The Tennessee Titans won their second preseason game of 2026, beating the Seattle Seahawks 19-16 at Nissan Stadium with 10 fourth-quarter points to complete the comeback. The victory on the scoreboard, however, does not tell the full story. The Titans’ starters looked anything but sharp early, falling behind 16-3 after the first quarter against a Seahawks team that did not play any of its starters. Robert Saleh’s group played all of theirs.

That disconnect between the final score and the first-quarter product is going to leave a lot of fans feeling uneasy heading into the final stretch of the preseason. So let’s go through the winners and losers from the Titans’ win over Seattle.

Winner: Tony Pollard still ‘got it’

Stanley: Tony Pollard is one of the more underrated and overlooked players on this roster, and the back-to-back 1,000-yard rusher continues to look like his same reliable, consistent self with pop when he needs it.

Pollard only had 2 carries for 12 yards, including a 9-yard run. The biggest play of the night for the Titans offense came on his legs, though. On third-and-5, Cam Ward hit Pollard on a swing pass that Pollard turned into a 33-yard gain down the sideline. It was the only third-down conversion for Ward’s group all game, and it came on the opening drive.

Grouping what I’ve seen from Pollard throughout training camp, including Friday’s joint practice against Seattle, this guy looks fresh, healthy, and ready to be a big-time asset for Ward in this offense.

Winner: Elic Ayomanor continues to emerge as a weapon

Freeze: On to the winners. Wide receiver Elic Ayomanor continues to look like a legitimate target magnet in this offense. He drew 3 targets with the first and second team Saturday and was open on a deep ball that Ward slightly under-threw. Many fans felt pass interference should have been called on the play, and I liked the way Ayomanor worked back to the ball to create that opportunity.

The Titans are looking to him at multiple levels of the field and across multiple elements of the route tree. He is not a one-trick pony, and he’s not a background character. With a full year of chemistry with Ward under their belts, I think Ayomanor is going to see quite a few looks on Sundays. He looked the part of a useful piece in the Tennessee offense.

Winner: Tyjae Spears flashes as creative weapon, but health remains the concern

Freeze: Tyjae Spears lands on the winners list despite the run game’s struggles. In the passing game, the Titans used him in some genuinely creative ways, and that matches what we’ve seen in practice. They’re lining him up as a receiver out of the backfield, in the slot, and even out wide at times. They’re snapping the ball directly to him. He’s being deployed as an offensive spark plug who brings juice that a lot of other players simply don’t have in their bag.

I found myself toward the end of his run Saturday saying, what are we doing? We’ve seen enough from this guy. Get him out of there. My issue with Spears is not proving he knows how to handle himself in the NFL or proving he has the juice. My issue is that he can’t stay healthy. Pack him up for the preseason. I wouldn’t have a problem shutting him down until the regular season, because that’s what continues to be the issue. He can’t get to the parts that matter. He keeps getting hurt in the meantime.

Winner: K Joey Slye is apparently Mr. Automatic

Stanley: Two preseason games in, two preseason games on the winners list for Joey Slye. He went 4 for 4 on field goals with a long of 55 yards and hit his extra point for the second consecutive week. That puts 13 points on the scoreboard from his leg alone. Slye has not missed a field goal, at least that the media has seen, since the Titans’ scrimmage at Nissan Stadium on Aug. 7. He was perfect in the joint practice against the 49ers, 4 for 4 with three over 50 in that preseason game, hit all of his field goals in Monday’s practice, connected on everything in the joint practice against the Seahawks on Friday, and then went 4 for 4 again Sunday night.

Winner: P Tommy Townsend is a drastic upgrade

Stanley: New Titans punter Tommy Townsend deserves a nod here, too. He punted four times and averaged 54 yards per punt with a long of 57. The long was only 3 yards more than his average, which tells you how consistent all four punts were. Two landed inside the 20. One was a touchback. Townsend brings hang time, distance, and ball placement that represent a significant upgrade over Johnny Hekker a year ago. The Titans paid for Townsend and they’re getting a good return so far. With the special teams coverage units looking like they have a chance to be pretty good this year, Townsend should make the entire punt unit better.

Winner: James Williams Sr. earns starting base linebacker role

Freeze: Linebacker James Williams Sr. is a role winner. He was a starter when the Titans lined up in base defense with their 4-3 front, joining Cody Barton and Cedric Gray as the three linebackers. When Tennessee went to nickel, Williams was subbed out for safety Tony Adams rather than slot cornerback Marcus Harris. That personnel grouping may be game plan dependent, but in base, Williams started. If that’s his role as the starting base linebacker and a rotational nickel piece, he has moved up significantly in the Saleh regime.

Winner: Anthony Hill… welcome to the show, rook

Stanley: Anthony Hill Jr. was all over the place Sunday night. He led the team with 7 total tackles (5 solo), grabbed an interception off Jalen Milroe, and added a pass breakup. He did not officially receive credit for a sack, but he created one by blowing right past a Seahawks offensive lineman and getting in Milroe’s face, forcing a takedown that sparked the Titans’ second-half comeback from that early 16-3 deficit.

Now, most of Hill’s production came against Seattle’s third-team offense led by Milroe in the second half. But stacking success matters for a second-round pick learning a complex position. Hill’s performance was legitimately promising, and it’s the kind of game that builds confidence heading into the regular season.

Loser: Starting defense leads the losers

Freeze: The Titans’ entire starting defense earns the top spot on the losers list. Coach Robert Saleh said after the game that he felt the defense played pretty well generally, but I’m going to push back on that a little bit. He also addressed the two touchdowns the starting unit allowed on back-to-back drives, including an explosive passing play to tight end Elijah Arroyo and a 69-yard rushing touchdown.

Saleh called both plays “hateful,” explaining that he was glad they happened in a preseason game and not in a real one. He framed them as great teaching moments and broke down what was teachable about them in his postgame press conference.

That’s all well and good, but this is the starting defense, and the front of this unit is supposed to be the entire team’s calling card. Tennessee was playing against a bunch of backups. Watching the first two drives unfold the way they did, with Seattle’s reserves executing that easily, was not super inspiring.

The defense continues to disappoint. It is preseason, and the scheme is super vanilla. Robert Saleh’s track record of putting together regular season defensive success is still the thing I think fans are fair to latch onto. But if you’re looking for anything in the preseason to reinforce your belief in his ability to make this a strong defense, you’re not going to find it. So far, so bad on that front. You just have to have faith in what he provides on paper with history and not what he’s currently showing.

Loser: Cam Ward’s ball security is inexcusable

Stanley: This is not Cam Ward himself as a whole, but Cam Ward’s ball security. For the second preseason game in a row, Ward had a play where he was too lackadaisical and too careless with the football.

In the first game, it was a 17-yard intentional grounding penalty on the second drive that killed the series. Sunday against Seattle, it was his second-to-last play of his outing (before the near-magic completion to tight end Gunnar Helm, who could not keep his feet in bounds). The Titans had second-and-1, and Ward scrambled toward the sideline. Chazz Surratt hustled from behind and knocked the ball out of Ward’s throwing hand, which was away from his body. Instead of a third-and-1 situation if Ward had simply thrown it away, it became a sack for a 6-yard loss and third-and-7.

Those two plays are inexcusable, and nobody should give Ward a pass for them. The grounding was avoidable. The fumble was avoidable. Those are big margins in a football game. They could be the difference in a turnover, a scoring drive, time of possession, or field position. Ward has to clean that up.

Loser: Carnell Tate’s ‘cold streak’ continues

Stanley: It is not the end of the world, but Carnell Tate exits his second preseason game with zero catches. He now has no receptions on 5 targets across two preseason games. Tate had a play Sunday where he could have hauled in a one-handed sideline catch that would have given everyone something to get excited about, but the ball went off his fingertips. I brought up the idea late last week before the joint practice that Tate was hitting a plateau, and the quiet stretch has continued. Outside of a fourth-and-8 play in Monday’s practice where Kevin Winston gave him a pretty heavy hit and a pass interference he drew in Friday’s joint practice against Seattle, Tate has not generated much buzz in well over a week.

Ward had a great answer on Friday about it not being a ‘cold streak’ but rather Tate playing a dependent position. Saleh also noted in his postgame press conference that Brian Daboll is not game-planning or scheming to get specific players the football in the preseason.

I’ll also mention this: AJ Brown went for 1,000 yards as a rookie in 2019. In the 2 preseason games Brown played that year, he had 2 catches for 10 yards and missed significant time during camp with a hamstring injury. Highly drafted receivers have done nothing in the preseason before and still produced big regular seasons. The Titans just need Tate to get out of this funk.

Loser: Run game dries up after promising stretch

Freeze: The final loser is the run game, and this one stings because of how well things had been cooking in recent practices and last week’s preseason opener against San Francisco. The offensive line and running backs looked impressive in that first game, followed it up with strong practices, and then dominated a joint practice with Seattle last Friday.

Once the pads went on and the tackling went live Saturday, the success dried up. Titans running back Tony Pollard carried twice for 12 yards, averaging 6 per clip, with one nice 9- or 10-yard run on his first carry. Running back Tyjae Spears went for 2 yards on 2 carries. Both backs contributed in the receiving game, which was better, but at every level of the depth chart, the Titans’ run game failed to produce the kind of dominating glimpses and sustained positive performances we saw in recent practices and last week’s game. Not discouraging, but not impressive.