The Tennessee Titans controlled most of today’s game at Nissan Stadium against the Buffalo Bills. It took until the middle of the second quarter for the Bills to complete a pass or get a first down on offense, and until late in the third for the Bills to run a play in Tennessee territory. But the Titans were unable to convert their yards into points, and two good drives driven by big plays were all the Bills needed for a 14-13 come from behind triumph.
I expected the Titans to struggle offensively, but they started off looking good and moving the ball with some consistency. The made it inside the Bills 40 their first possession, past midfield their second, inside the 5, to midfield, and inside the 40, but ended up with just a field goal attempt. Ken Whisenhunt’s conservatism was part of it; he punted on fourth-and-2 from the Bills 36 (defensible, on the opening drive) and again from the 39, and the field goal came on fourth-and-2 from the Buffalo 3. The last was particularly frustrating, because even a failure to convert would likely have meant good field position for the Titans given Buffalo had not done a thing on offense up to that point.
Whisenhunt’s conservatism was likely in part a product of the Titans’ ineffectiveness on the ground, struggles the Bills also went through most of the game. Excluding runs by each team’s quarterback, the Bills had 50 yards rushing on 21 carries, the Titans just 50 on 23, spread out among the several backs. When a quarterback wasn’t hitting, likely in part because of the pressure coming off each team’s right side (both right tackles struggled, and both teams trying leaving a tight end against the edge rusher with even worse results), teams struggled to move the ball. The Bills also did a pretty good job at times of contesting Titans catches, limiting their productivity.
Anyway, the game: yards were 170 to 51 at the half, and it felt like the Titans had dominated the game as much as that disparity suggested. Yet, it was just 3-0. The Titans went up 10-0; following a three-and-out, Jalston Fowler forced a fumble on a punt and the Titans had the ball inside the Bills 40. Seven plays later, Antonio Andrews found the end zone.
Yet, the defense couldn’t handle the prosperity. Tyrod Taylor had been errant and not so good up to that point, but he took off up the middle and got 22 yards on third-and-4. A couple plays later, he dashed 22 yards around the end to cut the lead to 10-7. Titans field goal (this one a kick on fourth-and-3, just to change things up), but it became the Tyrod Taylor show again. Third-and-23 from the 7, he gets 24 yards (and tack on 15 on a penalty on Zach Brown, who lost his starting job of Wesley Woodyard but still played a fair amount, I think). Jurrell Casey gets banged up, next play Taylor finds receiver Chris Hogan, who’d beaten Coty Sensabaugh’s coverage, for 46 yards down to the 7. A couple plays later, he found Hogan against Sensabaugh again, and it was 14-13 after the extra point.
Tennessee ended up having two chances to win. They couldn’t convert third-and-long, so Whisenhunt punted on fourth-and-11 from the 32 with 3:01 to play and 1 timeout. Like the earlier calls, this is a perfectly sensible decision that I might not have made (for the record, NYT 4th Down Bot concurred, though it was close). It worked out and the Titans got the ball back still needing just a field goal for the win, but Mariota was intercepted and that was that.
It’s hard to win in the NFL. We’ve seen that this game and the previous one. It was reasonable to believe the Titans were the better team for the majority of both games. But in the NFL, it’s how many points you have at the end of the game that decides the winner, and the Titans were bad at converting their dominance into leads big enough to overcome the potential failures, which in the end were actual failures. So they’re now 1-3 and 0-2 as the ludicrously long homestand is halfway over.
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