 |
Titans head coach
Jeff Fisher
|
Before the season began, many experts believed the Titans would win the Super Bowl. A
month into this new season, they’re just hoping they can win a couple of games.
That is how quickly fortunes can change in the National Football League when the
chemistry isn’t right. You protect your biggest names, like Steve McNair and Eddie
George and Samari Rolle, from salary-cap defections and import a potential big addition to
your defense in the person of former Pro Bowl pass rusher Kevin Carter, and you believe,
as Jeff Fisher and Floyd Reese did, that you can survive the little hits that chip away at
your foundation. But seemingly, the Titans have not survived.
While they kept their stars intact this offseason after going 26-6 the last two years,
they lost the little guys few people noticed until the games were played and defeat piled
upon defeat.
People like FB Lorenzo Neal, whose punishing blocks so often sprung George free. No
question George is a talented and powerful runner, but there is more to gaining 1,200
yards or more a season for each of the past five years, as he has done, than simply
running alone.
You need someone to run behind, and that was Neal, who today is throwing his crushing
blocks for Corey Dillon in Cincinnati, one of the Titans’ AFC Central rivals. That he
is missed is obvious in many ways, not the least of them being the fact that the Titans
opened what had been predicted by many to be their Super Bowl-championship season with
three straight defeats. Far more damning than those three losses was the manner in which
they came — with the Titans unable to run the ball, a staple of their philosophy
since head coach Jeff Fisher first arrived.
As Game Four against the tough Buccaneers loomed last week, the Titans could no longer
count on doing what they had relied on for success the past two years. They could no
longer count on running the ball or stopping the run. One of the reasons for the former
was the loss of Neal. Two of the reasons for the latter were the losses of S Marcus
Robertson and CB Denard Walker, tough players whose value has increased in their absence.
"They lost a true fullback," Ravens S Rod Woodson said of the Titans after
his team had stuffed them 26-7 in a game in which Tennessee converted only 2-of-14
third-down attempts and, worst of all, surrendered their bread-and-butter when they twice
declined to run on 3rd-and-1, opting to throw a failed screen pass on one of those plays
and try an option pass that was intercepted by Woodson on the other.
That is how slim the difference is between winning and losing in the NFL these days. As
good as the Titans have been the past two years — and arguably they have been among
the two or three best teams in the game — you lose two or three small parts of your
infrastructure, and there is nothing to replace it with.
"You lose a certain team chemistry, and it’s hard to get that back,"
Woodson said of the struggling Titans.
Certainly, Fisher will find a way to win some football games before the year is out,
but with a few losses in personnel that seemed small at the time, plus a bit of age and
injury added to George and McNair, and everything is different. Dominance in time of
possession and on the scoreboard are gone. Every game is now a struggle because the Titans
cannot play the way Fisher wants them to.
Heading into Week Five, a once-proud running game was suddenly ranked 28th in the NFL,
and a defense that so often shut down opponents also was ranked 28th. George was averaging
only three yards per carry after three games, and his body seemed to be giving out almost
weekly after five years of taking a brutal pounding that has made him old before his time.
The Titans may have finally broken into the win column last week with a 31-28 victory
over the Buccaneers, but Tennessee’s problems hardly disappeared. After all, the
Titans’ defense allowed four touchdowns, and George averaged only 2.9 yards per
carry.
George suffered a severe toe injury last season that has never quite healed, and now he
is saddled with a minor ankle problem as well. Worse, he is getting hit at or near the
line of scrimmage far more than he used to, because Neal is not cracking open running room
for him at the point of attack.
Being an NFL fullback these days is among the most thankless jobs in sports. Seldom do
you get the ball, and even less seldom does anyone notice what you contribute until the
man running behind you begins running nowhere — and by then it’s too late.
The NFL team average after four weeks this year was 102 rushes for 406 yards, or 4.0
yards per carry. The Titans had run only 64 times for 239 yards, a 3.7-yard average. The
difference is subtle but profound because running and stopping the run is what the Titans
were built on.
When you suddenly have neither, what is there to fall back on? That is what Fisher must
try to figure out at a time of year when there are few good answers and a lot of hard
questions.
"Right now," Titans DE Jevon Kearse admitted last week, "a lot of us are
in disbelief. With the talent we have, to start 0-3 doesn’t seem right. Right now, I
think a lot of us are in denial."
That is natural for a team that had not lost two consecutive games since 1998, but the
Titans cannot deny the obvious. They can’t deny that in their effort to afford the
big-ticket items in their lineup, they may have punched their own ticket, and it
doesn’t seem to be one that will take them to New Orleans in February anymore.
Ron Borges is a columnist for the Boston Globe. |
