Well, a 26-10 road triumph is certainly a nice way to start a season.
In was a game in many ways reminiscent of last year’s season-opening triumph, the Tennessee Titans stifled an opposing offense en route to a victory. Last year, it was Pittsburgh not finding the end zone until a late score. This year, it was Kansas City. Offensively, it was a run game. This year, it was some crisp passing by Jake Locker, who played very efficiently, and then a run game that took over in the second half.
For the first time, we got to see when a Ken Whisenhunt offense looked like. The Titans struggled some in the first half, with only one good drive that resulted in Locker’s TD pass to Delanie Walker and a field goal right before the close of the half after a short field, but they drove the field to start the second half for another passing tally, this one to Wright, and added three field goals. After 52 yards rushing in the first half, they added 110 in the second to continually put Kansas City on long fields. The Chiefs didn’t start a drive in the second half beyond their own 33, and averaged starting at their own 21, 10 yards behind what the Titans did.
Kansas City really struggled to find anything offensively. Lack of immediate success led Andy Reid to go to his normal pass-wacky self. The results were unsurprisingly, as a Kansas City offensive line missing one starter and breaking in several others struggled at times to protect Alex Smith. Meanwhile, the Tennessee secondary seemed to blanket the Chiefs’ unimpressive band of pass-catchers. Not until the Chiefs were down three scores in the fourth quarter did they find the end zone. The Titans immediately thereafter responded with a drive that took over half the 10 minutes then remaining, and it was lights out Alex Smith from there, including eventually his third interception of the game.
Box score standouts? Locker is certainly the biggest one, completing 22 of 33 for 266 yards and those two scores. Ryan Succop made all four of his field goals, plus Brett Kern averaged almost 51 yards per punt to contribute to Kansas City’s bad field position. The run game was balanced, with Shonn Greene leading the way at 19-71, as was the pass game with the three four wide receivers between 6 and 8 targets each. Not even on defense was there a real standout, with seven players with at least three tackles and nobody more than Wesley Woodyard’s five solo; while Jason McCourty had two interceptions, I thought both were more the result of poor throws by Alex Smith than particularly good plays by him. Still, though, defense is a team game, and the Titans played a strong defensive team game for the win.
Time to watch some more football and enjoy the win. Snap report Monday morning, more content later in the week.
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