Winning the hardway
It took an excellent offensive day and OT for the Titans to beat their AFC South rival
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — You didn’t really think this would be easy, did you?
The Texans might be a mess this season, but they are still the Texans — the team of Deshaun Watson and J. J. Watt and all those receivers and tight ends the Titans can’t cover.
All that had supposedly changed in 2020. The surging Titans were unbeaten, the declining Texans struggling through transition, having fired coach/general manager Bill O’Brien.
This rainy, gloomy afternoon was setting up to be a statement, a demonstration of how much the balance of power in the AFC South Division had shifted toward Nashville.
Have we finally reached a point where the Titans are supposed to win easily and then go do it?
Not so much.
It still took everything they had to beat Texans at their worst.
It took a Titans team that keeps thriving in these ridiculous high-wire acts giving away a winnable game and then doing just enough to rescue it, 42-36 in overtime.
It took 601 yards of offense. It took Derrick Henry running for 212 yards and an electric 94-yard touchdown before taking a short pass 53 yards in overtime, followed by a direct snap for the game-winning score.
“We witnessed somebody taking the game over,” Titans coach Mike Vrabel said of Henry. “… He really put us on his back and carried us.”
It took Ryan Tannehill throwing for 364 yards and four touchdowns and directing yet another clutch drive in crunch time, finding A. J. Brown for a 7-yard touchdown with four seconds remaining in regulation.
No matter how this happened, it meant something for the Titans to beat this particular opponent.
The Texans aren’t just a rival for the Titans. The ties between these sides make it more personal than that. The Texans have more resembled that older brother who’s just a little stronger, a little funnier, better looking, more successful, always somehow in the way.
Just last December, the Texans picked up a huge win in Nissan Stadium that meant the AFC South. Thus, every game of last season’s Titans’ playoff run was on the road. Even that success for the Titans, in a sense, could be credited to the Texans. By resting their top players inWeek 17, the Texans assisted their divisional rival in the result that got them in. The Titans didn’t beat them straight up to do it.
In Sunday’s rematch, the Titans had to hang on for dear life. But they won.
To beat the Texans provides additional confirmation that the Titans are the team to beat in the AFC South. No matter the continued flaws — like a defense that has continually struggled to hold leads — you are what your record says you are.
What difference does it make ultimately if much of the Titans’ 5-0 start has come the hard way?
Shouldn’t have expected that Sunday, either. The uniforms gave that away.
When the Titans started stumbling away this game they’d been controlling, it all felt oddly predestined — the blocked short field goal, Watt’s sack and fumble recovery at the Titans’ 4, the missed short field goal, the 53yard touchdown strike byWatson to immediately counter Henry’s long touchdown, the interception by Tannehill after that, Watson’s fourth-down touchdown toss with 1:50 remaining.
But after three of these heartstopping victories already this season, it also felt oddly predictable that Tannehill would find a way to direct that drive to force overtime, that an undeniably clutch team would continue to be that.
It’s in that way 2020 has been so different. The Titans keep winning close games that could have gone the other way and did not.
By now, that can’t be viewed as mere luck.
Even, it turns out, against the pesky Texans.