BALTIMORE — The Tennessee Titans (0-4) fell 24-18 to the Baltimore Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium on Sunday night. They lost a one-score game to a team that did not look much better than them, and offensive coordinator Brian Daboll’s red zone play calling sits at the center of that loss.

Titans coach Robert Saleh keeps saying his team will learn how to win these games. The work is there. The results are not.

There were positives in Baltimore, as hard as that is to believe. Rookie receiver Carnell Tate became the first rookie wide receiver for this franchise to reach 100 yards in a game since AJ Brown in 2019. Tennessee’s offense started fast. The defense held running back Derrick Henry under 100 yards and pitched a second-half shutout after quarterback Lamar Jackson left with an ankle injury and gave way to Snoop Huntley.

None of that matters when you lose again.

Every good note for the Titans came with a bad one attached

Quarterback Cam Ward’s day started with a tipped interception on a shovel pass intended for running back Tony Pollard. The ball bounced off Pollard’s hands and right into a defender’s arms, two plays into Tennessee’s first offensive possession.

Later, Ward delivered as good a throw as I’ve seen from him this season on a 35-yard completion to Tate. Tate fumbled it away in a huge spot, a momentum swing that makes his feel-good day feel a lot less good.

Defensively, receiver Zay Flowers did enough to beat Tennessee by himself. He finished with 118 yards, including a 51-yard catch after he somehow found himself matched up with linebacker Cody Barton in coverage. Tight end Mark Andrews also found the end zone once Flowers got Baltimore into the red zone.

Brian Daboll’s red zone choices cost Tennessee in a one-score game

The sequence that decided this game came in the second quarter.

Tennessee had first-and-goal and ran the ball four straight times. Daboll called three straight runs, including one on third down with the Titans already planning to go for it, then a direct snap to Pollard out of a wildcat look on fourth down. The play went nowhere. Tennessee turned it over on downs, and the Ravens marched 98 yards the other way.

That is a 14-point swing in a game decided by six.

The Titans rallied late anyway. Huntley couldn’t sustain drives in the second half, and Tennessee scored a touchdown and converted the two-point try. They failed to recover the onside kick and were out of timeouts by then.

It is easy to second-guess play calls with the results in hand. However, this is now a pattern. Against the Philadelphia Eagles, Tennessee had first-and-goal from the 9 and called a play-action pass from under center that Jalen Carter immediately sniffed out for a sack. The Titans then called a couple of runs and settled for a field goal late in a one-score game. Some of last week falls on Ward. Plenty of it falls on Daboll.

At some point, you have to put the ball in the hands of the former No. 1 overall pick at quarterback.

Robert Saleh won’t throw his offensive coordinator under the bus

Coordinators are not made available to reporters until Thursday, so Daboll did not face questions postgame. Saleh did. 

“I felt like we were running the ball pretty well,” said Saleh. “I’ll definitely have a conversation with Daboll about it. I do know that in those situations, the guys work their tails off to make sure that we’re calling the best play for those situations based on what we’ve seen on tape. And so I’m pleased with the preparation that goes into it, and we’ll watch the tape and figure out what we could have done better, if anything at all.”

Is that a satisfactory answer? No.

To be fair, Saleh was never going to publicly disagree with his offensive coordinator at the podium, and he had not watched the tape yet. He knows exactly how that drive ended and what happened after it. Calling out a coach or a player in public simply doesn’t benefit him.

Four games feels like an eternity at 0-4. Still, it is worth filing these red zone mishaps away. Each situation is not created equally, but at least two of Tennessee’s four games have featured Daboll red zone calls that will drive a fan base insane. Whether Saleh’s conversation with his coordinator changes anything will show up the next time the Titans get inside the 10.