Offseason Lessons Prove Fruitless and Titans Bomb in Opener

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DENVER – Enough went right for the Titans to win at Empower Field at Mile High on Sunday.
 
That they didn’t, that they couldn’t, indict an organization that worked since last season finsihed to put itself in a position not to kill itself when in range of victory.
 
The Titans are 0-1 after a 20-12 loss to the Broncos, and if they want to feel some pride for being within one score of a good team, that’s a shame. They should be embarrassed at how many chances they had to take the game and the multiple ways they failed to do so.

Tennessee Titans quarterback Cam Ward (1) sits on the grass after being sacked during the second half of an NFL football game against the Denver Broncos, Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025, in Denver. (AP Photo/Eric Lutzen)
Cam Ward/ ASSOCIATED PRESS

While their coach and players shifted immediately into fractional talk (it’s just one-seventeenth of the season) and all the lessons they can take from what unfolded (the lessons they spent all offseason harping on), the weak showing from a stuck-in-the-mud organization is a flashing neon sign that says “We still have massive issues.”

A second-year coach spelled out a rule incorrectly and chose the game’s most dangerous time and geography to play his most aggressively, calling things more conservatively virtually everywhere else. A second-year cornerback said he won’t revise his game to stop drawing flags. The franchise receiver dropped two passes. The revamped offensive line helped running backs gain an average of 3 yards per carry and saw Cam Ward sacked six times. 
 
“They are not a better football team than us,” insisted Jarvis Bronwnlee, who was flagged for three penalties.
 
And the rookie franchise quarterback watched drops, took hits, settled for showing off some poise and class and then talked frustratedly and dutifully sold what he must – hope.
 
“We can be explosive,” he said. “We’ve just got to connect on the play, from myself to the receiving group.”

The Titans gained 2.4 yards per offensive play. Last year, their worst number in the category was 3.9 -- in a 31-12 win at Miami. Sunday’s 14.3 percent third-down percentage (two-for-14) on offense was also worse than anything they did in 2024.
 
Their average drive start in Denver was their own 41-yard line. They started on Denver’s 38, 24, 26, 24 and 46. From those five drives, the Titans produced 9 points.
 
“We’ve got to score,” Arden Key said. “We’ve got to put points on the board. We got four turnovers; we won the turnover battle (4-2). We’ve got to score; we’ve got to be better on third down offensively. Defensively, we had a couple of penalties on third down that we could have gotten off the field and put our offense in a better situation. But all in all, we’ve got to put points on the board.”
 
An offseason spent emphasizing the reduction of SINs, self-inflicted negatives, resulted in a debut featuring 13 penalties for 131 yards that produced six Broncos’ first downs, as well as nine plays for no gain or negative yardage that moved the Titans back 60 yards total. Last year’s high in penalties was 13, and the high in penalty yards was 113. 
 
Months of practice scorekeeping, conversations and emphasis didn’t mean they were going to come out clean. But that they came out and committed as many penalties as they had at any time during a three-win season for more yards is an incredibly bad feat, the sort that can undo Callahan even if he shows good progress with Ward because it says his messaging is not getting through.
 
Of course, when he’s got a player with utter disregard for officiating, well, I’m not sure what he’s supposed to do.
 
Brownlee built a reputation for being a handsy cornerback as a rookie, and the Titans are willing to accept a bit of it in exchange for being a physical team on the back end. He got called for illegal contact (5 yards), a 16-yard pass interference against Cam Sutton (that was arguable) and a 15-yard facemask against Sutton.
 
OK if he’s got beef with the one call. He said there was no point in asking about it. But the way he spoke after the game, he sounds completely unwilling to bend to the officials, and that’s not going to work.
 
“You control what you control, and I’ve got no say-so on the flags they throw or how they feel,” he said. “So, shit, like I said, I’m going to keep playing me, I’m going to keep doing me, I’m going to keep playing my game.”
 
Are we sure that’s going to work out week to week with the guys in black and white stripes? Don’t we need a little give and take, some adaptability?
 
The Titans need him badly when they’ve got L’Jarius Sneed on a 19-snap pitch count and they use all the pitches in the first half because who could predict there would be important scenarios where they’d need their best coverman in the second half?
 
Sneed said that was all decided by coaches. With the pace he’s been brought along, we could see his 21 snaps shoot up to what, 23 against the Rams?
 
As for Callahan, he totally mismanaged a late-half scenario with a 6-3 lead.

The Titans had the ball at their 7 with 47 seconds left and the Broncos had two timeouts. Ward threw incomplete twice to the right flat and then took a 6-yard sack, barely avoiding a safety. Johnny Hekker punted the ball back to the Broncos with 27 seconds remaining, and they needed just two plays – Brownlee’s PI and a Nix TD over Darrell Baker to Sutton for 22 yards to make it 10-6 Denver.

The Titans were fortunate that Chimere Dike took a 71-yard punt return to the Denver 24 to set up a 42-yard Joey Slye field goal to end the half. But Callahan was too anxious to push from deep in his own territory to try to get Slye a long try, and it backfired badly.
 
“I was trying to be aggressive,” Callahan said. "I was trying to see if I could get the ball moved out from underneath there, and we had kind of got in a little bit of rhythm. So I was trying to take advantage of some momentum potentially, and it didn’t really work out in our favor.”
 
In the third quarter, Callahan missed an easy chance to challenge when Ward hit Elic Ayomanor up the right side for what looked to be a 23-yard gain, with his elbow landing in bounds. He was ruled out and Callahan accepted it.
 
“Yeah, you’ve got to get a foot in-bounds too,” he said. “Which, we didn’t have a clean look at whether his foot was down as well. An elbow doesn’t equal two feet, so his foot would have had to come down as well. We didn’t have a clean look, so the call from upstairs was that it wasn’t worth challenging.”
 
But that is incorrect. An elbow does equal two feet, as does anybody part outside of a hand.

Rob Riederer, director of game management and strategic initiatives, was the guy on the headset there. But this wasn’t some mysterious rulebook nuance; this was a "One knee equals Two Feet " thing that dates way back to the title of a 1986 John Madden book and a poor, poor miss by Callahan with a postgame explanation that doesn’t loses him more ground with fans and should hurt him with players. Note Amani Hooker's immediate reaction in the top left of the frame.

Will he acknowledge it with them? He’ll certainly be asked about it on Monday by us. He has no choice but to admit he blew it.
 
If the Titans keep blowing games like this, the Ward growth isn’t going to be enough.
 
The QB made one terrific play early in the fourth quarter on second-and-8 from the Titans’ 12. He dropped back and then with pressure coming, he scooted back and to his right, into the end zone, patient and calm and he hit Ridley back over toward the middle for a simple 13-yard gain, taking the hit he needed to after letting it go.
 
It’s the sort of play that can have a lot of meaning if the Titans can string it together with others like it, with stuff that amounts to way better than 2.4 yards per offensive play and two first downs in 14 chances and free first downs on defense.
 
They are far from that, stuck in a remedial class with a thematic acronym they can’t even handle.