The Tennessee Titans turned in one of the most lifeless performances in recent memory (a high bar!) in their Week 1 loss to the New York Jets. The second half collapse, the absence of energy, the nothing-football feel of it all left fans wondering whether this is truly a different team or just the same old Titans wearing new jerseys.

From the Wednesday locker room availability at Vanderbilt Health Football Center, I spoke with six members of the team and asked variations of the same question: How bad was it really, and why should anybody believe this team is different?

Their answers varied. And what those answers reveal about each person’s perspective is worth examining, because the underlying tension this week outside of the building has been unmistakable. This team, largely composed of new faces, views Sunday as chapter 1 of their story. The fan base, understandably, views it as chapter… 47(?) of the Titans being the worst team in the league. That disconnect is real, and the way these six people navigated it tells us something.

Robert Saleh set the tone

So as to not make a liar of myself in the headline of this article, here is the ranking of willingness to call Week 1 a disaster from most-to-least:

1. LG Peter Skoronski
2. HC Robert Saleh
3. DT Jeffery Simmons
4. QB Cam Ward
5. DT John Franklin-Myers
6. WR Wan’Dale Robinson

The point of this, though, isn’t to shame the people who wouldn’t scream “WE SUCK” from the mountaintops. The point is to look at what each person said, why, and what it tells us about this team already.

Head coach Robert Saleh was one of the most forthcoming about how poor Sunday’s performance was. When I asked him whether the team’s response this week against the Philadelphia Eagles is the “proof in the pudding” for fans who think this is just the same old Titans, he did not flinch.

“I think the way we respond every week until we prove it week in and week out, you’re never going to get the benefit of the doubt. But you’ve got to focus on the main thing, which is the things that we have control over. The noise outside is always going to be the noise until you have street cred and you prove that you’re able to do it week in and week out. So the objective is, it’s not necessarily to prove anyone wrong, it’s just, prove what we can get better at, prove that we can compete and prove that we’re a team that’s capable of stringing together 4 quarters and win football games. But even if we did that this week, it still doesn’t prove anything because we’ve got to go do it again and again and again,” Saleh said.

When I followed up asking whether there was an internal standard for the team to show serious strides this Sunday, he was even more direct.

“Of course, and that’s week to week. Don’t make a mistake, guys. Last week sucked. It wasn’t close to the standard, wasn’t close to what we expected us to perform at, wasn’t even close. I made the comment that I would have bet every asset I have in my family’s name that we would have came out in the second half and played a hell of a lot better than we did. We didn’t. But at the same time, there’s a lot of things that we can grow from and learn from. And we came in on Monday, talked about it, set the truth, set the table. And now we’ve got to attack this week to try to find a way to get better,” Saleh said.

That is about as transparent as a head coach can be after a loss like that, in my estimation. He acknowledged the stinker for what it was while planting his flag that this is a week-to-week process. And that’s what a head coach is supposed to do. But credit where it’s due: Saleh played ball with us on a day he knew the questions would be pointed.

Cam Ward gets a passing grade, barely

Titans quarterback Cam Ward came to the podium next. I framed my question as non-accusatory as possible, giving him every avenue to be self-critical after a rough outing. The intent was to see how he’d respond when the door was left wide open.

“I’m very critical of myself” he told me. “I want to be a great player. And that comes with whether it’s for myself or the coaching staff. It’s what can I do to be the best I want to be and for the team and for us to be our best. And there’s key plays that us, myself and the staff think that I helped and saved, but there’s a lot, also a lot of plays that I could have helped us even more. So let’s continue to take coaching from myself, continue for myself, continue to take coaching from (Daboll) and (Tierney), getting back to the drawing board and making the plays happen,” Ward said.

It was a fine response. Not a pass-with-flying-colors response, but a passing grade. He didn’t deflect, and he didn’t pass the buck. One other thing worth noting: on Sunday night after the game, Ward’s answer about his short-area misses pointed to the receivers needing to run flatter routes. On Wednesday, he changed his tune to simply needing to be more accurate. That’s the correct answer if you ask me.

I went into Wednesday bracing for Ward to be hardheaded about some things. To his credit, he wasn’t. Saleh himself said during his availability that you’d be hard-pressed to find somebody more aggressive in their pursuit of fixing the things wrong about themselves than Ward. Whether that tracks publicly over the long haul, especially if the Titans continue to struggle, is something I’ll be watching.

Peter Skoronski understands you!

The locker room conversations were where things got genuinely compelling. Titans offensive lineman Peter Skoronski has been here for nearly the entirety of the Titans’ losing era. The only games he missed were the seven to end the 2022 season that punched his ticket to Nashville in the first place. He knows what losing looks like. He went 4-20 in his final two seasons at Northwestern before arriving to this 6-11, 3-14, 3-14, 0-1 stretch in Tennessee.

What Skoronski honed in on, and I think this is fair, is the distinction between “bad-ball” football and “nothing” football. He pointed out that the Titans weren’t out there creating big messes or making catastrophic errors. The problem was a complete and utter absence of good. And in his view, that’s just as bad, potentially worse, because it’s more infuriating to exist in that purgatory where you’re not scoring points and you can’t pinpoint one thematic reason why.

When I pressed him on what makes him confident this team is different from the ones where he had to eventually admit to himself that, yikes, this team ain’t going anywhere, he talked about the body of work from training camp, the joint practices, the understanding of the concepts. He said it’s hard to quantify, but he can feel it. He has been around enough bad-ball Tennessee Titans football to know what that’s like, and he doesn’t feel that way about this team.

I’ll say this about Skoronski: he was firmly on the willing-to-admit-it-sucked side of the ledger. The words “that really sucked” came out of his mouth more than once. And when I described the fan perspective, I could read it in his eyes. He was telegraphing: trust me, I know. I get it. This isn’t a case of players secretly thinking fans don’t understand real life. He knows. They know.

Jeffrey Simmons comes close to a resounding yes

Titans defensive lineman Jeffrey Simmons occupies a similar space to Skoronski as a veteran who has seen the good and the bad with this franchise. I asked him the same question I asked Saleh: is the response this Sunday a fair barometer for whether this team is actually different? He came close to saying yes. Not quite the bluntness of Skoronski, but close”

“I would hope so. We have a lot of confidence in this locker room. We have a lot of confidence in the guys in this locker room and our coaching staff. And with the mindset that we approach this week, like today, I mean, that’s the great thing about Wednesdays of a new week. You get to flip the page really quick because now you focus on the Philadelphia Eagles. So I think for us, it’s can we go out there and put what we have put on tape before this weekend? And I don’t think we did that last week. Like I said, I mean, it’s all a show to— it’s all to show to today. It’s all a show from today during training camp in the season. We showed that we could do these types of things like run the ball, stop the run, and affect the quarterback. So now it’s can we put that on tape this weekend,” Simmons said.

You could feel it in the room that he agreed with the premise of the question. When you craft a question for a player, you can usually tell pretty quickly whether he agrees with what you’re getting at. Simmons did. He and Skoronski, with their veteran perspective, seem to be aligned on this.

The newcomers: John Franklin-Myers and Wan’Dale Robinson

The final two conversations were with defensive lineman John Franklin-Myers and wide receiver Wan’Dale Robinson, both newcomers to the Titans.

Franklin-Myers brings the perspective of a player who came from a strong Broncos team last year. His patience for the nonsense is higher than everybody else’s in the building, and his faith that things can change in a hurry is equally elevated. He was receptive to understanding where the fans are coming from, but he was also honest about the defensive line’s quiet absence in Week 1. He thinks a lot of the issues come down to one person’s execution or one communication breakdown per play. If you sat down in the film room and went play-by-play, you’d find that cleaning up one thing makes the play look totally different. To him, those are easy fixes. That makes a game feel far worse than it actually is.

Robinson has a unique perspective because he’s new to the Titans but has been in the offensive system with Daboll for years. His point was simple: take it from me, a guy who has been in this offense. I know what it’s supposed to look like. I know that it works because I’ve been in it when it works. And that wasn’t what it was on Sunday.

Week 2, a new opportunity

I’ll go ahead and plant my flag. This isn’t about winning or losing against Philadelphia. I want to make that clear, because we spent a lot of time before Week 1 arguing over the must-win framing and I don’t want this to feel like a reversal. It’s not about the binary outcome. It’s about the lifelessness. The response this Sunday against the Eagles is going to tell me, at least for now, whether this is the same old Titans trying desperately with new faces to dig out of the hole, or whether they’re already truly different.

These players seem to genuinely believe they’re different. But people believe plenty of things that aren’t true. Sunday will tell me whether or not they are right now.