Checking on the Haters

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Titans lose an extremely winnable game. What’s new. Same old Titans. 

Titans lose on Sunday afternoon to the Broncos 20–12. Titans were never supposed to win this game. If I had told myself 3 days ago Titans would lose by 1 score, I’d be ecstatic. Now that future me is here and I watched the game, I’m incredibly disappointed.

 Now you might say, “12 points is weird, how’d that happen?”. Bad coaching, bad play calling, and nothing to help the rookie QB in his debut. Lucky we played in Mile High, or we may have not even gotten those field goals. We got a couple positives out of this game, but there were way more negatives. 

Cam Ward was a positive. He played about as well as he could’ve given the circumstances. Constantly under pressure, he showed a good job of escaping the pocket and putting the ball on a frozen rope when given the chance. A couple of the drops were not his fault, and the others were just barely off. He had great energy, ran when he needed to, and looks like he should continue to develop nicely. My biggest issue with his game was doing the Titans classic of taking too many sacks. He’s still gotta learn to get the ball out of his hands and not try too hard to make something out of a dead play, and he actually got better at that as the game went on (Screen pass where 0 receivers ran the screen). A couple rookie things here and there, but I believe in Cam Ward and hopefully he’ll be here for the long run.

Titans Defense might be elite. They harassed and bullied Bo Nix and the Broncos O-Line all day, forcing 4 turnovers. Now if I told you a team forced 4 turnovers, you’d probably think they won, or at the very least, scored on those right? Alas, this is Tennessee. We do things a little differently around here pal, we lose games here. 

D-Line looked great. Simmons, Sweat and SBJ looked great, even Oladejo looked strong in his debut. Linebackers and Secondary were strong, getting 2 picks and locking up a solid Broncos WR room. 

Only issue with the defense is them being on the field for 3 quarters of the game, due to the offense not moving at all, and then eventually getting exhausted and letting up a big play (RJ Harvey and JK Dobbins in the 4th). 

Special team surprised me. A huge issue last year, actually was one of the strongest parts of the team this week. Chimere Dike had everyone questioning what’s going on, but he proved me wrong. That return to end the first half sold me on him as the returner for the rest of the year.

Now the sad part. Brian Callahan. What’re we doing. One of the worst game plans and play calling I’ve seen in a long time, and Titans have had some bad play callers in the past! Just when you when you think the Titans might escape the formula of run, run, pass, punt, they come right back at you even harder. When Cam was allowed to get the ball out of his hands quickly, we actually moved the ball. Unfortunately, the game plan was run Tony Pollard on weird stretch plays to start the game, the purely inside zone for 2 yards a pop the rest of the game. I thought Callahan would get creative now that Levis isn’t starting. I thought we’d do something fun. Instead we ran the ball against a great run stuffing defense until we died. Every drop back Cam had felt like it was four verticals and he just didn’t have the time to find anybody. When Cam was able to get the ball out in clean pockets, the passes were there. Did the WR always catch them? Certainly not, but it looked good. 

This is all not to mention the penalties. 131 yards in penalties and 135 yards of offense. Not good Coach! That’s a coaching issue, and Vrabel’s team would’ve never been that bad, at least in the penalties area. 

The Jeffery Simmons penalty, to essentially kill the Titans, was horseshit. I thought football was a physical game? I know it was a little late, but come on. He finished the play, that’s what he’s supposed to do. Be mad at him if you want, but he’s trying to establish an identity to that defense and make offenses answer to him. I have 0 issue with him doing that, and it’s a soft ass league if that’s what’s deciding games (I know we got the ball back but we were never going to score). 

I won’t even talk about the non-challenge from Callahan on that Ayomanor catch down the sidelines. In short, Coach didn’t know the rules and nobody on the sidelines told him different. Bad look. What I will get mad about is one of the worst ways to end a half i’ve ever seen. Titans run the formula to end the half in the redzone. Run, Run sack. Classic. 40 seconds left after that mess. Just enough time to give the Broncos time to score late. Just horrible clock management and play calling. Again, stop me if you’ve heard this before. 

At the end of the day, we should be happy we lost a 1 score game to the Broncos, a very good team. But instead, we just get to see shades of old Titans, losing winnable games. I don’t know what to think anymore. Half of me wants to defend Callahan and give him a chance, the other half wants him gone already. 

Will he be around when the bye week comes? Will it hurt Cam Ward’s development? Who would the new coach even be? Who’s to say. Future me probably. 

Haters loved this game. Titans fall to 0-1, but we have to remember you gotta go 0-1 to go 16-1. 

Titans dead (for now).

Currently taking questions.