The Tennessee Titans face backup quarterback Jameis Winston and the New York Giants this week, six days after starter Jaxson Dart suffered an MCL injury that will sideline him for the entire regular season. 

Giants head coach John Harbaugh says the team hopes to have Dart “back for the playoffs.” We’ll see about that, Giants fans.

Tennessee (0-2) finds itself desperate for a win and staring at what looks like an easier difficulty level than the first two weeks of the season. But Titans fans carry a very specific kind of PTSD when it comes to backup quarterbacks, and the data backs up the fear.

The 10-year sample: 24 games, a perfect split

A to Z Sports went deep on this one. From the 2016 season through the 2025 season, there are 24 qualifying games where the Titans played against a backup quarterback. That includes situations where the starter was ruled out before kickoff and situations where the starter got hurt early and the backup played a significant role. And there’s one instance where a back up came in for a starter in a week 18 game for playoff rest,

The Titans’ record in those 24 games? 12-12. Right down the middle.

But when you break the timeline apart, the picture gets painfully obvious.

The good years: 2016-2021

From 2016 through 2021, the Titans had 12 of those 24 backup quarterback games. Tennessee went 9-3, winning at a 75% clip. That stretch lines up with the Titans’ resurgence era. They made the playoffs in four of those seasons and posted a winning record every year except 2022, when they lost seven straight to finish 7-10.

The highlights from those years dust off some old stories. In 2016, the Titans went 3-1 in these games. They lost to Shaun Hill and the Vikings (filling in after Teddy Bridgewater’s traumatic knee injury), then beat Cody Kessler and the Browns by two points. Kessler wasn’t even the second option in Cleveland. He was the third-string guy behind RG3 and Josh McCown.

Most fans probably remember the 27-21 win over Matt Barkley and the Bears. That was the game where general manager Jon Robinson cut cornerback Parrish Cox immediately afterward because he was so bad in a win over a backup quarterback, making Barkley look like Jay Cutler.

The 2016 season finale was a meaningless win over Tom Savage and the Houston Texans the week after Marcus Mariota broke his leg in Jacksonville in the game which ended playoff contention. 

In 2017, the Titans went 1-1, beating Savage and the Texans who were without DeShaun Watson due to an ACL tear. Tennessee later stumbled 12-7 to Blaine Gabbert and the Arizona Cardinals. That loss was the beginning of the end for head coach Mike Mularkey. Jonathan Hutton tells the story well of the Titans spending two consecutive weeks on the road with games at Arizona and San Francisco, and that road trip is when the movement for Mularkey’s ousting began.

The 2018 Titans went 2-0 in Mike Vrabel’s first year. They beat Kessler again (then with Jacksonville) on the historic night of Derrick Henry’s 99-yard TD run. Then beat Washington when Josh Johnson started. That was the famous game where Taylor Lewan hit Josh Norman with the bow-and-arrow celebration.

The 2019 Titans were 0-1 in backup quarterback games, by our metrics coming while Mariota was still the starter. The Titans lost to rookie Gardner Minshew and the Jags on Thursday night despite Matriota throwing for over 300 yards in sloppy conditions.

The Titans also lost to Kyle Allen and the Panthers in 2019, but that game was excluded from this study because Allen was making his sixth consecutive start for the injured Cam Newton and had become Carolina’s established quarterback by that point. This was famously the game where Titans OC Arthur Smith ‘figured it out’ with running back Derrick Henry moving ahead of Dion Lewis as the offense’s focal point.

In 2020, the Titans beat Mike Glennon and the Jags. In 2021, the most injured team in football beat Trevor Siemian and the Saints, then Davis Mills and the Texans. 

In 2022, there were zero qualifying games, which is interesting with how the success split falls the way it does.

The last 3 years: 3-9 and well below league average

Since 2023, the Titans have gone 3-9 against backup quarterbacks. That 25% win rate is brutal on its own, but the context makes it worse.

According to Action Network data from 2013 through 2022, teams facing a backup quarterback won 61.5% of the time league-wide. The Titans’ 75% clip in their good years was well above that number. The 25% of the last three years is historically bad.

The three wins: the Will Levis game against Taylor Heinicke and the Falcons, the 2024 win in Miami against Tyler Huntley when Will Levis hurt his shoulder and spawned the crying face meme and the Titans broke their 30-point drought, and the 2025 win over the Kansas City Chiefs when Gardner Minshew got hurt and Chris Oladokun came in to finish.

The nine losses read like a horror movie. 

Minshew beat the Titans twice in 2023 with the Indianapolis Colts. The second one was the December game where punter Ryan Stonehouse suffered a torn ACL, MCL, and a broken bone in his plant leg after two blocked punts, while Minshew threw for over 300 yards and two touchdowns. 

Case Keenum, who hadn’t started in over two years, came in for a concussed CJ Stroud and beat the Titans in overtime with 229 yards and a touchdown.

The 2024 season was the most embarrassing stretch. Malik Willis, barely a month after being traded by the Titans to the Packers, came back to Nashville and throttled his former team. He went 13-of-19 for 202 passing yards with a passing touchdown, 73 rushing yards, and a rushing touchdown. 

Joe Flacco beat the Titans 20-17 in the L’Jarius Sneed vs Michael Pittman game. 

Mac Jones beat the Titans twice, including a 10-6 game where Jacksonville scored just 10 points and the Titans still lost.

The final game of the 2024 season saw the already-clinched AFC South Champion Texans pull Stroud healthy after the opening drive. Mills entered to lead Houston to the win, and clinched the first overall draft pick for Tennessee.

Then in 2025, Davis Mills converted a third-and-16 to Nico Collins on a game-winning drive to beat the Titans in a game where Cam Ward had started to turn things around after the bye week.

What it means for Week 3

The Titans’ fanbase is holding its collective breath hoping Jameis Winston doesn’t become the 10th loss to a backup quarterback in this three-year stretch. The data says this Tennessee team should win games like this. 

Recent history says otherwise. The Giants with a backup quarterback in a game the Titans need feels like the exact kind of trap this era of Titans football has fallen into over and over again.

Now, the Titans-Giants game in MetLife Stadium is expected to experience inclement weather with the Nor’Easter storm, which can always be the game’s greatest equalizer. 

Another painful, but relevant note about the Titans and backup quarterbacks. From 2023-2025 the Titans have only a 2-16 record against AFC South division opponents. Tennessee is 0-8 in that stretch against backup QBs, with the two wins being against Stroud in Houston (2024) and Lawrence and the Jags in January of 2-24 – which was also the final game for Derrick Henry and Ryan Tannehill in Titans uniforms.