1 reason to keep watching Tennessee Titans games this season
By Will Lomas
It is almost remarkable how unwatchable Mike Vrabel and the Tennessee Titans have made this team.
Think about what this team is on paper. They did the impossible, they landed their quarterback of the future who is showing all of the signs of being someone that they can build around in the future. On top of that, the team has DeAndre Hopkins who is trending towards being the most prolific receiver that this franchise has seen in 20 years.
In the backfield, the Titans have a Hall of Fame running back in Derrick Henry who broke 9,000 career rushing yards and who already has another double-digit touchdown season. Behind him, they have Tyjae Spears who is the most dynamic player on the team with the ball in his hands and he is the future at the position.
Defensively, Denico Autry is outworking Father Time and he has a career-high 11 sacks on the season. Meanwhile, Harold Landry has bounced back from his ACL injury a year ago and he is on pace for the second-best season of his career with 8.5 sacks.
Even though the Tennessee Titans have moved on from Kevin Byard, Amani Hooker has stepped up and looked good and he leads the team in pass breakups. Another young standout in the secondary is Roger McCreary who has ascended to being the team's best corner in his second season.
Maybe most shocking of all, the Tennessee Titans have found a competent kicker! Nick Folk has been fantastic, hitting 27 of 28 field goals including going 4 of 5 from 50+ (and nailing everything else).
Despite all of those things that sound good on paper, watching the Tennessee Titans play football is excruciating. Sure, Will Levis puts up some fun highlights, but for Titans fans, this season has been a desert of disappointment with entire months going by without a fun game.
The games like the Cincinnati Bengals and Miami Dolphins win are oases in a vast desert of divisional losses and blowouts like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers game or the Cleveland Browns game.
Now the Tennessee Titans have been officially eliminated from the playoffs and Will Levis is hurt, so fans are rightly wondering why they should put in the effort to watch these games. If you are one of those people, then I would say that there is one big reason to keep watching the Tennessee Titans play football (even if it hurts).
Why Tennessee Titans fans should stick it out for three more games
Can the young players continue to break out? After terrible starts to the season, Chig Okonkwo and Treylon Burks have picked it up recently.
Okonkwo has nearly 200 yards over the last four games and he is starting to look like the guy that gave Tennessee Titans fans hope last season. Now Okonkwo is going to have to deal with a quarterback change, but can he gut it out and continue to string together impressive games?
Treylon Burks is fascinating because fans were ready to abandon him after this year because he has struggled with some truly unfortunate injuries. However, it turns out that some of it was just bad coaching.
On Sunday, the Tennessee Titans used Burks the way he should be used (as an intermediate target who thrives in space over the middle and who can still win deep shots if you give him a chance), and he was the team's leading receiver.
In that game, he had 62 yards on three catches, and Will Levis admitted that if he had seen him on the play where he threw an interception, it would have been an easy 60-yard touchdown.
Burks and Okonkwo need to continue to prove that they are still viable options at receiver and tight end respectively. It is going to be hard with Malik Willis and that offensive line, but if they can stay healthy and stay productive then it will go a long way towards showing Mike Vrabel (or whoever the coach is) that they can be weapons.