Titans Spiral in Loss to Jaguars as Cam Ward, Jeffery Simmons Air Frustrations

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – This terrible team provides something bad every week. So we search for degrees of dreadfulness, grades of gruesome, notches of negligence.

For three consecutive weeks they looked a smaller score of brutal – losing by single digits, getting improvement from the rookie quarterback, finding some gains.

Tennessee Titans running back Tyjae Spears, left, is hit by Jacksonville Jaguars defensive end BJ Green II (95) during the second half of an NFL football game Sunday, Nov. 30, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Tyjae Spears gets crunched against the Jaguars/ ASSOCIATED PRESS, George Walker IV

And then this: A game with more personal fouls than points, with Ward’s lowest net yards gained per pass attempt (2.95, his lowest since opening day), four three-and-outs and five punts, three fumbles with two lost, no takeaways and a real challenge to feel like there was a lot of passionate output or meaningful input.

Jaguars 25, Titans 3.

This has been a lifeless team at times, and it put a 3-hour, 18-minute candidate for most lifeless game in evidence, unless you were measuring life by Arden Key or Julius Chestnut starting fights or total personal foul penalties.

That put Peter Skoronski in position to answer a challenge to prove guys still care. 

“We do, because I can feel the frustration in this locker room right now,” he said. “I don't think that frustration exists if people don't care. I think we're all pretty pissed off right now. It doesn't matter if we're eliminated or what our record it is, we want to go out there and try to win and put a good performance and that wasn't that.

“And I feel a lot of frustration about that and I come to work to try to be the best player I can. So we care. I know I feel the guys in this room working hard and care.”

That also provided Jeffery Simmons with a chance to single out the qualities needed in the team’s next coach.

“Once we get thorough this season, we’ve got to do a lot of self-reflecting. Whoever comes in to be this head coach, we need somebody who’s going to lead this football team. That’s it. We’ve got to figure it out….

“We’ve got five more games. The culture and everything have to be better around here. We’ll figure that out when we get to that.”

Official statistics show Tennessee with 10 penalties for 86 yards and four first downs. But the Titans were flagged 15 times. Two wound up declined, three offset.

In total, six calls against them were personal fouls: 

Unnecessary roughness on Jeffery Simmons
Roughing the passer on Arden Key
Unnecessary roughness on Key (declined)
Roughing the kicker on Mike Brown
Disqualification on Brown (offset)
Unnecessary roughness on Kaiir Elam (offset)

That’s an undisciplined team. 

“Everything is just self-inflicted,” Ward said. “It's been like that the whole year and it was like that today.”

“It's sloppy,” Mike McCoy said. “You look at the whole thing, you have 10 penalties, two turnovers, some big plays were given up. We weren't very good on third down offensively, where that's where we had been better the past couple weeks.

“I think it was 2-of-12 or whatever. That's never going to be good enough. So there's a lot of things—it was a sloppy game all around.”

All that mess suggests they weren’t ready. After coming off a 30-24 home loss to the high-quality Seahawks, McCoy seemed pleased and the locker room was generally upbeat. 

Did that factor into a holiday practice week? I can’t say. This team is pretty loose by Wednesday every week.

But McCoy isn’t a good coach and he and his team and talking over and over and over about the same issues which are a huge sign of a bad team – one that can identify the problems but is unable to fix them.

The Titans got down to three penalties in losses to New England and at Indianapolis in Weeks Eight and Nine, respectively. Since then: 7, 9, 10 and 10.

Where is the progress, the improvement?

Is it, as I posit over and over, overmatched players unable to handle their matchups?

Now, maybe some disinterest?

McCoy insisted they are interested, but he can’t say otherwise without indicting himself. He also said he knows “the type of people that we have in that room.”

How selective can the Titans be in choosing personalities while they are churning their roster and trying to patch holes and figure things out? 

When they are still filling gaping holes left by wild swings and misses like Caleb Farley, Treylon Burks and L’Jarius Sneed. When they are still trying to figure out if JC Latham and T’Vondre Sweat can be real contributors and culture fits? While they are trading away three key defenders?

Sure, Mike Borgonzi made a statement getting rid of Jarvis Brownlee, but do we think there is any real culture setting going on? This is a team that is regularly committing self-inflicted negatives – something Brian Callahan spent the entire offseason harping on reducing.

McCoy isn’t setting any culture when he’s a cultural problem himself, a beta old-school coach in an alpha new-school league.

I’ve told you that plenty, Simmons is saying so now.

The coach said would have gone on fourth-and-2 on the game opening drive from the Jaguars’ 10, but not on fourth-and-3. The Titans went ahead 3-0 and never got close to scoring again.

And McCoy actually told us he predetermined they’d go needing 2 yards, but kick needing 3. Those three feet were an incredibly important distinction for a nothing-to-lose team and for a coach who’s insisted since he took over six games ago that game flow guided him on fourth-down decisions. The way he spoke of it, he determined the game flow awfully early.

I argue that players mailing it in isn’t generally a thing – because what they put on film determines their value moving forward and they need to maximize value for as long as they can.

Skoronski was upset, and he saw others feeling the same. I trust him and believe him. I also saw a big penalty offender in Key not seeming particularly remorseful. Several others said they didn’t know what needs to change. 

The level-headed Ward stayed with his top theme. 

“I'm big on results so, win or loss is the only thing I care about,” he said. “Strides? We haven't made any strides. We've got the same outcome for the last couple of weeks. 

“So, it's more about just winning a football game now. Don’t matter how it gets done, whether one side of the ball is playing good and the other side isn't, or special teams wins the game for us, but it comes down to just winning games.”