The Tennessee Titans got blown out and blanked by the Houston Texans in Week 4, and things in Nashville are reaching a fever pitch before we’ve even reached October. It’s not that this ship is adrift at sea without a sail or a paddle. It’s not that there are leaks springing everywhere in the hull. It’s not even that the ship is sinking, which it is; it’s that the ship continues to sink, and sink, and sink. Every time it feels we’ve reached the bottom, a deeper trench opens up to welcome the two tone blue even further into the dark, crushing depths.

So you could say things are bleak. The firing of Brian Callahan and his coaching staff feels firmly like a foregone conclusion. The question is now “when”, not “if” after showing very little fight against an uninspiring Texans team. But assuming Amy Adams Strunk eventually pulls the plug on the coach, then what?

Key Titans Veterans Aren’t Performing

Something that’s been infuriating to try to explain so far this season is that the Titans are a combination of bad and underperforming. When you look around this topsy-turvy roster of expensive, middling veterans and cheap, inexperienced young players, even the guys you’d expect to at least set the performance floor for the Titans aren’t pulling that weight. Even the “good” veterans on this team aren’t playing well right now, on top of this team being largely inexperienced, subpar, and thin.

DT Jeffery Simmons is easily the best player on the roster. He’s played at a Defensive Player of the Year level through four games. And LG Peter Skoronksi and C Lloyd Cushenberry have played admirably in the interior of the offensive line. It hasn’t been perfect, but they’ve been nice pieces.

Just about everybody else is frustrating to watch at the moment.

I could dive headlong into the tape and the metrics for every starter on the Titans roster, but that’s more in the weeds than the point of this article is trying to live in. Let’s take this from a 10,000ft view: We saw CB L’Jarius Sneed get torched too often in Houston, a downright bad game for the starting cornerback who they need to play at least average, acceptable-level ball. S Amani Hooker just got a big contract extension, and for two weeks now has looked turned around and utterly lost in the backfield too often. Hooker is a player that for the majority of his Titans career has been reliably good and a leader on the back end. What’s going on there?

S Xavier Woods is a heat-seeking missile who’s very hit or miss. And when he misses, it’s been a real problem for the defense. LB Cody Barton isn’t making nearly the impact on this team that we at one point had hoped he might make before the season began. LT Dan Moore is exactly what we thought he was: he’s been problematic against the three elite pass rushes he’s faced, and perfectly fine against the one normal one. You need him to be your fifth best lineman on the team. And right now you’re asking him to be your best tackle and arguably your second best lineman, and he simply cannot and will not ever be able to be that guy. WR Calvin Ridley hasn’t been nearly the player you need him to be all month, failing to make a play for Cam Ward at just about every turn. At this point, Fourth Round rookie Elic Ayomanor feels like this team’s clear WR1.

TE Chig Okonkwo wasn’t an impact player in Week 4. He’s not been some glaring problem all season, but he also hasn’t made many plays for his offense. These vets are supposed to be capable of doing things that really impact the game, and so far, they haven’t been. WR Tyler Lockett was targeted four times for no catches in Houston, not making any sort of an impact either. K Joey Slye couldn’t connect on either FG try from inside 45 yards in Week 4, crushing the goodwill he’d build up with Titans fans and keeping the Titans off the board for the day. Veteran RG Kevin Zeitler has been generally disappointing as well. There is truly too much to get to with this roster to give any of these September bodies of work their due diligence in one article. But the feeling everybody who has watched these Titans has when reading through the rambling tirade above is probably roughly the same: “yea. I feel that.”

The bottom line is that the veterans aren’t stepping up for this team, and it’s forcing them to lean on the young guys. For the better part of this month, the youth have looked like the best and most promising players on this roster, but they can’t carry this franchise yet. And if things keep up, their development is at risk of being stunted. Especially Cam Ward, whose play has taken a step back in each of his four games so far if you ask me.

What’s going on here? Is it the coaching staff? Well, that’s the generous read. We’ve reached a point in Titans fan cope where this is already the Rorschach Test in September: do you think removing this coaching regime will collectively return these veterans to their old selves? I won’t sit here and tell you the coaching staff is blameless, not by any means. When veterans are pretty much all underperforming for a team, the coaches definitely share at least a large part in the blame. Where I’m pessimistic, though, is the idea that they’ll suddenly be a whole lot better once the coaches are gone. Fire them, fine by me at this point. I think that’s the last step for everybody to finally come to the unsavory conclusion that this roster is in shambles, the youth need development and patience, and the veterans simply aren’t good enough.

For the sake of the 13 games left on the schedule, I hope that I’m wrong.

Tennessee Titans News

Getting shutout by Texans put Amy Adams Strunk in an impossible spot as Brian Callahan’s future with Titans is on life support

Is Brian Callahan the story this morning? Well in a game management sense, he is not. But we’re still talking about him today anyways.

Easton Freeze