Titans coach Bones Fassel all but predicted Chimere Dike’s punt return touchdown vs Chargers five days before he broke massive franchise cold streak

The Titans knew something about Chimere Dike’s return touchdown before it happened.

Easton Freeze — Tennessee Titans Beat Writer
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The Tennessee Titans jumped out to an early lead on the heavily-favored Los Angeles Chargers in Week 9 with a Cody Barton pick-six. Exotic! Then, they parlayed their strange scoring day with a 67-yard punt return touchdown from rookie Chimere Dike.

This exciting play immediately brought two things to mind: that it’s been an astonishingly long time since the Titans returned a punt for a touchdown, and that special teams coordinator John “Bones” Fassel gave an awfully strange answer on this topic last week…

Chimere Dike scores a rare touchdown, his coach seemed to see coming

First things first: the Titans just broke a very long cold streak. This was their first punt return touchdown since Darius Reynaud returned two for scores against Jacksonville on Dec. 30, 2012.

And it was their first special teams return touchdown of any kind since A.J. Brown’s kickoff return touchdown at Indianapolis on Nov. 29, 2020, which you may remember as an onside kick attempt that he jumped.

Dike nearly had one of these in Week 2, when he had a punt return touchdown called back because of a questionable block in the back call on Cedric Gray. It’s felt like an inevitability that he’d break one eventually because he’s been the best returner in the NFL so far this year.

He’s legitimately inserted himself into special teams All-Pro consideration as a rookie, which would be remarkable. And he’s beginning to get some national recognition for it, too.

The second thing I thought about was our press conference with Fassel this past Tuesday. It struck all of us as pretty strange at the time, and now it feels even more like he knew something early in the week of prep. ESPN’s Turron Davenport asked Fassel about hoping to see Dike break one eventually, and his face curled up into a wry smile as he said this:

“That’d be a good talk this week. I can’t believe you asked that. It’s like you were in my and Coach Rayna (Stewart’s) office yesterday. I’ll leave that alone for now, but yes.”

I highly recommend actually watching the video to see how he said it. What did he know? Clearly, they’d already identified an opportunity, and the Titans capitalized on it early.

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