Titans’ impressive win vs. Browns comes with a big loss to create drama for the rest of Cam Ward’s rookie season

The Tennessee Titans did something in Week 14 they’ve been desperate to do for a long time: win a football game. They bested the Cleveland Browns in the snow 31-23.

It was just the third game out of 13 Tennessee has played this year that’s against a non-playoff team. The Texans and their No. 1 defense are technically eighth in the AFC as of the writing of the article, but you get the point. When you’re watching a bad team face good-to-great teams every week, it’s easy to lose sight of what they may look like against a fellow bottom-feeder. And while the Browns have a strong defense, it hasn’t helped them win many games this year.

This Sunday, we got the first reminder of this in a long time. The Titans were the better of the bad teams by a significant margin, and it led to their second win of the season. This is a massive deal for the foundational players on this roster, but it also has dramatic draft implications.

Titans win their way out of the first overall draft pick

As the only team in the NFL with just one win, the Titans sat comfortably atop the NFL Draft order for weeks leading up to this game. But their league-leading strength of schedule is a double-edged sword: it’s what’s ensuring they keep losing so much, but it’s also what sends them to the very back of each win total group. Win a second game, and you become the last two-win team to pick. The same for three wins, and so on.

Now that the Titans have a second win, they drop behind at least the New York Giants, who are on a bye. They also drop beneath the Raiders, who face the Broncos as over a touchdown underdog in the afternoon slate. And they would have fallen behind the Saints had they not pulled off an upset of their own over the Buccaneers for their third win of the season. So, they’ll sit in the third position after Week 14 at worst, and the second position at best.

When Titans players were asked leading up to this week about all the fan interest in landing the top pick and trading it for a franchise-altering haul, they of course dismissed it all. Wins like this mean a lot for the young core of this team, Cam Ward chief among them. You can’t learn how to win if you don’t, well, win. And everybody involved with this to-the-studs rebuild will tell you that “meaningless” wins down the stretch of this year mean a whole lot to them inside the building.

Before kickoff on Sunday, the Titans had 47.5% odds to land the top pick per ESPN Analytics, by far the best in the league. A loss would have raised those odds to 66%, but instead the win dropped them to 29%.