3 reasons why being the one seed is huge for the Tennessee Titans

The Tennessee Titans are in a great spot

After months of hoping that the Tennessee Titans would finish strong, the road to the Super Bowl will officially run through Nashville.

Running back Dontrell Hilliard made a great play and found a way to get a first down while staying in bounds to help ice a tough game against the Houston Texans. It was a huge sigh of relief to see the Titans hold onto that 28-24 win as the clock ran down, but as soon as the last second ticked off it was time to look at the big picture.

Last week the Titans clinched the AFC South and yesterday they clinched the AFC.

After officially winning the top seed and earning a bye, the next question is, “now what?”

Mike Vrabel talked after the game about how the team was going to enjoy a week of tough coaching as they learn up some mistakes, but the reality is that the Tennessee Titans are one win away from the AFC Championship Game, and two wins away from going to the Super Bowl.

With that in mind, let’s look at some of the reasons why clinching the one-seed was so important for the Titans and the advantages it brings.

The Tennessee Titans can get healthy

In Houston, the Tennessee Titans extended their record of most players to take a snap in the regular season, and they finished with 91 different players seeing the field. As crazy as that sounds, the Titans are actually healthier than they have been at any point this season.

The Titans entered the season thinking that they were going to have a three-headed monster on offense, but injuries quickly prevented that from taking shape. Yesterday, two-thirds of that monster was healthy and showed out with  A.J. Brown and Julio Jones playing 102 snaps and combining for 9 receptions, 126 yards, and 2 touchdowns.

Before you scoff about Julio Jones, people forget that we have seen him win a game for the Tennessee Titans this year.

Even more important, Derrick Henry is back and running at full speed. Look at this stat:

January 10th (today) is 10 weeks from when Derrick Henry had his surgery. If the Titans play next Sunday, it will mean that 84 days will have gone by since the last time that anyone saw Henry on the field which is well over the 10 week mark.

So not only is your entire team getting healthier because of the week off, but Derrick Henry moves into the “9% increase” in performance territory. All of that while A.J. Brown, Julio Jones, and Anthony Firkser (don’t laugh) are all getting hot as well?

History is on the Tennessee Titans side

People have talked a lot about how important the one seed is, but did you know that the one seed has won the Super Bowl 25 out of 46 times (54.4% of the time). That means that if your team has the top seed, you have a better chance of winning the Super Bowl than every other seed combined.

That is an incredible advantage and it isn’t hard to see why. You have to play one less game than everyone else to make it to the Super Bowl so you have a built-in advantage there. On top of that, you get to host each game and never have to adjust your schedule or body clock for travel.

Finally, there is a sort of secret benefit to the one seed. If you are in the top spot, the odds are that you have had a playoff spot locked up for a little while and you didn’t have to play like your football life was on the line at any point in the season.

That means that you have fewer players rushed back from injuries and there have been fewer situations where you have had to show any potential tricks you have up your sleeve.

Those slight advantages might be enough to win you a game in the playoffs and again, if you are the top seed you only have to win three games to win a ring.

Mike Vrabel’s Coach of the Year game

I have been critical of Mike Vrabel for relying too much on personal relationships to make decisions, but it is impossible to look at what he and Jon Robinson have done this year and come away anything other than impressed.

Quick math (91-53) tells us that 38 times this season the Tennessee Titans have had to find players outside of their system and get them up to speed quickly in order to play a game that week. That requires a good eye for talent to find players that fit the system you are using and a good coach that can communicate what he wants effectively in a short amount of time.

As impressive as that is, what might be even more impressive is what Mike Vrabel is able to do when he has a chance to coach the same 22 starters for more than the average workweek like Mike Herndon shows here:

Going 8-0 and winning by three scores is incredibly impressive and since they are scheduled to face the lowest seed it means that they are going to host either the Pittsburgh Steelers, New England Patriots, Las Vegas Raiders, or Cincinnati Bengals.

None of those teams are bad obviously, but they fall nicely into the tiers of some of the teams that the Titans have played during that win streak like the Dolphins two weeks ago, the 2020 Baltimore Ravens, or the 2020 Buffalo Bills.

If this team just keeps doing what they are doing, the top seed is going to help them massively throughout the playoffs. Now it is just about how this team decided they want to close out the final month of the football calendar.