You have to learn to walk before you can run.
Right now, the Tennessee Titans are crawling in circles.
The Titans found creative ways to lose in overtime to the Indianapolis Colts, 31-28. Blocked punts on two consecutive series and a missed extra point were enough to cost special teams coordinator Craig Aukerman his job. His firing was announced Monday.
But with all that went wrong Sunday – and, really, throughout the last calendar year – this Titans team has shown one thing clearly: It no longer knows how to win football games.
The Titans are 4-15 in their last 19 games with no wins away from Nissan Stadium.
When it was over, Coach Mike Vrabel said he was pleased with his team’s effort, despite the mistakes that had them on the losing end once again.
“When they compete like that, there’s some good football in there,” Vrabel said. “I’m going to try to find it and eliminate the stuff that gets you beat, which is certainly missed opportunities, giving up X-plays, letting the quarterback get hit and fumble, and then having punts blocked. But there’s also a lot of really good stuff in there, as well.”
What else is he going to say? When the franchise is this kind of mess, you have to try and seek out the positives in order to have something to build upon. And perhaps a close loss is more of a positive than a blowout, even if the result is the same.
Truth is, the Titans have been in a tailspin dating back to the final seven games of last year, alternating mostly between one-score losses (nine times) and being blown out (six times).
That’s what bad teams do in the NFL. They keep it close most weeks and find a way to lose.
There was a time not so long ago that Vrabel’s swagger gave this team its cue. Those days are long gone.
In 2019, a 9-7 Titans team that found its confidence about halfway through the season went to New England in the first round of the playoffs and ended Tom Brady’s time there, then knocked off Super Bowl favorite Baltimore the next week. They then had Kansas City on the ropes in the AFC championship game until Patrick Mahomes worked his magic in the second half.
A mere four years later, the Titans have exactly five players on their 53-man roster who played in that postseason. Derrick Henry and Ryan Tannehill are the lone survivors on offense, and both might be out the door after this season. Jeffery Simmons and Amani Hooker were rookies that year, and Harold Landry was in his second year.
Other than that, no one else in that locker room can recall and good ole days. Think about that when you examine the current team’s predicament.
To only have five players remaining from the team’s most recent playoff win is alarming and is a huge factor in why that swagger no longer exists on the Titans sideline.
Many of the players from those teams are no longer active in the NFL, but about 20 other players from that team’s roster are still playing around the league on other clubs.
In football or any sport, winning is contagious. So is losing.
For the Titans, the first step in the rebuilding process is for this team to learn how to win games again. For Vrabel that starts with trying to find enough pieces to begin the process all over again.
Vrabel called a play in which quarterback Will Levis fumbled the ball, and then went and forced a fumble back and recovered it “something to rally around and build around.” Now this team need some wins to “rally around.”
Terry McCormick covers the Titans for TitanInsider.com