NASHVILLE — The Tennessee Titans are 1-7 heading into their Week 9 bye after an overtime loss to the Cincinnati Bengals. It was a thriller, but it was still a loss. It leaves Titans coach Robert Saleh and the rest of the building with plenty to sort through before the stretch run of the 2026 season.

If you told a Titans fan in August that this team would be 1-7 on Nov. 1, the natural response would have been that quarterback Cam Ward must have gotten hurt. Surely a meteor hit the sideline and Tennessee was playing with replacement players. Nothing like that happened. The Titans are 1-7 anyway.

The bye could not have come at a better time.

The Titans are showing life in places I left them for dead

I picked Tennessee to win four games before the season. Based on the team we saw over the first seven weeks, even that will be a struggle. However, Week 8 threw a wrench into everything.

All of a sudden, the offense scored all over the place. The defense (supposedly the strength of this roster) couldn’t get off the field, even though it forced four turnovers plus a turnover on downs. Losing defensive lineman Jeffery Simmons, who was traded to the Chicago Bears, changes the math on that side of the ball.

The full-season numbers still aren’t pretty. Tennessee ranks near the bottom of the league in total offense. Despite an uptick over the last two and a half games, the Titans remain one of the lowest-scoring teams in football at under 20 points per game, well below league average.

Defensively, the Titans are hemorrhaging yards. They have given up almost 1,000 yards over the last two weeks alone and now rank as the second-worst total defense in the NFL. Joe Burrow did a lot of that damage himself, nearly throwing for 500 yards in an otherworldly performance.

Special teams wasn’t a major factor against Cincinnati. Still, a couple of holding penalties on returns popped up again. Tennessee stays losing hidden yardage.

Brett Kern’s ‘Big Three’ numbers make the Titans a mathematical impossibility

Brett Kern, who joins us on the radio show, did his usual homework before appearing this week. He texted me a stat that sums up this season better than anything else.

The Titans are the only team to win the Big Three and lose a game. They have now done it twice this year.

The Big Three is a Mike Vrabel philosophy: outrush the opponent, post a higher QBR, and win the turnover battle. Per Kern’s tracking, 99 of the 121 NFL games played so far featured a team winning all three and winning the game, with eight ties included in the total. Only 11 teams have lost all three and still won. Just two teams have won all three and lost, and both of those were the Titans.

That is roughly a 1.65% outcome, and Tennessee has pulled it off twice. Part of that falls on the coaching staff. Part of it falls on Burrow. The Titans are simply a weird football team.

Robert Saleh believes the Titans have the right guys in the locker room

Saleh is still learning what his team is. He seems to have a better grasp on one area he has been waiting to figure out in real time, though. Speaking with reporters via Zoom on Monday, Saleh reflected on how this group has responded to everything thrown at it.

“I stood up here when you guys were asking questions about like, what kind of team do we have? And I said, I won’t know until we face adversity,” said Saleh. “And we’ve had a lot of adversity. Between the close losses, like you said, Jordan [Elliott], who, if anyone cares, is doing well. And then obviously having Jeff traded. And then there’s been a bunch of other things, you know, as you go through all this stuff, just trying to maintain level-headedness and trying to keep guys focused on what’s important.

“When you’re losing, it’s very easy to go off the rails. And so [we’re] continuing to pull guys in and keep them on the track and keep them going in the right direction and keep them supporting one another. All the different things that go into trying to flip an organization. And, to answer the question from a few questions ago, you know, why [do] they play their tails off? Because we got the right guys. You know, the adversity— you ask, like, what kind of a team [do] we have? Well, you find out what type of team you have in adversity.

“And there’s been a bunch of guys who have been stepping up, keeping guys on the straight, guys who have been improving week in and week out,” Saleh continued, “To answer your question, though, it’s that this bye week is sorely needed for everybody, coaches included.We’ve got today, we’ve got tomorrow. We’ll knock some things out. We’ll look at some things from a self-scout standpoint and just try to get away from football for a little bit.”

I was on the sideline before kickoff in Cincinnati, talking with players and general manager Mike Borgonzi. The vibes were pretty high, all things considered. Maybe that means nothing, since teams can be loose before any game and still get beat. However, after weeks of the Simmons trade sucking up all the oxygen, it stood out.

Saleh clearly thinks he still has a roster that is bought in, even after selling off the heart and soul of the team. 

“1-7 and going into the bye week, and you know, the trade deadline coming up and things like that, it could be easy for guys to check out, especially veteran guys,” Saleh told reporters. “But it feels like your guys are still buying in and playing hard. They’re made of the right stuff and they, and they feel it like this, you know, and they’re not responsible for all the pain of the entire— of the organization over the last 4 and a half years. It’s been short order, but they also recognize that the vast majority of the guys in the locker room right now are going to be here when this thing turns. And this is the starting point.

“It’s how do you grind? How do you put yourselves in these moments? How do you figure out how to win in these waning moments and how do you make the play and how do you play disciplined but make the play at the same time? There’s a lot of things. How do you play more efficiently? How do you play faster? How do you play championship football for 60 minutes? I think it’s important to them and they’re buying into everything that is being done around here. They’re working their absolute tails off. And, and you just sit there in the locker room after these games. What are we, 6 one-score games now? And, and you just want so badly for them to taste victory and taste success because they’ve earned it.

“But, we have guys that are made of the right stuff. We have the right leaders. … We have a bunch of guys who are still trying to prove that they belong in this league, and even some of our veterans are still trying to prove that. And it’s fun to kind of watch them all work together.”

Can Tennessee look anything like the Week 8 offense over its final nine games? I have no idea. The Titans will spend the bye trying to figure that out too.