It’s Worse Than You Think: Titans recent losing stretch is now historical in two astonishing and bizarre ways
The Titans have lost two games at the buzzer already this season, and the broader picture is historically grim — tracing back to a single day that apparently changed everything?
The Tennessee Titans are 0-3, and the losses are starting to feel like cruel comedy. Tennessee came so close to its first win of the season in Week 2 against the Eagles, only to lose at the buzzer. Then the Titans came so close again in Week 3 against the Giants, only to lose at the buzzer again. And so they sit winless alongside four other teams at the bottom of the league right now.
It’s a pretty funny collection, too. Just one NFC candidate: the Baker Mayfield-led Buccaneers, the team who most recently gave a quarter of their salary cap to their quarterback. And then on the AFC side, a pair of duos: two preseason-projected bottom feeders in the Dolphins and Titans, and two preseason-projected conference championship contenders in the Texans and the Chargers! What odd bedfellows. Now for some equal parts depressing and hilarious history:
The historical weight of all this losing
When you look at the historical implications of the Titans having done so little winning over the past couple of years, it truly is remarkable. At 6-31, the Titans currently have the third-worst win percentage (16.2%) in a three-year span among all NFL teams since 2000, according to my colleague Travis May.
The only teams that were worse: the Browns from 2015 to 2017 (which is not shocking, hello, the Cleveland Browns) and the Rams from 2007 to 2009 when they were relocating across the country.
Take it a step further, though, and this is the one that will land home for most Titans fans. It all dates back to a very specific inflection point that none of us at the time knew would become one of the most impactful sliding-door moments in Tennessee Titans history.
In their last 61 games, the Titans are 12-49. The previous 61 games before that stretch? They were 40-21. And the one event that divides that timeline: the Friday morning DUI that former Titans offensive coordinator Todd Downing got after they won in primetime against the Packers.
The Titans were a winning team, a good team. Vibes were high. The offensive coordinator gets a DUI on a Friday morning, and since then, they have played 61 games and won only 12. It’s unbelievable how little this team has won since that strange news day.
Where is the hope?
The hope is still that Cam Ward and the Robert Saleh regime can turn that around. If you’re looking for a sign of encouragement, the fact that in two of their three games this year it has come down to the last drive, the last play of the game, is a welcome sight from purely an entertainment standpoint.
Think back to last season and the season before. There haven’t been many games where it actually came down to the buzzer. In fact, there have been a lot of games where the outcome was out of hand many minutes, sometimes a quarter, sometimes two quarters before that final play.
You can spin-zone your way into saying the Titans are closer to winning on the margins, winning in those key moments. But the best I can tell you is that right now, this season, they’re putting themselves in spots to capitalize on those key moments and batting maybe .100 on them. One out of 10 money-down moments, they’re actually winning. And until they mature into a team that wins more of those, it’s going to be more infuriating losses like this.
