Bengals 31, Titans 23: What We Learned

Tennessee's second straight defeat revealed the fallibility of two offensive stars and just how bad things are for one part of the defense.

The Tennessee Titans found ways to win through the early part of the season.

Now, they have to find their way back. They have dropped two in a row following Sunday’s 31-20 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals and their lead in the AFC South has vanished. At 5-2, they are tied for first with the Indianapolis Colts.

The latest defeat was a product of some familiar issues, such as third-down defense (the Bengals converted 10 of 15), the kicking game (Stephen Gostkowski missed another field goal) and, for the second straight week, a slow start.

Yet there were some revelatory aspects of the performance as well.

Here is what we learned from this latest defeat.

The pass rush is worse than we thought. Cincinnati was without four of its five starting offensive linemen, and then made a change in the first quarter to the five it did start. Yet somehow, the Titans came away with no sacks. It was the third time in seven games this season they failed to get the opposing quarterback on the ground.

To be fair, it is not as if they Bengals’ front stymied the pass rush all day. There were a couple times when quarterback Joe Burrow managed to escape. In fact, on one play in the third quarter he avoided Harold Landry three times and defensive back Chris Jackson once and ended up with a seven-yard gain.

That, however, is just as much of a problem. When guys have a clear shot at the quarterback (Jadeveon Clowney also missed two early in the game) they need to take advantage. Through seven games, however, the Titans’ defense has just seven sacks.

“We’re going to have to continue to take our chances and get them down,” coach Mike Vrabel said. “The quarterbacks in this league are going to be big and athletic, and hopefully we can get more guys there.”

For the game, the defense was credited with two quarterback hits – one each by safety Kevin Byard and defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons, none by the guys whose primary job is to rush the passer.

Ryan Tannehill is not perfect in the red zone, after all. Coming into the game the Titans had scored on 23 of 25 red zone possessions. They had 20 touchdowns and three field goals. The two times they failed to score were due to missed field goals.

In this one, the Titans got to the red zone on their first offensive possession but came away empty when Tannehill’s attempt to force a pass to A.J. Brown was intercepted.

“No doubt, no way I should have made that throw,” Tannehill said. “… I just let it rip, but there is no way I should make that throw. I should just keep scrambling and either keep it on the ground or throw it away.”

The offense got the red zone three more times the rest of the day and came away with a touchdown each time – two of them on passes. But Tannehill’s fallibility already had been revealed.

Corey Davis does have No. 1 receiver potential. The fifth-year wide receiver had his best game of the season with 128 yards and a touchdown on eight receptions. He had two of the offense’s three biggest gains of the day with catches of 27 and 24 yards, both in the first quarter.

After a stirring performance in the season-opener at Denver (seven receptions, 101 yards), Davis had just 140 receiving yards in his last three appearances. Last Sunday against Pittsburgh, he caught six passes for a meager 35 yards with a long of 7 yards.

Davis is now the first Titans receiver with multiple 100-yard games this season, and he leads the team with 29 receptions and 369 receiving yards despite the fact that he missed two games while sidelined by the coronavirus.

Derrick Henry rushing for 100 yards is not a sure thing. Lost in the misery of the defeat is the fact that Henry had a pretty good day. He rushed for 112 yards on 18 carries, his fourth 100-yard game of the season and a 6.2 yards-per-carry that is second only to his 9.6-yard average against Houston two weeks earlier.

It was the 14th time in his career that Henry has rushed for at least 100 yards – and the first time Tennessee lost one of those games. The Titans had won all three this season when he hit that milestone, six in 2019 and two each in the two seasons prior to that (2017 and 2018).

You have to go back more than four years, to Oct. 23, 2016 when DeMarco Murray ran for 107 yards on 25 carries, to find the last time Tennessee had a 100-yard rusher in a loss.

“We need to play better,” Henry said. “We need to be better as an offensive team as a whole. We’ll be better next week.”

Quality long snaps suddenly are in short supply. Beau Brinkley, the Titans’ long snapper since 2012, likes to say that he is happiest when no one talks about him because the only time people talk about the long snapper is when he makes a mistake.

So, let’s talk about Brinkley. It was not a factor in the outcome, but he practically rolled the snap back to punter Brett Kern on the PAT attempt after the Titans’ final touchdown. Consequently, Kern attempted a pass that led to him getting hit and possibly hurt.

A week earlier at Pittsburgh, Brinkley bounced a snap to Kern on a punt that also prompted Kern to attempt a pass. Brinkley was one of the first players to go on the COVID-19 reserve list during the team’s recent outbreak, and at this point it seems fair to wonder if he has experienced any lingering effects.

“We all have to do our job better,” Vrabel said when asked about Brinkley. “We all have a job to do. Mine is to coach and to manage this team.”