Who to blame for the Tennessee Titans loss
As much as it hurts Tennessee Titans fans, everyone should have expected the team to lose on Sunday.
Sorry, but that is just what this team does in the Mike Vrabel era. More than anything else, his defining quality is that he plays up and down to the level of competition that he faces.
But, it isn’t fair for any one person to take the blame for this loss. Instead, let’s spread the blame around to several people who should be receiving some criticism today.
The first person who is going to get blamed is Ryan Tannehill. Despite a great career with the Tennessee Titans, yesterday was his worst performance by far. To put it into perspective, Sunday was only the fifth time where Tannehill has had more than one interception in a game since joining the Titans and he had never had more than two in a game.
Everyone should be disappointed in Tannehill’s game on Sunday, but it was an outlier by a quarterback who has been the driving force behind one of the best offenses in the NFL over the last two years.
Now that the low-hanging fruit is out of the way and the box score scouts are satisfied, who or what else deserves some blame for this loss?
Injuries
This is another obvious one and it is has been something that has been harped on over and over, but Tennessee Titans fans should feel cursed at this point.
Here is a list of the players that didn’t play or didn’t finish the game on Sunday:
-Derrick Henry
-A.J. Brown
-Julio Jones
-Marcus Johnson
-Nate Davis
-Geoff Swaim
-Khari Blasingame
-Bud Dupree
-David Long
-Jackrabbit Jenkins
More than half of the starters on offense are out and the defense isn’t far behind. It took a rainstorm for the defense to find their footing, but they did completely shut down the Houston Texans’ offense in the second half except for a touchdown after Chester Rogers muffed a punt inside the 10-yard line.
On offense, Ryan Tannehill is sitting behind bad pass protection and trying to complete passes to players who were are on the roster to play special teams or who have been pulled from the practice squad. I could detail all of it, but this is a great way to sum it up:
At one point in today's game Tennessee was in trips empty with the following receivers out wide:
— James Foster (@NoFlagsFilm) November 22, 2021
- Dontrell Hilliard
- Anthony Firkser
- Dez Fitzpatrick
- Chester Rogers
- Nick Westbrook
Not sure a less explosive group of receivers has taken the field together once this year
Yep…
Todd Downing
Todd Downing just doesn’t seem to understand…much.
Just for starters, Downing came into the season with promises of continuity before orchestrating a disaster against the Arizona Cardinals. In his debut as a play-caller, he turned the Tennessee Titans from the offense that called the most play-action passes and scored 30 points per game, into the offense that used the least amount of play-action passes and struggled to get a touchdown.
Tennessee Titans fans should be praying for more articles about how he should be a head coach somewhere because his style of offense doesn’t fit the way this roster is constructed at all.
One of his biggest problems is he doesn’t seem to continue to do what is working. This was a big reason why the Titans lost on Sunday.
The Houston Texans had the worst rushing defense in the NFL and the Tennessee Titans had a lot of success running the all. Adrian Peterson averaged nearly 4.5 yards per carry and Dontrell Hillard averaged 5 yards per carry.
Despite that success, the two only combined for 16 rushes.
For reference, Ryan Tannehill threw the ball 52 times.
In a storm.
Without his top-3 receivers, his top tight end, or his third-down running back.
Get this guy a plane ticket out of here as soon as possible.
Chester Rogers
With the Titans’ top receivers all dealing with injuries or out, the only receiver available who was on the opening day roster, was Chester Rogers.
Despite that, he didn’t really help his quarterback and the game ended with Dontrell Hillard, A.J. Brown, Nick Westbrook-Ikhine, Dez Fitzpatrick, and Anthony Firkser all getting as many or more targets than he did.
Where he obviously hurt the team the most was the muffed punt that gave the Texans their only points of the second half with the go-ahead touchdown.
Ryan Tannehill had four interceptions, but no turnover hurt the Titans worse than the muffed punt and it was just another missed opportunity for Tennessee to get back into this game.
The Tennessee Titans’ three best receivers are A.J. Brown, Julio Jones, and Marcus Johnson. While Nick Westbrook-Ikhine gets more time because he can play inside and outside, there was a time early in the season when it looked like Rogers had a shot at being the “other” weapon in this offense.
Unfortunately, it looks like he is going to go into the “what could have been” category where Adam Humphries ended up towards the end of his career with the team.