Twelve weeks into his rookie season, Tennessee Titans cornerback Jarvis Brownlee Jr. pondered the idea of moral victories.
His Titans were 2-8 and had just come off the practice field after a full Wednesday of preparing for a divisional tilt against the Houston Texans. The Titans' chances of ending the year with the No. 1 draft pick looked a lot stronger than their chances of ending the year in the playoffs. But things were, oddly enough, looking up. A few days prior, quarterback Will Levis had played his best game of the season and the defense was a few raw penalty calls from securing a huge upset against Minnesota. The opportunity to sit back and enjoy a moral victory or two was alluring.
Why not, right? Sure, things were bad. But it's not like they were getting worse.
Brownlee paused, considering the idea. Then he landed on an answer only a rookie — not yet driven cynical by the years-long grind of an NFL existence — could've offered.
"Because I think everybody’s still in shock that we’re 2-8," Brownlee said. "Just, the guys that are in this locker room, the scheme that we play. Honestly, myself, I come and wake up every day and it’s still shocking to me."
Well, now the Titans are 3-8. The playoff odds got a little better and the No. 1 draft pick speculation is tamped down for now after Sunday's 32-27 win over Houston. But Brownlee's initial shock still matches that of a fan base that had been invigorated by a busy offseason.
It featured the hiring of offensive whiz kid Brian Callahan as head coach and the courtship of his father, offensive line guru Bill Callahan, to guide the team's most maligned unit. There was the recruitment of veterans like receiver Calvin Ridley, running back Tony Pollard and cornerback L'Jarius Sneed in the primes of their careers to give this team some star power. Then there were the draft selections of tackle JC Latham and defensive lineman T'Vondre Sweat as some serious beef to build around.
And yet, after all of that, the Titans could be headed for a historically bad place. If they don't get to at least six wins, it will be the first time in franchise history that the team's winning percentage has gotten worse three consecutive seasons.
So what, if anything, can possibly be giving the Titans hope right now?
"There’s no moral victories, right?" receiver Nick Westbrook-Ikhine said, bringing up the no-no term all on his own. "But I did hear from a buddy of mine. He had a book release and he was talking about how growth isn’t always linear. That’s my initial thought. Obviously we want to be winning. That’s what growth is measured by in this league. The fact that guys are still fighting and still being resilient, I think that’s what we need to tip our hat on and see if those scales will eventually tip."
Tipping those scales in the Tennessee Titans' favor
A funny thing happened in that Minnesota loss. You see, a few weeks earlier, after a bludgeoning in Buffalo, veteran tight end Nick Vannett lamented the Titans' lack of energy and belief on the sideline. He described the on-field vibe, particularly in second halves, as "flat."
"Every team goes through it," Vannett said. "The good teams are able to go past it."
So, again. The Minnesota game. A strange sequence unfolds. The Titans get pinned at their own 2-yard line trailing 16-3 in the third quarter. Levis pulls a full-sized rabbit out of a baseball souvenir-ice-cream-hat, connecting with Westbrook-Ikhine for a 98-yard touchdown to cut the deficit to 16-10. Complementary football eludes the Titans, though, as special teams allows a 35-yard kickoff return, and the defense gives up a seven-play touchdown drive.
As the defense was giving up a backbreaking score, the offense still felt . . . kind of good?
"I remember after my touchdown, the first drive we had on offense, (Ridley) caught a deep out route," Westbrook-Ikhine said. "I was like, ‘OK, we’re about to get rolling. We’re going to take back over this game.’ I feel like I felt that kind of same energy on the sideline."
The Titans only had to wait a week to start feeling that rolling energy. In Houston, minutes after throwing a pick-six that coughed up the lead the Titans had held on to for the better part of three quarters, Levis came back out and responded by lofting a ball up the seam to tight end Chig Okonkwo.
Okonkwo dashed the distance for a 70-yard touchdown to take the lead right back from the Texans, almost exactly how Westbrook-Ikhine thought it might happen the week prior.
"There are teams across the league in similar situations as we are in the bottom of that pack," Levis said. "We feel like the football we’ve put on tape and just how we’ve prepared and how we’ve strained every single game that we weren’t going to be seen as a team that’s given up. It’s a credit to everybody for just powering through, blocking out all the noise, keeping the blinders on."
That's the kind of thing Callahan would call an "under-the-surface improvement." It wasn't enough to get the Titans a win against the Vikings. But it was a step in the right direction. Process, as coaches are wont to say, comes before results.
"Those are things every week that you keep trying to stack," Callahan says. "If you ride the roller coaster and you overreact and you underreact and you think you’ve arrived when you haven’t, that’s a bad place to live. We try to manage that with as much consistency in the good and the bad as possible."
Building that consistency
Here's what has most surprised cornerback Darrell Baker Jr. with the Titans. The hitting. The physicality. The intensity on the practice field.
Now, remember: The Titans claimed Baker after the Indianapolis Colts waived him at the end of August. He wasn't with the Titans in training camp, when most of the real, honest-to-goodness hitting takes place. And yet, in a post-Mike Vrabel era, the Titans are still practicing so physically that a castoff from one of the team's archrivals was stunned upon arrival.
Consider this one of those areas where the Titans have a different impression of themselves than the outside world does.
"We see it on film. We see the improvements. We see that we have a good team, we just haven’t put it all together yet," said linebacker Harold Landry III, the longest-tenured Titans player. "But there’s optimism because we know the guys we have in the locker room and we have the right people in the building to turn this thing around."
Landry compliments Callahan for the schedule he has put together, for his ability to identify which incremental improvements need to be made each week, for the ability to hit the right notes talking about things like discipline, technique and mentality.
Like Callahan, Landry preaches the virtue of the stack. Getting better isn't about fixing everything at once. It's about figuring out how to do one thing the right way, then figuring out the second thing while maintaining the first, and so on. It's arduous. It's mind-numbing. It's borderline Sisyphean. But it's how good teams are built.
There's a problem, though. Consider these quotes:
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"We bought into everything that he’s taught us and everything that he stands for and we just gotta keep stacking days in and make it about something.”
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"I like the mentality of this team, I like the way everyone is working. We just need to keep stacking days like we have been and try to get better."
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"It doesn't feel great right now, but if we just keep stacking days and get some guys back healthy, we'll be all right."
The first quote was from receiver Davante Adams, reiterating the approach Las Vegas Raiders coach Josh McDaniels was instilling in his team during OTAs in 2022. McDaniels didn't make it out of the 2023 season before getting fired.
The second quote was from running back Dion Lewis, complimenting New York Giants coach Joe Judge's approach to building the organization during training camp in 2020. Judge was fired after the end of the 2021 season.
The third quote was from New Orleans Saints quarterback Spencer Rattler on Oct. 18. His coach, Dennis Allen, was fired 18 days later.
The Titans have hope. They believe they're building things the right way. Sunday against Houston was a keystone piece of the foundation of the stack.
So many other teams have had that same belief, though. The Titans need to prove the foundation isn't a fluke.
"We’ve just got to find a way to put that together, keep coming together, stacking days, and just trusting the process," Landry said, echoing what so many have said before him. "Because we have a good process here. We just have to trust the process, keep stacking days, keep improving at practice and just go out there on Sunday and put it all together."
