Titans becoming numb to close losses
It isn’t supposed to be like this. Even in his first year in the league, linebacker Otis Reese knows it.
“It definitely feels weird,” Reese said. “Me, my first year in the league, a lot of the guys that I did training camp with, they’re not here. And a lot of guys that I did Week 5 or Week 1 with, they’re not here. It’s like a whole other team. It kind of does feel like training camp.”
The Tennessee Titans lost another close one again Sunday, blowing a fourth-quarter lead to fall 20-17 at home against the Seattle Seahawks. But the team that lost to the Seahawks wasn’t really the same team that lost so many of the early season games. Twenty of the players who saw the field in the Week 1 loss to the New Orleans Saints weren’t even on the active roster against the Seahawks. Twenty-one of the guys who played in Week 8 — the first start of the Will Levis era — weren’t available against the Seahawks. Heck, there were nine guys unavailable to the Titans Sunday who played last week.
Contrast that against the Seahawks, who started 18 players Sunday who also started Week 1, and it’s tough to call this a fair fight.
Obviously these Titans are no stranger to roster turnover. The 2021 team set the NFL record for the most players used in a single season and still earned the AFC’s No. 1 seed. By the end of the 2022 season, the players on injured reserve accounted for 49.7% of the team’s spending against the salary cap.
The crucial difference is these Titans have lost games they had chances to win. These Titans are 4-7 in games decided by eight points or fewer. Their past three losses have come by a total of nine points, and they have led in the fourth quarter or overtime in all of them.
Losses add up . . . but to what?
With all of these close losses, multiple Titans admit they’re starting to feel a little numb. Defensive end Arden Key said the narrow defeats are getting so commonplace that they don’t wear on him anymore — they have graduated past frustrating. He says the defense did everything a team can to put itself in position to lose on the final drive, allowing long third-down conversions and committing penalties and lapsing in the red zone.
Safety Elijah Molden said there’s seldom ever a time he loses and doesn’t wake up in a cold sweat at 3 a.m. reliving a mistake. But he agreed with Key that it’s getting harder to wallow when the impetus for all the wallowing keeps repeating itself.
“I think that’s our seventh loss that’s been a one-score game,” Molden said. “I think we’ve had so many times where it was like, ‘Oh, that one hurt.’ They’re all close. And they’re not coming out in our favor.”
Titans coach Mike Vrabel reiterated his belief that there are no moral victories in the NFL, or in life. Even if the Titans nearly beat a playoff contender by using 10 players who weren’t with the team in training camp. Even if the Titans averaged more than 5 yards per carry behind an offensive line that started three rookies and a guy signed off the practice squad Saturday.
Even if the Titans held star receiver D.K. Metcalf to four catches despite missing four starters in the secondary, or held Seattle below 3 yards per carry without their two starting defensive tackles and with Reese making his first NFL start at linebacker. Even if they did all this without their new starting quarterback.
No moral victories.
Just weird, surreal losses that players like Reese know are weird and surreal even if they haven’t been around long enough to know anything else.
“Over camp, over training camp, over OTAs, you build that chemistry with guys,” Reese said. “Football, this game is built on chemistry. It’s a brotherhood. So when new guys come in, you’ve got to embrace them and let them know, like, we believe in you. But it definitely is challenging when you bring a lot of new guys and new faces in.”
Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at nsuss@gannett.com . Follow Nick on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, @nicksuss.