after the game a lot of lessons to be learned. You know it's a whole different ball game and you got to play it to a different standard. The thing is just for having that experience over with. Like kind of like having that hurdle cleared. No matter how it went it's got to feel good. Yeah I mean it feels good but it was also like you know I mean it was exciting for that first game. You know I wasn't looking for it to be over by any means. It was definitely fun. It was really cool. Go play in other color jersey and just looking forward to the next one. How much do you think the work against the Vikings is helping you? I think it's good. You know I think it's always good to see different looks, different people, different bodies. You know they all everybody uses different techniques so it's just good work all around. It's time now to see what we're posting from training camp. On Tuesday before the team left for Minnesota the entire football team and staff took part in the Titans Foundation luncheon at the Grand High. Veteran players sat with guests at each table and enjoyed lunch while the rookies were on stage with Coach Mike Grable being asked to perform a variety of tasks. It was fun for all except maybe for the rookies. The best news nearly four hundred thousand dollars was raised for the Titans Foundation which donates money to worthwhile charities and causes throughout the state of Tennessee. Coach Mac why does Mike Grable think it's important to get the rookies involved in this way? It's essential to assimilate your rookies as quickly as possible into everything and part of being a rookie is not only assimilating into the football part of it but becoming part of the locker room and very very comfortable. And so he is doing this in a way that they feel like they're part of it. They're still rookies but you've got to bring these guys in quickly because you're going to count on quite a few of these guys to be able to help your football team. It's creating that atmosphere where everybody's got a brotherhood in the locker room and when you get them out in public and they do something like this that earns them points with all the vets. Also a chance for you to follow the Titans all of this preseason on all of our socials. We invite you to do that. We have updated coverage and different packages. Interesting interviews every single day. Also invite you to join the latest edition of the OTP. That's the official Titans podcast. You can download it wherever you get your podcast. We'd love for you to rate and review it. Our guest, the voice of the Minnesota Vikings, Paul Allen. I promise it is entertaining. Get you ready for Saturday night. Titans up against the Vikings. Coach Mac and I will be on Titans Radio starting at 6th Central on all of our great Titans radio stations throughout the Mid-South. For Coach Dave McGinnis, I'm Mike Keith. Thank you for joining us from Minnesota for Titans Camp Review.