Some people are fans of the Titans. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Titans. This 2024 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: Tennessee Titans.
Your 2023 record: 6-11. The Titans were kinda cool for a few years. Head coach Mike Vrabel was the league’s reigning half-orc barbarian chieftain. Running back Derrick Henry tore through defenders like an Elden Ring monster. Rickety-but-resolute quarterback Ryan Tannehill completed the illusion that the Titans had just popped out of a time machine from 1977 to punish the modern NFL with handoffs.
The Titans reached the playoffs every year from 2019 through 2021 and reached the AFC championship game in 2019. They excelled at using unga-bunga tactics to humiliate AFC South rivals attempting foolish Win Now shortcuts like overpay the hell out of a big-name quarterback (Colts), hire a preening douche-biscuit of a college coach (Jaguars), and allow the corniest youth pastor in Texas to run football operations (Texans).
Alas, former Titans general manager Jon Robinson got sentimental and overpaid Henry and Tannehill, causing a cap crunch. Pro Bowl wide receiver A.J. Brown agitated for a raise before the 2022 draft, Robinson panicked, and Eagles robber baron Howie Roseman reacted like a golden retriever to the sound of an electric can opener. The Titans traded Brown to the Eagles and drafted a replacement in Treylon Burks, who is exactly like Deebo Samuel except slower, more injury prone, and less motivated.
The Titans passing game cratered without Brown. Tannehill, already duct-taped together when he arrived in Tennessee in 2019, began splintering. Vrabel voided Henry’s warranty by making him lead the league in carries in 2022 and 2023 behind a coffee filter of an offensive line.
The Titans fired Robinson in December of 2022. They fired Vrabel last January, robbing the NFL of the only Bill Belichick acolyte who didn’t act like a meth’d-up paranoiac convinced that the neighborhood squirrels were conspiring to murder him.
Henry is now in Baltimore, where his presence should remind the Ravens to run the damn ball once in a while in the playoffs. Tannehill has nothing going on and might be your cat-sitter if you give him enough notice. With all their best players and most colorful personalities gone, the Titans are a no-frills generic brand team for fans who like to watch football while munching on stale, unsalted crackers dipped in nothing.
Your coach: Brian Callahan was the protege of Cincinnati Bengals head coach Zac Taylor, who ranks among the less-impressive protégés of Sean McVay. So right away you know the Titans went dredging the bottom of the stubble-bearded, white, wannabe offensive supergenius cloning vat.
Taylor’s tactical achievement was ordering Joe Burrow to throw to Ja’Marr Chase a lot. That burst of chessmaster brilliance got the Bengals to the Super Bowl in 2021. Taylor then spent the next two years trying to come up with a second idea while Burrow started each season with a training camp injury, followed by a worrisome slump. Taylor designed the Bengals offense (photocopied McVay’s playbooks, anyway) and called their plays, so Callahan did whatever offensive coordinators who don’t handle those critical responsibilities do to pass the time. His most important duties likely involved a Keurig.
Callahan also happens to be the son of Bill Callahan, the early-2000s Jon Gruden toady who autopiloted the Gruden-built Raiders to Super Bowl 37 but didn’t bother to change the team’s audibles after his mop-haired overlord left for Tampa, allowing Gruden’s Buccaneers to intercept six passes because they literally knew what was coming. Hiring Callahan the Younger is like hiring a night watchman whose dad thought the Joker could be trusted with the keys to Arkham Asylum.
Brian thoughtfully hired dear old dad to coach the Titans offensive line; the elder Callahan is qualified for the role (he has coached the sturdy Browns line for the last few years), but the fact remains that NFL coaching remains a more blatant patronage racket than your local port authority.
So the new Titans coach possesses the combined talents of a nepo baby and a second-level connection coattail rider. Callahan is destined to lead the Titans to a 32-6 first-round loss to the Chiefs in their lone playoff appearance, get unceremoniously fired during the Titans’ 2027 bye week, and melt back into the safety of the middle of the old-boy network, just like both his father and the Titans coaches (Mike Mularkey, Ken Whisenhunt, Mike Munchak) that preceded Vrabel.
Your quarterback: Will Levis is the quarterback equivalent of the gift you buy at the gas station on the way home from work when you suddenly realize you forgot your anniversary.
Levis, the Titans’ second-round pick in 2023, is best known for putting mayo in his coffee. Mistaking beverages for sandwiches is one thing; having that be your most memorable trait is quite another. Levis was statistically ordinary and noticeably erratic at University of Kentucky in 2022, but draft analysts justified his hot-prospect status by invoking the Five Tenets of Unfalsifiable Draft Wishcasting:
- He looked better earlier in his college career (also known as the Christian Hackenberg Fallacy).
- He played through unreported injuries in his final season (but of course will enjoy perfect health when facing bigger, faster defenders).
- He didn’t have enough talent around him (as opposed to the 2023 Titans, whose arsenal included superweapons like Burks, Trevon Wesco and Nick Westbrook-Ikhine).
- Other experts are high on him, so he must be good (Blue wildebeests have a less-developed herd mentality than NFL evaluators).
- Maybe he’ll go from awful-to-awesome like Josh Allen! (Teams will be using this logic to draft big fast dudes with the accuracy and judgment of blindfolded toddlers until the sun explodes.)
Levis started nine games and endured 28 sacks while running headlong into danger as if he were trying to unlock all the fatality cutscenes in an M-rated video game. He plays quarterback like he’s driving in a demolition derby, which is almost endearing, and the shoulder/ankle/foot injuries he is already racking up will allow everyone to save face when the Titans trade him for a fifth-round pick next February.
Levis isn’t a serious quarterback of the future. The Titans are pretending he is, just as the Falcons did with Desmond Ridder and the Commanders with Sam Howell, for the same reason you may someday hand your spouse a jug of antifreeze, a plastic rose, and a box of Hostess Ding Dongs while wearing your most apologetic hangdog smile: procrastination and poor budgeting left them with no other options, and they need you to play along for the sake of their dignity.
Levis’s backup is Mason Rudolph, best known for getting slapped around with his own helmet by Myles Garrett after (allegedly) using a racial slur on the Browns defender in 2019. Rudolph has a knack for lurking on the roster until ostensible franchise saviors (like Kenny Pickett last year) irrevocably wash out, which may come in handy by mid-November. Malik Willis, a former small-college Cam Newton impersonator who can barely get dressed without fumbling his socks, is hiding at the bottom of the quarterback depth chart and hoping no one notices him.
What's new that sucks: The Titans have spared no expense to create the illusion that they are giving Levis the best possible chance to succeed. They have built a skill position corps headlined by:
DeAndre Hopkins, who was outstanding for the Texans in the late-2010s, mildly disappointing for the Cardinals of the early 2020s and is now a 32-year old chunk of salary-cap ballast (his cap hit this year is $18.3 million) who racked up impressive bulk stats in 2023 by being the only guy on the Titans roster with sharper receiving skills than the typical birch tree.
Calvin Ridley, who came back from a one-year gambling suspension last year to catch 74 passes for the Jaguars, who then happily let him sign with the Titans for $50 million guaranteed. If you focus on the stats and speed while ignoring the dropped passes (six), the miscommunications, the eagerness with which the scuffling Falcons and Jaguars gave up on him, and the possibility that he will spend his off-hours assembling four-legged parlays instead of studying next week’s opponent, Ridley’s acquisition is a real coup.
Tyler Boyd, a 1,000-yard receiver for the Bengals in 2018–19 who then settled into an uneventful second career as one of the other Destiny’s Children behind Ja’Marr Chase. Boyd was jettisoned by the skinflint Bengals and signed to a one-year deal by the Titans during the post-draft free agency flea market. Boyd brings experience, knowledge of Callahan’s system, and all the other standard justifications for signing an over-the-hill role player who will keep his job despite being outperformed by a sixth-round pick in training camp.
Running back Tony Pollard, whom the Cowboys thought so highly of that they replaced him with the two kids who follow Jerry Jones around his superyacht with a decanter of Johnnie Walker Blue and an ice bucket, plus the reanimated corpse of Ezekiel Elliott. Pollard is ostensibly more “versatile” than Henry, because he’s equally forgettable as both a rusher and receiver, while Henry was below average as a receiver but a reminder of everything we have loved about football since childhood as a rusher. For an offensive megamind like Callahan, balance is everything.
Also among the rushers and receivers: Treylon Burks, master of the four-yard screen pass and charter member of the Injury of the Month club; Tyjae Spears, a 23-year old running back with arthritic knees; Nick Westbrook-Ikhine, a Madden-generated slot receiver hard-programmed onto the Titans roster (the team’s servers crash if they try to cut him) and tight end Chigoziem Okonkwo, who is actually pretty good but will lose receiving opportunities to all the big name/salary refugees from your 2019 sixth-place fantasy lineup.
The Titans traded for former Chiefs cornerback L’Jarius Sneed, then signed the borderline Pro Bowler to a reported four-year, $76 million contract. Sneed is good, but paying a premium for veterans after finally shedding your premium-paid veterans is like trying to escape a bad mortgage by remodeling your kitchen. (We’ll eat out less!) By the hypothetical time the Titans become competitive, Sneed will be the veteran that they will be trying to get rid of to clear cap space.
The Titans also signed Jamal Adams, an itsy-bitsy pass rusher masquerading as a safety. Adams is a liability in coverage, knows the names of all the MRI lab technicians’ spouses and, now that the league has figured him out, blitzes with all the effectiveness of a hummingbird crashing into a storm window. His last good year was 2020, making him another fine addition for a team that is still trying to win Super Bowl 54.
What has always sucked: The Titans have such a nondescript national profile that they decided to wear Houston Oilers throwback uniforms last year just to see if anyone noticed. The Titans were originally the Oilers, but they left Houston in such a rush in 1997 that they lacked a stadium or team nickname. Obviously, this was a historic event worth commemorating, so the Titans took the field with little derricks on their helmets against the division-rival Texans, causing fans of a certain age to fear we were having ministrokes/LSD flashbacks and hallucinating the not-so-hot Houston-on-Houston action.
The Titans plan to baffle viewers with the Oilers throwbacks again once this season. They might as well cosplay as University of Tennessee or the Memphis Showboats now and then, too. Their regular uniform has the personality of a Nike Air Monarch and their logo looks like it was rejected by the Southwest's fourth-largest manufacturer of carpet tacks, so any change would spice things up a bit.
What might not suck: Ridley is blessedly talented and impossible to cover when his mind/body/spirit are in the same area code and his FanDuel app is disabled. Hopkins can still outjump your average below-average AFC South cornerback when the ball is nearby. A rebuilt offensive line featuring two straight first-round picks (J.C. Latham, Peter Skoronski) should be closer to code than the balsa wood structures the Titans erected in front of Levis and Tannehill for the last two years.
Defensive linemen Jeffery Simmons and Harold Landry are excellent and under-appreciated. The Titans are paying them like they are prime Aaron Donald and J.J. Watt, but the veteran defenders will allow them to win a few low-scoring slugfests against fellow bottom-of-the-standings placeholders.
The best thing about the 2024 Titans is that most fans can safely ignore them. All but two of this year’s Titans games will be early-afternoon Sunday kickoffs, meaning even sports bars with Sunday Ticket and 200 televisions will only show Titans-Colts mediocrity fests on one screen next to the kitchen. And since the Titans could be wearing their throwback 1975 Memphis Southmen uniforms, you might not even know who is playing.
HEAR IT FROM TITANS FANS!
Charlie:
My team sucks, and they’re about to suck so quietly that few will notice they’re there at all. But at this juncture, I can’t really even enjoy hating them, nor can I justify getting behind them. That’s the unique purgatory of cheering for a team with a brand new (dull-as-dishwater) head coach and a young (cannon-armed yet pigheaded) quarterback that likely sucks but whose suckitude can be scapegoated on the previous regime. Every strong opinion you want to have as a fan is basically unfair, and every player and coach has been gifted some benefit of the doubt. I hate it. It’s like sports agnosticism. There’s no way of knowing for certain whether coach nepo-baby and mayo-boy are all that good or all that bad, and there’s not going to be enough of a sample size any time soon to justify spicy takes, so as fans, we’ll just nod along as the identity-free Titans joylessly scrap their way to 6-11. Maybe they’ll celebrate the season by drafting a right guard in the first round. If we’re really lucky, they’ll fire two kickers mid-season – although that has more of Vrabel flavor to it, and this franchise is about to embark on a flavor-free journey for the next two decades.
And while watching the Titans muck their way through the awkward first stages of rebuilding a mediocrity machine, we’ll no doubt be treated (by broadcast crews) to shots of the hole in the ground next to Nissan Stadium where the new taxpayer-funded domed stadium will go. Can’t wait to be reminded that our city leaders were too chickenshit to even pretend to negotiate with the team, in essence dooming the city’s financial viability for our children and their children. But we wouldn’t want to rob those children of the experience of watching the blandest team in the league play indoors on a perfect 65-degree fall day. The best possible outcome for the season is for the hole in the ground to swallow both stadiums, along with our irredeemably shitty downtown.
Ilissa:
I was 13 when Kevin Dyson was tackled one yard short of winning the Super Bowl. I used to think nothing could hurt me as a fan worse than that moment.
Until I had to face the fact that we had a generational running back and we utterly wasted it.
Dylan:
The forthcoming Netflix doc covering both the Titans 2000 Super Bowl run + the 2009 murder of Steve McNair will bring up plenty of old traumas from my adolescent years in Nashville, and still won’t be as depressing as the Titans upcoming season.
Dan:
Because we are located in Tennessee, 2/3rds of our shithead fan base always values the University of Tennessee VAWLS over anything the titans do even though the former hasn't been nationally relevant on a consistent basis since the Clinton administration. The titans snagged the AFC one seed in the 2021 season and the orange clad mouth breathers in our fan base were more excited that good ole rocky top got to the clay travis asshole bowl on the back of a thrilling 7 win season where our signature win was pre-good mizzou. The coon skin hat humpers are still FURIOUS that the titans drafted will levis instead of 50 year old one legged hendon hooker who the lions basically relegated to the phantom zone in the off season thanks to a giant extension for Goff.
Speaking of levis, is he good or bad? I dunno and we may not know for another couple of seasons right as his rookie contract is expiring along with the contracts for all the high priced receivers (who are only a couple of years away from being eligible for social security) we signed in the last two offseasons. So we may have to break open the entire bank for a QB with no money left over for top tier weapons. Good thing we got rid of AJ Brown for a guy who would struggle to make a UFL roster and something called nick westbrook-ikhine!
Nashville is overrated as hell. In exchange for no state income taxes you get a shit bar scene run by MAGA junkies and general shitheels who spend entire weekends trying to get into the pants of bridesmaids unsuccessfully. You could get better hot chicken sandwiches at most hardees. Tennessee is ALWAYS one of the first states called for Trump on election night.
Fuck Jon Robinson with Julio Jones's hamstring.
JK:
When the team announced they were building a new stadium, I asked my very conservative friend what he thought about taxpayer funds being used for the project. His response:
I hate it here.
Submissions for the NFL previews are now closed. Next up: Atlanta Falcons.
