Titans still need to be careful to avoid a familiar 9-7 fate
By Brady Akins
How It Started vs How It’s Going
Regression was the word of the offseason for the Tennessee Titans.
Yes, Derrick Henry was coming off of one of the best running back performances in recent memory, but elite running back play is inconsistent. Yes, Ryan Tannehill had just reeled off a 10-game stretch where he was the most efficient quarterback in the league, but we have six season’s worth of tape from his Miami days that show us he was due to take a step back.
It was across the board– AJ Brown wouldn’t be as much of a home run hitter as he was the year before. The offensive line would take a step back without Jack Conklin. From position to position, the Titans offense would look worse in 2020– but oh how wrong they all looked through the first five games.
In fact, up through Week 6 of the NFL season, the Titans might have been playing even better than they had at any point in 2019. Four of their first five games saw the Titans reach over 30 points, and twice they cleared the 40 point mark. In all five of their games, the offense had reached over 330 yards– and one game over 600 yards.
Performances like those had the Titans sitting pretty. They weren’t just playing well for recent Tennessee standards– they were playing at an elite level for anyone. Through those first six weeks, the Titans found themselves ranked second in both points and yards per game– the only offense in the league to be ranked in the top five in both metrics to that point.
But if you were paying attention to the last slide– you know the numbers, while still good, aren’t quite as pristine for the Titans’ offense. The last four weeks have seen the Tennessee offense take a major step back. They’ve… regressed.
After hitting 30 points in four of their first five games, they’ve done it just once since Week 6, needing overtime for 30 points on the dot. After five straight performances of over 330 yards, they’ve only done it twice. At one point in the year arguably the strongest offense in the league, the Titans now look pretty good, and pretty good only.
And pretty good is, well, it’s pretty good. But it might not be enough to compensate for the wealth of defensive inefficiencies they’ve shown– and that once elite team with a once elite offense is now looking like they might be cursed to being “just pretty good”.