Let me start off making a quick statement. I am a sad boy (I wanted to type out a deep sigh but I didn’t think you’d get the full feel of how sad I am).
The Titans have no place in foggy London town. They barely belong in Tennessee. But they will always have a spot in my heart (so they can break it).
I am going to be a little less general in my Titans analysis and be more game focused, so if you love ball, hold onto your britches. Unless, of course, you love good football.
Haters have been great, no sickness to report.
Disclaimer : Titans game was in London, so it kicked off at 9:30 am EST, Sunday morning. I was very hungover and an extra sleepy boy so I did miss the first quarter, but nothing good happened then anyways.
PS : Bums of the Week are up, check ’em out
Biggest Takeaways
#1. Titans are dead. That’s an easy one. Another winnable game, lost.
#2. I really wish Treylon Burks would play. That’d be really cool.
#3. I am starting to think this was Ryan Tannehill’s last game starting as a Titans, and I will elaborate in a bit.
#4. The defense still looks elite. Still holding their own in the run game (minus last week, doesn’t count) and still flying around the ball, they just can’t be on the field for 3 quarters.
#5. Titans have a good kicker? Huh? Here? In Tennessee? 3/3 on field goals?
#6. Derrick Henry is still that guy. Run the damn ball, for the love of all things holy.
Talking Ball
Lemme recite a few Derrick Henry numbies for you, courtesy of my good friend Chris Johnson.
Week 1: 15 rushes, loss
Week 2 : 25 rushes, dub
Week 3 : 11 rushes, loss
Week 4 : 22 rushes, dub
Week 5 : 13 rushes, loss
Week 6 : 12 rushes, loss
You can say what you want about this, teams that are winning tend to run the ball more yes, but the Titans are never winning. So we might as well give the ball to the 2k yard rusher as many times as humanly possible. Remember in 2019-2020 when everybody made fun of the Titans and Tannehill for having one play call, give it to Derrick? What a time. He carried the team and why we’ve gone away from that and either thrown it to DHop or Chris Moore (who had the fastest recovery I’ve ever seen after going lights on nobody home on a dirty hit) I will never understand. Tyjae Spears (I also learned how to spell his name!) is getting a few touches and has shown how explosive he is, but he barely gets the ball either. Ravens ran the ball 39 times for 139 yards. Titans ran the ball 19 times for 129 yards. Now, I know that Lamar is a rushing qb and that skews the data for rushing attempts, but that would imply they’d have a lot more than 10 more rushing yards than us right? You would think! They ran it 20 more times! You may ask, “But Preston, if the Titans averaged 6.8 yards per carry, why did we not run it more?”, and to that, the only answer I can think of is because they hate me. I understand we were down the whole game and needed points, but when we were running, it became our game. Complete vibe change. But instead, we let Tannehill be a silly little guy and take a bunch of sacks and throw a bunch of ducks.
A large part of me wants to ship Derrick to a contender so we can stash picks, ride the Tyjae Spears and Julius Chestnut train, and he doesn’t have to have his career ruined anymore. Only issue, it would make me very sad.
Let’s talk Tannehill
Oh Ryan. Ask anybody and they will tell you I have been a Tannehill defender almost to a fault. Actually, definitely to a fault. He was the guy who wasn’t going to make the big mistakes. A true gamemanager that’s supposed to make smart throws and hand the ball off and let Derrick and the defense do the rest. But for some reason, this year Tannehill has just been extra silly goofy guy. He’s making decisions and throws that he simply would not have made two years ago. It also looks like he has lost a lot of his escapability. He was never the guy to get out of the pocket everytime he got pressured, taking sacks has always been a downside, but it feels like we have a shell of what used to be Tannewheels. To me, its from a mix of injuries, bad pass protection and no confidence, leading to sacks and bad balls. I miss scrambling for a touchdown with a finger roll at the end.
After the injury on Sunday, I think that may be the end of Tannehill’s career in Tennessee. He’s on the last year of his contract, so it was already a huge possibility, and one that people have been clamoring for. If Tannehill is out more than 2 weeks, count me shocked if he comes back in. Titans have been trying to find an excuse to throw in a new guy since last year when they drafted Malik Willis, but that obviously didn’t go great, so they bring in another qb in Levis, who is also booty. Another question with no answer.
The worst part about the game, I really thought Malik played well for the situation he was put in. My biggest complaint (besides him going smooth brain and taking a sack inbounds on first and goal with a minute left when he could’ve gotten out, we’re not gonna talk about that) was he held onto the ball too long, but he was really given no time. When he did have time, he actually threw some strikes. Now, you might say, “But Preston, he was only 4/5 for 74 yards with a 48 yard catch and run from Tyjae”, and to that I say, don’t care. That’s growth baby. Malik a year ago isn’t even throwing the checkdown, he’s running around in the backfield all willy-nilly, taking sacks or throwing to nobody. He proved that his passing has improved a ton since last year, and we saw that in preseason too. He has continuously improved and reports from camp in July said he was “miles ahead of where he was last year” and we got to see some of that. My biggest fear is that he is going to be just good enough to get me to buy back in, and I will be caught in the endless cycle of “well if he just had some better pieces”. I want to believe in Music City Malik, and especially if he ends up winning a game or two, I don’t see any reality in the multiverse where Tannehill starts again.
At the end of the day, the Titans qb situation in one word ; meek.
The only other big things I wanted to talk about are, Teair Tart and Denico Autry are gamechangers, Sean Murphy-Bunting and Kristian Fulton are borderline liabilities, Kyle Phillips may have a permanent spot on bums of the week, and Nicholas Petit-Frere must be really super booty if he can’t beat out the other tackles on the already mega-super booty offensive line. Also shoutout special teams this week. We already knew Stonehouse was a wagon, but him and Folk really make our wefense special.
How do the Haters feel about all this?
Hates have won another battle, but they haven’t won the war. Not yet. Titans did show some signs of life, a little beep beep on the heartbeat monitor, but i’m gonna need more. We cannot stop fighting against the haters, even in our darkest qb times.
Paraphrasing an Oklahoma player this past Saturday, “The Haters fear Pdubs, and Pdubs fears God”.
Titans are still dead, for now?
Checking on the Haters 