NASHVILLE, Tenn. – After a euphoric Week 12 win in Houston, a game with special meaning for owner Amy Adams Strunk, the Titans crashed back to earth with a brutal loss to the Commanders. Reflecting on that defeat, Jeffery Simmons said the team was "hungover from success."
A 3-8 team was hungover from success.
It hasn’t tasted success again. The Titans are now 3-13. Early next week the GM and/or president of football operations could be fired. Indications are their first-year head coach will get a second season.
Strunk dislikes the team that got the stadium in Houston that her dad couldn’t get. Those sour, failed negotiations prompted the move that’s turned out pretty well for what’s now her organization. Her family is just a couple of years away from opening its second stadium here, this one a $2.2 billion indoor palace.
If she wants to hold a grudge over having to have a second home in our great city, she can have it. Brian Callahan cast the first game as the Titans' Super Bowl.
But she needs to not give a damn about Sunday’s result against the Texans. I presume she gets that. Her football people need to make sure of it.
The Titans will be decked out in Oilers’ throwback uniforms which may make it more difficult for her to absorb a loss, to watch new Houston uniforms beat old classics. She can, however, still revel in the drunken stupor her team wound up in from 32-27 on Nov. 24 and let her football people have, at worst, the second pick in the draft.
A win and bad results elsewhere could mean a five-slot drop to seventh, a drop that Mike Herndon has pointed out is equal to the value of the 14th overall pick in the draft.
I’m not a proponent of tanking. But for this team on this day, the 14th overall pick in the draft cannot be given away, no matter who the competition, no matter the grudge, no matter the sentiment connected to the uniforms.
Do Chad Brinker and Ran Carthon have the gumption and courage to spell it out for her upfront? We know our jobs may be on the line and we know how much you like to beat Houston, but we’re being frank with you about the long-term health of the organization, which is our obligation to you. This is a rare day when losing is good for the whole operation. Brian Callahan is going to make some decisions that aren’t going to enhance our chances to win.
Tony Pollard was held out in Jacksonville because his ankle injury was getting worse (and he got the flu to top it off) and there is no reason to circle back to him, even if he gets screwed out of bonuses connected to two more TDs ($100K for seven on the season) and 1,100 rushing yards (he needs 83 for $250K). Neither would be a guarantee if he played.
Be cool and class about it and give him $175,000 after a Sunday off.
Tyjae Spears has a second concussion and is unlikely to clear the protocol in a week. Don’t even let him try.
Give the running back game to Julius Chestnut and Joshua Kelley.
Callahan has said he’ll play both quarterbacks. Let Will Levis go out as the starter in, perhaps, an interception-filled blaze of glory.
Heck, give Jha’Quan Jackson a chance to return again after four games benched to show you he won’t fumble. (I’ll bet he will.)
But the team has been talking about all the lessons it is learning, and this is a great week for more learning, especially if what it learns is that it will be able to take one of the top two quarterbacks if it loves him, ideally trade out if it doesn’t, or at least wind up with Travis Hunter or Abdul Carter.
This result needs to be free of consequences for the picker of the game-day roster, the setter of the lineup, the callers of plays on both sides of the ball, hell even for Colt Anderson.
All those verdicts should be in, and Strunk should know what she wants to do and what she needs to hear from her top employees.
The seventeenth game is free.
Please don’t give any big motivational talks to the players about what a Texans' game means to Strunk, or the pride behind that oil rig logo and those colors or how much a season sweep of the Texans would mean to her.
This team is great at losing. Give a little extra nudge and stay out of its way.