NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Dennard Wilson had some things to like out of a defense that held the Broncos to 20 points in Denver. But two of his better players – Jeffery Simmons and Jarvis Brownlee -- need to pull back some moving forward.
They accounted for five of the team’s 13 penalties.
Simmons played a very good game, regularly disrupting the Broncos’ offense and forcing a fumble with a sack.
But a neutral zone infraction handed away a first down in the first quarter and an unnecessary roughness with less than three minutes left in the game hurt the Titans’ chances to get the ball back with enough time to move to a tying score.
Afterward, he was as accountable for his mistakes as I can recall him being in some time, which I saw as a solid step.
“You have to live on the edge and play on the edge, but at the end of the day you can never hurt the team and if you hurt the team, it’s not good for any of us,” Dennard Wilson said. "So Jeff understands that he can’t get the personal foul penalty, that was too much…
“He felt extremely bad. We have a thing about when we mess up, we’ve got to make it right. And this week he’s got to come out and make it right.”
Brownlee was called for illegal contact, a 16-yard pass interference and a 15-yard face mask. The PI was certainly debatable. But after the game, he spoke as if he wouldn’t alter his game at all to conform to officials.
"Look, I want him to play with the tenacity that he plays with and I want him to play hard,” Wilson said. “But the penalties must stop. We have to clean it up and I’ve been raised with the thought that if you allow it to happen, it’s not good. We’ve addressed it. We’re going to keep working on him getting his hands down at the top of the route, not grabbing, understanding when is the point to take your hand off receivers.
“At the beginning of the stage, yes be violent with your hands, move your feet. But as they start to go in the move area, we’ve got to drop our hands.”
Wilson sounded frustrated about the Brownlee penalties, saying they are unacceptable a year after he was called for nine. There will be practice work regarding them this week.
