Every week, fans say the Titans can’t possibly be worse. And almost every week, they defy that by springing another leak and sinking to another more embarrassing loss.
In sinking Sunday at home to the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Titans sank at least to the bottom of the AFC South, sharing a pitiful 3-10 record with the Jags.
But even more concerning were comments coming out of a losing locker room as a season that promised hope during a rebuild continues to flounder in misery.
Defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons, one of the few Titans players who has been on the team long enough to remember the good old days of division titles and playoff berths, could not hide his frustration Sunday after yet another loss and another season gone down the drain.
“It’s still frustrating. We talk about it all week that we’ve got to play complementary football. Two turnovers, and you win the turnover margin, there’s no way you shouldn’t win the game,” Simmons said. “At the end of the day – I really get tired of saying the same (expletive). This sucks. Apparently, we’re not in position and we don’t do enough to win games.
“All the way around, (expletive), I’m tired of seeing our quarterback on the ground, tired of seeing him squirreling on the damn ground, actually, getting his block knocked off by edge guys. I don’t know, man. It’s frustrating to see that, and especially right before the half, we know we’re throwing the ball, knowing they’re fixing to rush.
“It’s frustrating, but at the end of the day, I’m tired of saying we’ve got to do better, play better. I don’t know. I don’t have no answers. Complementary football wasn’t there.”
Opportunities wasted
Most of the time after losses, one side of the ball hesitates to point the finger and criticize the other side of the ball when it comes up short. After all, just the week before, the offense could have brought up the defense’s miserable run defense in a blowout loss at Washington.
But clearly, after getting two takeaways from the defense and shutting out the Jaguars through three quarters, the Titans still managed to lose to a backup quarterback in Mac Jones. And players weren’t able to hide bubbling frustrations.
“You want to dominate, no matter who it is, and I think especially going against a team that on paper had the 32nd ranked defense in pass and run, they should not hold us to (six) points,” cornerback Darrell Baker said.
Baker has a point, and what happened Sunday shows all the signs of a team that either doesn’t know to win or doesn’t expect to win. Either way, that’s a big problem.
Offensively, the Titans got a 100-yard rushing effort from Tony Pollard, went 8-of-16 on third downs, didn’t commit any turnovers, allowed just two sacks and had only four penalties.
In other words, all the things that have plagued them for most of the season, the Titans didn’t do Sunday – and they still lost to one of the worst teams in the NFL, one that was ranked dead last in defense coming into the game. The Titans could not even score one touchdown, twice turning it over on downs in the red zone.
It is becoming more and more painful to watch, and fewer and fewer Titans fans are even bothering to do so. At the previous home game, Nissan Stadium was so overrun by Minnesota Vikings fans that Titans quarterback Will Levis had to go to a silent count at times in a home game. This past Sunday, the stadium was barely half full.
Apparently, neither Jaguar nor Titan fans had little interest in watching their teams.
Win the winnable games
Quite frankly, this Titans team shows a lot of the signs of what football fans in Nashville used to see many a year from Vanderbilt – waiting for something to go wrong and the inevitable loss to arrive.
Credit to the Commodores for being able to shed some of that history of failure this season and at other times over the past decade or so.
But longtime Nashvillians know the syndrome, and I’m betting they see it in the Titans.
There was a time when Vandy would look at the schedule and count the number of winnable games and see maybe three or four potential victories. The problem with that was the three or four teams in that category would look at their schedule, see Vanderbilt and see a winnable game for themselves.
That’s what the Titans saw in the Jaguars, and obviously what the Jags saw in the Titans.
It sure looked like that was the case Sunday when the Titans did many things right except the one thing they had to do right: score more than six points.
In the locker room, the lament was familiar and maybe even a bit more emphatic than after previous defeats.
“It’s one that we definitely feel like we should have won, could have won and had opportunities to win,” quarterback Will Levis said.
With four games left, the Titans are running out of opportunities to even show modest improvement and build momentum for 2025.
The question now becomes, if things don’t get better, who will be around to see the process through to brighter results ahead down the road?
“After a loss like that, the locker room is not good, I mean, as you expect,” safety Amani Hooker says. “We didn’t come in here trying to lose or expect to lose. You thought we were going to win the game. But we didn’t do enough.
“We’ve just got to get to work. I mean, regardless, we still have these next four games. And if you show up, you’ve got to show up in the right mentality, or they’ll get someone else to do the job for you.”
Terry McCormick also covers the Titans for TitanInsider.com