The Tennessee Titans’ playoff hopes were officially dashed in Week 15 after they suffered a 19-16 overtime loss at the hands of the Houston Texans.
The Titans are now one of six teams no longer in playoff contention, a list that also includes the New York Jets, New England Patriots, Washington Commanders, Arizona Cardinals and Carolina Panthers.
On the bright side, the Titans remain in the hunt for a top-five pick, which they’ll likely need in order to get one of the top left tackles coming out.
Tennessee currently sits in the No. 9 spot, but the team in the No. 5 spot, the Chicago Bears, shares the same record. The Titans also trail the No. 4 team, the Commanders, by one game.
But we have three weeks left in the season before the Titans’ draft position is official. For now, let’s take a painful look back at Week 15 with the biggest takeaways from Tennessee’s ugly loss to Houston.
Will Levis was far from the biggest problem
Levis had his fair share of issues on Sunday, but he was far from the biggest problem on offense. The bigger issues were the offensive line and Tim Kelly’s play-calling.
It remains to be seen how serious Levis’ injury is, although it appears he’s avoided a major one. That said, it certainly wouldn’t be the worst thing if Levis doesn’t have to play another snap behind that putrid offensive line.
The O-line is officially worse than last year
Going into this season, I didn’t think the offensive line could be any worse than last year’s, even with the Titans having limited resources to try and improve it.
I was dead wrong.
Tennessee’s offensive line gave up seven sacks in Week 15 (and got Levis hurt in the process) and is now up to 50 on the year, one more than the 2022 offensive line gave up — and there’s still three games left.
With a young, promising quarterback under center, the Titans have got to figure this thing out. Right now, it looks like they’ll need four new starters, as left guard Peter Skoronski is the only one who should be locked in for 2024.
However they get it done, the Titans simply cannot have another year of this garbage.
Tim Kelly's play-calling was a fireable offense
I’ve tried to give Kelly the benefit of the doubt in his first season as a play-caller, even with several lean weeks from the offense. However, there’s no defending what he did on Sunday.
Kelly had his worst game of the 2023 campaign, with the biggest issue being his gross negligence in trying to stick with the run — especially on early downs — even though it wasn’t working.
The play-calling was so egregiously bad, I’ve lost all faith in Kelly and would have no issue with the Titans parting ways with him right now.
That won’t happen, but at the very least, Kelly has earned every bit of the scrutiny he’s getting after that embarrassing performance.
The defense did enough
Yes, the defense wasn’t great between the 20’s and got gashed by the run, and the secondary dropped two would-be interceptions that could’ve changed the course of the game.
But the unit still only gave up 16 points in regulation, which should have been good enough for the offense to top. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.
Another missed PAT proves costly
After the Titans posted an impressive scoring drive on the opening series, Nick Folk missed the extra point, which proved costly in a game that went to overtime.
This was the second time in three weeks Folk has missed an extra point that proved to be the difference in a game. Had he made them both, the Titans might be in a much different position going into Week 16.
Tyjae Spears needs more opportunities
Another blunder Kelly made was not utilizing Spears more after it was clear Henry couldn’t get anything going on the ground. Granted, Spears didn’t have much success running the ball, either, but he did manage to average 3.3 yards per tote to Henry’s 0.6, mostly thanks to his superior elusiveness.
Spears simply looks like the better back right now, both as a runner and pass-catcher. And, with it looking like he’s the future at the position beyond 2023, Tennessee should be giving him more work the rest of the season to see how he handles a lead-back role.
