The Tennessee Titans host the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 2, and Robert Saleh needs to channel a former Titans coach’s mentality. Not the person Mike Vrabel, but the coach Mike Vrabel and it centers around one word: urgency. 

After Tennessee looked like a disaster against the New York Jets in the season opener, which was also Saleh’s debut, what Saleh’s response in this game could tell us about his Titans tenure could define the next several years.

This isn’t about Week 2 being a “must-win game”. There’s a clear difference between desperation in a must-win scenario and playing with nothing to lose. The Titans are massive underdogs against Philadelphia. You can trade on the Eagles holding a team to zero points at least once this season for $0.24, which could win you roughly $290 on $100. That shutout could very well happen on Sunday. ESPN NFL analyst Ben Solak is predicting it will.

This team isn’t very good. Nobody has to sugarcoat that.

Vrabel’s 2018 Week 2 culture moment set the tone for years

Vrabel and Saleh each had an abject disaster debut game as the head coach of this franchise. The disaster level was the same, but for very different reasons.

2018’s Titans season kicked off in Miami in a loss vs the Dolphins that was interrupted by nearly four hours of weather delay, causing the game to last over seven hours to become the longest game in NFL history. 

Within the actual game, the Titans were decimated by injuries to some of their most important offensive players. Pro Bowl tight end Delanie Walker was lost to the season with a lower leg fracture. Left tackle Taylor Lewan was literally knocked out on the field and was in concussion protocol. This game was the moment when starting quarterback Marcus Mariota suffered the nerve injury in his throwing arm that caused issues throughout the entire season. 

In Vrabel’s second game as Titans head coach, Tennessee beat the Houston Texans 20-17 as a massive underdog with two back up tackles, a back up QB, and missing their best playmaker.

The two touchdowns scored that day were safety Dane Cruikshank catching a fake punt pass from fellow safety Kevin Byard, and a Taywan Taylor screen pass from Blaine Gabbert. 

It’s not that Saleh doesn’t have buy-in from the locker room, and it’s not that Vrabel needed extra buy-in at that point either. But that was Game 2 of the Vrabel era, and it was a massive culture tone-setter for the next three, four years. That win screamed “we’re going to figure this out one way or the other.” It was the first of what became many more Vrabel moments of pulling a rabbit out of his hat, like beating the Buffalo Bills when half the team had COVID on a Tuesday night, having the most injuries in the history of the NFL in 2021 and still earning the No. 1 overall seed in the AFC. That Houston game was the first example of all of it.

Titans face an urgency test in Week 2 that could define 2026 trajectory

Freeze: The Tennessee Titans don’t necessarily need to win in Week 2. But they need to prove something, and everyone watching will know whether they did or not by the time the final whistle blows Sunday.

That’s the takeaway from a week spent talking to coaches and players inside the building. The Titans are coming off a lifeless Week 1 performance that raised familiar questions about whether this team is any different from the Tennessee squads that have frustrated us for years. The answer from the coaching staff and the locker room has been consistent: this is not the same old Titans. This team has potential. It will grow. It will look a lot better by the end of the season than it does right now at the beginning. They aren’t what they showed us in Week 1.

Fair enough. But if all of that is true, then the urgency in Week 2 has to be palpably different.

Will Saleh’s Titans show that same fight?

Now the question becomes whether Saleh will do anything remotely close to this against Philadelphia. Or will he punt on fourth-and-4 in plus territory, down by a touchdown again, like he did against the Jets?

What do the Titans have to lose? I don’t think Tennessee had enough desperation in the opener or enough awareness of the losing situation this fan base has watched for years. I don’t even know if the fan base that’s still bought in and still caring is expecting or needing the Titans to win this game for them to continue caring. The bar is that low.

The answer to these questions could reveal a lot about where this Titans rebuild is actually headed under Saleh. The record might not change much either way. 

But the tone, the urgency, the willingness to scratch and claw when the math says you shouldn’t win, that’s the page from Vrabel’s book worth studying.

We’ll know it when we see it

Freeze: The Week 1 performance had stretches of lifelessness that simply cannot carry over. If this coaching staff and these players are right about who they are and what they’re building, the evidence has to start showing up now. Not necessarily in the win column, but in the effort, the nastiness, the energy. The concept of the “urgency” they need to show is hard to define with specifics before the game is played. It’s one of those things where you’ll know it when you see it. There needs to be a tangible difference in how the Titans play, in how they compete, in the way they carry themselves from the opening snap through the fourth quarter.

By the time Sunday’s game ends, we’re all going to have a clear answer about whether this team showed us something different. Did the Titans come out with that palpable change in intensity? Did they look like a group that has genuinely moved on from the malaise of Week 1? Or did we get more of the same?

The bottom line is that the Titans don’t have to win this game to prove their point. But they have to compete in a way that validates everything the building has been saying all week. Whether Sunday delivers that answer or confirms the skeptics, we’ll have a much clearer picture of what this Titans team actually is right now.