The Tennessee Titans aren’t the only team suffering from injuries because, in the NFL, injuries aren’t a matter of if they are a matter of when.
They can happen at any moment, at any time, and to anyone. No player is immune or exempt from them. That inevitability is what has led to teams investing in staff devoted to creating the best strength and conditioning programs.
While many people think that their job is to make guys bigger, faster, and stronger, the reality is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Meaning that the bulk of their time is best spent making sure that players are on the field and healthy.
Unfortunately for the Tennessee Titans, injuries are making an unwanted comeback in 2022 after being a nonstop issue in 2021.
The Titans have been frequent visitors to the weekly injury report along with a revolving door to the Injured Reserve list the last few years. The season didn’t even begin & the first blow was struck by losing their newly extended edge rusher Harold Landry to an ACL tear.
The dread and disappointment spread through every corner of Tennessee.
Jump ahead a few weeks to Buffalo on Monday Night Football, the Titans entered the game without their shutdown corner Kristan Fulton & running back Dontrell Hilliard.
As if losing in humiliating fashion wasn’t enough, they also lost ST Trenton Cannon, LT Taylor Lewan, and EDGE Bud Dupree in the process.
Even now as we speak the IR continues to grow daily at a rampant pace.
Why do the Tennessee Titans seem to have more injuries than everyone else?
You can’t put all injuries on to one person, but the fact that the Titans have been near the top of the league in the number of players lost and the severity of the injuries means that something isn’t working.
Frank Piraino has been in charge of the Titans S&C program for 4 years now and in that time injuries have skyrocketed.
While some staff members were replaced last year, Piraino was retained to the surprise of many Titans fans.
While he has been praised by many players current & former, the results of his program have been underwhelming While I’ll never push or advocate for a coach or individual to be fired, the evidence is mounting that change is needed sooner than later. Mike Vrabel can’t put a roster together if close to 20% of his players are on the IR.
The fact is, regardless of the Titans’ on-field success, they were in the bottom 5 of teams with the most injuries in 2021. 4 of those teams were already well out of the playoffs, and the Titans were the outlier.
Another way to look at injuries is that the 5 teams with the least injuries all made the playoffs.
Three of them when to the AFC & NFC Championship games, and one of those teams was the eventual Super Bowl winners, the Los Angeles Rams.
Instead of calling injuries unpredictable after the season, the Tennessee Titans need to take a long hard look in the mirror and figure out what they want from their S&C program and whether the current staff is getting that done.