The Tennessee Titans won their first preseason game 19-13 over the San Francisco 49ers at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, but the final score told a prettier story than the tape. 

Joey Slye carried Tennessee with 4 made field goals, 3 of them from 50-plus yards, while the Titans’ only touchdown came on a Tony Pollard red-zone punch-in to cap an 11-play, 95-yard drive. 

The 49ers rested their starters and didn’t even play backup quarterback Mac Jones, handing the job to former Indiana quarterback Curtis Rourke. The Titans played everybody to some degree, and the result was a mixed bag that revealed some encouraging trends and some ugly ones heading into the second preseason game.

Cam Ward is excluded from this winners and losers exercise because Easton Freeze already covered the “wake-up call” Ward and the offense received in San Francisco. The short version: Ward went 5-of-12 for 57 yards, took one sack that was waved off by a defensive holding penalty, and threw an intentional grounding that was the kind of bad play everyone knows he has to iron out. There were miscommunications with his receivers as Elic Ayomanor and Carnell Tate each saw three targets and zero catches. Calvin Ridley’s 18-yard catch and run on third-and-short and a well-executed screen to Gunnar Helm for 16 yards on third-and-long were the bright spots, but everything outside that touchdown drive left a bad taste. 

To be clear, I would have Ward as a “loser” on the night if Easton didn’t already analyze the performance.

Now, to our combined winners and losers.

Winner: Kicker Joey Slye bounces back in a big way

Stanley: The Titans don’t win this game without Joey Slye. He went 4-for-4 on field goals with a long of 58 yards, made his lone extra point, and looked nothing like the shaky kicker who struggled at last Friday’s Blue and White scrimmage at Nissan Stadium. That scrimmage performance was bad enough that Tennessee brought in tryout kickers and specialists in the days afterward.

Slye responded emphatically. Buck Reising reported that Slye went 7-for-7 during the joint practice session in Santa Clara on Tuesday. If you count those, Slye has made 11 straight field goals heading into the next stretch of camp.

The sequence at the end of the first half stood out to me. Slye hit a 39-yarder with 1:21 left to put the Titans up 10-7. The 49ers came back and missed a 60-plus-yard attempt, and then Mitch Trubisky, Xavier Restrepo, and Michael Carter combined to gain 12 yards to set Slye up for a 55-yard field goal as time expired. Two field goals scored in the final 90 seconds of the half was a strong confidence-building stretch for a kicker who needed it.

He has to keep stacking good performances. His inconsistencies can plague him. But Slye earned winner status from his short time in Santa Clara.

Winner: Fernando Carmona forces his way into the right guard competition

Freeze: My first winner from the Titans preseason game against the 49ers is rookie right guard Fernando Carmona, who was given first-team reps to start the game and was able to continue getting reps as the second team came in. He played a good chunk of the beginning of the game, continuing a trend from the last two practices in which he suddenly became the majority shareholder of Titans starting right guard reps.

That entered him into a competition already being waged between Cordell Volson and Jackson Slater. It’s unclear yet whether the coaching staff is giving him an honest audition and stress-testing him during this early stretch of training camp to get a benchmark for where he’s at, or if they think he’s a serious contender in the competition. This next week of practice with the Titans returning home to get a couple of days on their own, followed by joint practice with the Bears and another preseason game, will be the determining factor in my mind as to whether he is fully in that competition or if this week was just his audition before they go back to the veteran competition.

I have, to this point, ruled him out of that competition because of the game smarts and veteran IQ seemingly required for this offensive line. But maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe he is just that much more gifted that it’s making the coaching staff want to give him a look ASAP.

In this game, I think he acquitted himself quite well. There were fewer moments to the naked eye where he was getting beat up on than either Slater or Volson experienced later in the game against players further down the 49ers’ depth chart. In the run game in particular, he looked like a player playing with some nasty. That’s something GM Mike Borgonzi has said about Carmona at pretty much every available opportunity — that he’s a player who plays with some nasty, with some ugly to him, and that violence is something the Titans are coveting. I’m very curious to see what comes of the rotation this next week.

Winner: Femi Oladejo flashes exactly what the Titans need from him

Freeze: My other winner from the night is second-year defensive end Femi Oladejo, who played a sizable chunk of the evening and tied for the most total tackles on the team with 5, including 2 solo tackles, 2 tackles for loss, and 1 quarterback hit. He was showing off his athleticism and his burst, getting upfield in a hurry and doing a lot of what the Titans coaching staff has talked about wanting to allow him to do in this new attack-style defense. The philosophy is simple: think less, act more, and just be a freaky athlete getting upfield as fast as possible to mess stuff up.

That is exactly what Titans fans want to see from the former second-round pick as he takes a developmental leap. It’s just one preseason game, but by all accounts his coaching staff is excited about him. I think it’s fair for fans to be tepidly excited about him as well.

Winner: Titans run defense was stout and I want to see it tested more

Stanley: How about a bonus “winner” from me… The Titans run defense felt like it was going to be stout when the team drafted Keldric Faulk in the first round, to go along with veteran additions of John Franklin-Myers, Jermaine Johnson II, and Jordan Elliott. We already know all-world tackle Jeffery Simmons is a force in the run game, too.

Thursday night the 49ers running backs combined for 23 yards on 12 carries in the first half. Patrick Taylor Jr. had the goofiest looking box score with five carries for negative five yards… but a one yard touchdown. 

Faulk, Johnson showed strong early. JFM didn’t play. Simmons played a little. But the list of names I noticed flying around and wrecking the Niners run game is long. Oladejo, Timmy Horne, Earnest Brown IV, Jalyn Holmes, and Khalen Saunders all flashed. I also want to recognize linebackers Cedric Gray, Cody Barton, and James Williams Sr. doing the same.

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Loser: Titans secondary is on notice

Freeze: My loser here is the entire secondary, and I’m not going to single any one person out. The starting duo of outside cornerbacks are the two who come to mind if you make me choose a specific portion of it. Cor’Dale Flott and Alantae Taylor both did not acquit themselves well at all. I think they are getting a bit of a wake-up call this week in San Francisco.

The two of them are very highly compensated, both paid well north of $15 million a year as free agents. They were brought in to be high-floor starting NFL cornerbacks, and I’m not saying they aren’t capable of that. But this week they have not looked the part of what they’re being paid to do. In this game, they had a low-end quarterback and young and largely irrelevant skill players beating up on them on the outside. That’s not going to fly in the regular season.

They have to get their act together. I’m confident they have the ability to do so, and they’re going to be stress-tested the next two weeks against Seattle and Chicago with some talented skill players they’ll face. They have some work to do.

Losers: Veteran offensive linemen Cordell Volson and Austin Deculus are flailing

Stanley: The two veteran offensive line additions who were supposed to provide depth and competition look like they could get cut.

Right guard Cordell Volson signed in free agency and was penciled in as the potential starter after the Titans didn’t draft Fernando Carmona until day 3. Volson was supposed to have the head start in the biggest position battle on the roster, with second-year player Jackson Slater from Sacramento State also involved. That competition looks over, at least for Volson. Carmona started and looked good. Volson was playing deep into the second half and took snaps in the fourth quarter. That is not the way this should be trending for a veteran free agent addition.

The question now becomes whether Volson even makes the team. If Carmona wins the starting job, Slater is a good developmental swing interior player who played left guard Thursday night and has been snapping at center throughout camp. The Titans might need another tackle on the roster more than another interior lineman.

That connects directly to Austin Deculus, who just doesn’t look good. He gave up consistent pressure on Will Levis, including getting blown up on at least one of Levis’s three sacks. The trend of camp has been Deculus entering as the third tackle and Brandon Crenshaw-Dixon overtaking him for that role. Deculus might still make the roster because the drop-off after him is substantial, but tackle is a position to watch on the waiver wire for Tennessee. Adding somebody from the outside to replace Deculus remains an option.

Loser: Will Levis looks done as a Titan

Stanley: It feels pretty cemented. Nobody is going to trade for Will Levis, and I think the Titans are going to have to cut him at the end of this month. He has about two and a half weeks left in his Titans career.

Levis completed just 3 of 8 passes for 42 yards. The only thing that consistently worked (dating back to the scrimmage last week) was the quarterback run, where he carried 4 times for 22 yards. Michael Carter had a 13-yard catch and run, and Bryce Oliver made a nice grab for 12, but the most impressive completion Levis had was a 17-yard pass to David Martin-Robinson that probably sent Robinson to the blue medical tent. Robinson was fine, but the 49ers drew a 15-yard penalty for the hit Robinson absorbed on that throw. Hospital ball.

Levis didn’t get good protection, and that made a tough situation worse. But even accounting for that, it looks clunky and inaccurate. He even got hit and threw the ball up in the air that looked like a punt toward the goal line. Will Levis is not here for long.