The Tennessee Titans are 0-3 and staring into the reality that they could lose to an opponent they’ve been avoiding for decades. 

Not a divisional rival. Not a conference powerhouse. The apple orchard. The pumpkin patch. Fall activities on a Sunday afternoon.

After the Titans’ sloppy, wet, 7-point performance against the New York Giants to drop to 0-3 on the season, this franchise is reaching the territory that represents the biggest nightmare for pro sports organizations: the one where their fans are completely done.

Cam Ward threw his first interception in over 200 pass attempts. The interception has been a rare thing for the young quarterback to throw, and this one might have broken the will of a fan base already running on fumes.

This moment has been coming

I’ve been feeling this coming. It’s why I called the Week 1 game against the New York Jets a must-win. It’s why I agreed with my colleague JT Ruhnke that the Week 3 road game against the Giants, who were starting backup quarterback Jameis Winston after Jaxson Dart hurt his knee, was also a must-win.

This fan base has been grasping for straws, wanting something to hold on to. Any type of hope. Any type of positive energy that’s not a loss wrapped in moral victory gift-wrapping paper and a bow on it. They got nothing. Tennessee is 0-3. The Titans are coming off back-to-back 3-14 seasons. In their last 61 games, they are 12-49.

Why 61 games? That’s such a weird number. It’s the perfect break of what the Titans were entering the 2020s and what they’ve become over the last three and a half years.

The before-and-after picture nobody wanted

The before picture was a winning football franchise on its way to a fourth straight playoff berth, a leader in its division, coming off a massive win at Lambeau Field against Aaron Rodgers and the Packers on Thursday night in primetime. Tennessee beat Green Bay in Nov. of 2022 in convincing fashion. Explosive offense, really good defense. A type of win that was the norm from 2019 to that night.

Then everybody woke up Friday morning and former Titans offensive coordinator Todd Downing was arrested for DUI on his way home after the team plane landed in Nashville.

Ever since then, the Tennessee Titans are 12-49.

The previous 61 games before that night, including the Packers win, the Titans were 40-21 in the regular season. They were 2-3 in the playoffs during that stretch, but they went to the AFC Championship Game as a wild card team and were half a football away from maybe going to the Super Bowl in Jan. 2020.

Something broke. The Titans have fired people, hired people, changed quarterbacks, changed running backs, changed PR and security staff, changed their logo, changed their jerseys, changed their primary color. 

Yet on game days, they come out with losses. 12-49 across three general managers and three head coaches.

The starting quarterbacks in this 61-game stretch tell the story on their own: Ryan Tannehill, Malik Willis, Joshua Dobbs, Will Levis, Mason Rudolph, and Cam Ward. There have been bright spots. Will Levis threw four touchdown passes in his debut against the Falcons. Levis, Derrick Henry, and Tyjae Spears pulled off a magical comeback on Monday Night Football in Miami against the Dolphins. But for the most part, the fans don’t even care about those moments anymore.

The Titans are about to lose to October

A good friend texted me Sunday after the game saying he thinks he’s just going to give up on the Titans for a while. This is somebody I never thought I’d get that text from. A true Titans fan, all the way down. He can’t handle it anymore.

The opponent the Titans are about to lose to, especially in October now that the Heat Dome is gone from Nashville, is the apple orchard and the pumpkin patch on Sunday afternoon. Fans are going to go hang out with their families. They’re going to go with their significant other, their kids, their in-laws, their parents. They’re going to do other things. At 0-3, I think that’s about to tick up in a major way.

I guarantee you a lot of Titans fans don’t even want to watch the rest of the NFL right now. The weather is great in Nashville and it’s going to stay that way for maybe four and a half, five weeks.

If Cam Ward hadn’t thrown that interception to lose the game against the Giants, a 1-2 team with a close loss to the Philadelphia Eagles would have kept people around. It’s unfortunate for Ward because he hadn’t made a mistake like that in over 200 pass attempts. All it took was that one throw to Jevon Holland in the end zone when he had three more downs and two timeouts in his pocket to break a lot of this franchise.

The Titans are 0-3. Derrick Henry and the Baltimore Ravens are next on the schedule. But the opponent Tennessee should fear most in October is a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Nashville and a fan base realizing it has something better to do.

I expect them to lose to all the fall things in the month of October.