Veteran Titans preaching the ‘move on’ mentality
CLEVELAND — In a moment of stress, you've almost certainly had a friend, parent, boss, teacher or coach hit you with: “So what? Now what?”
Adversities occur. Acknowledge them. Move past them. Be better.
Or, think about it the way Tennessee Titans defensive end Arden Key did, evoking a familiar phrase after his team's 27-3 clobbering Sunday at the hands of the Cleveland Browns.
“We got our ass whupped,” Key said. “Things happened. Now it's up to us to address it.”
The Titans (1-2) were all sorts of out of sorts Sunday. The offense never got in rhythm. The defense never knocked the Browns out of rhythm. Issues kept getting worse instead of going away. And the Titans never so much as threatened to make things hard on the Browns after halftime.
Tight end Chig Okonkwo admitted there was a mounting sense of frustration on the sideline. When asked if that made it harder for the Titans to get something good going, he quoted the old philosophical quandary about whether the chicken or the egg came first.
In some ways, figuring out the answer is more important than correcting coverage busts or designing the most effective pass protections. Weekto-week NFL parity is unlike anything else. It's how a team like the Dallas Cowboys, one of the favorites to win the Super Bowl, can lose by two scores to the Arizona Cardinals, the odds-on favorite to have the No. 1 pick in next year's draft, as what happened Sunday.
The gap between the best and worst is so much smaller than people like to acknowledge. More often than not, the teams with the best records aren't the ones that have the highest highs. They're the most consistent teams. The best squads can see a bad play or bad game, and like Key says, address it and move on.
Veteran safety Kevin Byard said his approach to football is to clear his mind after every snap. He believes in feeding off the energy of previous plays but not stewing in the moment. He wants to have the same mentality whether he just made a diving interception or ceded a touchdown. And he preaches that outlook to his teammates, though he admits it's easier said than done.
“It is. I'm not even going to lie. It is,” Byard said. “You've just got to draw on experience. That's something you try to preach to some of the other guys and the younger guys that ‘Hey, yeah, it's tough.' We might've had a tough game but at the end of the day we've still got, what, 14 more games left in the regular season? We've just got to keep going.”
Byard, who is in his eighth NFL season, all with the Titans, says he took losses a lot harder when he was younger. Nail-biters and blowouts alike. Now he tries to keep everything in the perspective of a long season.
Not everybody thinks that way. Receiver DeAndre Hopkins has been in the league 11 years and he said Sunday that “frustration is always at an all-time high whenever you lose.” Derrick Henry has been in the league as long as Byard, and he admitted he still takes losses like Sunday's hard.
“But you've got to have a growth mindset,” Henry said. “Flush it after 24 hours and then move on.”
Key's perspective might be the most interesting. The Titans are Key's fourth team in four years. His 2020 Las Vegas Raiders started 6-3 but missed the playoffs. His 2021 San Francisco 49ers started 2-4 but still made the NFC Championship. His 2022 Jacksonville Jaguars started 2-6 but went on to win the AFC South and a playoff game. He said he believes the best teams figure out how to overcome things going awry with proper communication.
It's about going into meetings and owning up to mistakes. It's about correcting those mistakes in practice and always having a move-on-to-the-nextplay mentality. It's about trusting what you know in games and not trying to do more than your individual responsibility.