"“Nice recovery from a weird Week 1 full of weather delays and injuries. The Titans engineered the smoothest fake punt you’ll ever see, and they got timely play from fill-in QB Blaine Gabbert. While the performance was far from dominant, Tennessee beat a division opponent when most experts thought they’d lose. Oh, and more rain, too. The Titans‘ defense bent plenty, but it held the fort when it absolutely had to. Four sacks and an interception were helpful. Back to the punt play: Who thought Kevin Byard would make like Steve Young with that beautiful lefty heave?"
This is a great time to bring this up, read this carefully:
Yards allowed are a meaningless stat propped up by bad teams to show why their defense isn’t as bad as it really is.
There are three real stats defensively in the NFL: Sacks, turnovers, and points allowed.
That is it, those are the stats that actually matter. Everything else is window dressing. So by all means, bend as much as you want as long as you don’t break.
Now, that doesn’t mean sit back and let teams drive down the field without any resistance. I mean that once the other team is outside of their own 30/40 yard-line, start attacking.
Sure, play smart on the back end but don’t be afraid to get burnt with a 12 yard pass if you have a blitz called with a good potential for a TFL or sack. Try to create explosive plays and then you can play defense on your terms.
So if you say the Titans defense bent, but they got 4 sacks and an interception while holding the Texans to 17 points then I am completely fine with that.