That's Progress

This is all Al’s fault.

No, not that Al. The other one.

Maybe the bad karma that malingered around town from Al Gore’s losing campaign wafted across the way—his MetroCenter headquarters was just a stone’s throw from the Titans’ practice facility, you know—and settled on the football team. Hey, that’s as plausible an explanation as any for the apparently inexplicable funk that possessed Jeff Fisher’s squad, who stumbled short of their goal Sunday, on their home turf, in surprisingly Gore-like fashion.

The parallels between their respective meltdowns are eerily compelling. Gore had the advantages of a popular incumbent administration, prosperity, peace, an opponent with less intellectual curiosity than Dan Quayle, and a 500,000 lead in the popular vote. The Titans had the home field, a week’s rest, an opponent that earlier went five entire games without scoring a touchdown, and a solid lead in the statistical indicators. It took some doing, but both found ways to lose.

With the Titans, however, there were no easy alibis, no butterfly ballots, no deus ex machina in the robes of the U.S. Supreme Court. There were only themselves.

For all its shocking effect on Nashville, the reasons for Baltimore’s 24-10 win were plain enough. And in hindsight, the cracks in the dam were there all along, despite the structure’s apparent formidability.

Though Al del Greco, for example, has contributed more than anyone’s fair share of game-winning plays, his earlier muffs against Jacksonville and the Ravens provided cause for concerns that proved well justified. He shanked one field goal try that any rookie kicker is expected to make, and he failed to get enough elevation on two others that were blocked. One was returned for the decisive touchdown, on a stunning play from which Tennessee never recovered.

Del Greco’s career may not recover either. But the responsibility for the loss is far from his alone. For all the horsepower of their offensive engine, the Titans have sputtered all season once they reach opponents’ 20-yard lines. Well, guess what? Their special teams, which otherwise played with uncharacteristic blundering, delivered not one but two blocked punts deep in Baltimore’s end of the field. On both occasions, the Titans offense generated nothing. Instead of scoring 14 points that might have put the game beyond the Ravens’ flying range, they posted only 3. And though they didn’t lose the game until late in the fourth quarter, they failed to win it on those two missed opportunities.

For all the precision and discipline their style of play demands, the Titans have suffered some puzzling lapses (seven turnovers against Cleveland, four in one half against hapless Dallas). Against the Ravens, Tennessee gored itself with costly penalties on special teams—three by Dainon Sidney, who might be well advised to update his résumé.

Even steady Eddie George, the rock on which Tennessee’s house is built, had provided an earlier foreshadowing of the play that went most cruelly against the Titans. Though he has become a creditable receiver, George at times has dropped passes that could have produced big plays. (Remember the season-opener at Buffalo?) That tiny chink in the armor proved fatal when Eddie left a catchable ball hanging in the air, and Baltimore’s Ray Lewis snatched it to provide the coup de grace to the Titans’ Super Bowl hopes.

Yet even the clarity of hindsight cannot render the team’s defeat any less stunning to Titans fans—many of whom had made travel plans to Tampa. And as silencing as the team’s fourth-period collapse was to the crowd at Adelphia, it became even more jaw-dropping when the magnitude of Tennessee’s statistical dominance was revealed.

The Titans moved the chains 23 times, compared to six for Baltimore. They held the Ravens to a punky 134 yards in total offense. They ran 81 plays to Baltimore’s 43 and held the ball better than 40 of the game’s 60 minutes. Had you told the Titans beforehand that they would so thoroughly hog the football and so utterly stifle the Ravens’ offense, probably not one would have imagined that they would lose.

But for all their precisely engineered control, the Titans couldn’t prevent chaos—on which Baltimore thrives—from breaking out on the three plays that swung the game: the two blocked field goal attempts and the Lewis interception. In spite of Fisher’s meticulously crafted plans and careful preparations, the dinosaurs somehow still escaped from the park and wreaked havoc.

For whatever consolation it offered, it was certainly possible, after watching this old-school slobberknocker, to argue that Tennessee fielded the better team. But only the most jaundiced Titans partisan would suggest that Baltimore didn’t deserve to win.

That’s what can make losses in football—a game played with a capriciously bouncing oblong ball—so stinging. And it’s what makes a trip to the Super Bowl so agonizingly difficult to achieve, even for the best team in the NFL.