Titans coach Mike Vrabel
After 16 weeks of the NFL season, it’s still hard to say if the Tennessee Titans are any good.
To wit: The Two-Toners have taken down both of last year’s Super Bowl teams, beating the defending champ Philadelphia Eagles in overtime Sept. 30 and then giving the Patriots their worst manhandling since the Siege of Charleston on Veterans Day.
On the other hand, the Titans also lost to the Buffalo Bills 13-12 in a game that was destined to be 13-12 from time immemorial — and somehow spent seven hours losing to the Miami Dolphins in Week One.
Sometimes the Titans looked noble in defeat. Coach Mike Vrabel, a Jack Fire-soaked Nickelback ticket stub stuck to the floor at the Florida Georgia Line House, opted to attempt a two-point conversion while down a point in the waning moments of a game against the San Diego Chargers of Los Angeles in London, proving the Titans/Oilers can’t beat the Chargers on the road no matter which city either team calls home. That one-point loss looks as good as a loss can given the Wherever-They're-Froms are 11-4.
And sometimes, the Titans, as the Titans will do, looked miserable in victory, sneaking out of Jacksonville with a 9-6 win in September. That was surprising only because the final score wasn’t 11-5.
Add all this nonsense up, mix in Derrick Henry turning into the musk ox with cheetah legs that Alabama fans promised he could be, join it up with one of the league’s stingiest defenses (led by safety Kevin Byard, who was presumably snubbed from the Pro Bowl because he’ll be in Canton at his Hall of Fame induction instead), and what you have is a 9-6 team in a win-and-in situation at Nissan Stadium Sunday night, helped in no small part by Blaine Gabbert being completely competent when forced into relief for Marcus Mariota.
Of course, that win-and-in situation comes against the Indianapolis Colts and quarterback Andrew Luck, a signal-caller the Titans have defeated ... let’s see here, take the square root, carry the one, divide by six ... exactly zero times.
As anyone with ears who has fallen asleep watching the NFL Network has no doubt heard this week, Luck is 10-0 all-time against our beloved Titans. It’s not that Luck lights up Tennessee like the TVA every time he takes the field; in fact, his career-passer rating against the Titans is 97.1. That’s fine, but it’s not eye-popping. For those of you who don’t have advanced degrees in applied mathematics and/or who like your quarterback stats a little easier to understand, Luck has 18 career touchdown passes against Tennessee in 10 games, with eight interceptions. Again, pretty good, but it’s not, say, 2004 Billy Volek against the Chiefs and Raiders. (The Titans lost the two Billy Volek Games, by the way, which is fun to remember in the same way that remembering that time you repeatedly hit yourself in the thumb with a hammer is fun.)
But, hey, the Titans have to beat him eventually, right? And what better time than Sunday, whence with a win, the team will qualify for the playoffs in consecutive years for the first time since doing so in 2007 and 2008. And no matter what happens, the Titans have locked up three consecutive winning seasons, something they’ve never done since moving to Nashville, and the first time for the franchise since the Houston Oilers notched seven straight winning seasons between 1987 and 1993.
It gets better! If the Titans win and somehow the Jags beat the Texans (I know, I know), the Titans lock up their first division title in a decade (and a guaranteed home playoff game). And if the Titans, Jags, Jets and Browns all win, unicorns will fly out of the Cumberland River and we’ll be driving our Bird scooters on top of a rainbow to the spaceport to take us to the magical planet of Flapjack, where the streets are paved with maple syrup and the ruling council of corgi puppies requires everyone to be vaccinated. Also, the Titans would get a first-round bye.
All it takes is a little more luck ... or a little less Luck.
