Division Crown Can Salvage an Otherwise Forgettable Season

Some near-misses, wins over losing teams and a long string of defeats have made the 2022 NFL season one the Titans would rather forget.

Christopher Hanewinckel / USA Today Sports

NASHVILLE – More than a month and a half since winning their last game, the Tennessee Titans still have a chance to accomplish something of significance this season.

Thank goodness for the AFC South, right?

When the Titans take the field against Jacksonville on Saturday, they’ll do so knowing that one win – just one – will earn them a third straight division crown.

More importantly, of course, that title comes with an automatic trip to the postseason, which, if you’re counting, would make four straight for the Titans – and three straight seasons with a home playoff game.

“I think (what would be most) significant would just be winning, winning a game that has a lot on the line – that’s a playoff game,” coach Mike Vrabel said. “You win and you get to keep playing. You get to keep coming to work.”

In the grand scheme of things, making the playoffs may not mean much for the Titans (7-9), who wouldn’t likely last long in the postseason, given the team’s injury-depleted roster and its inability to win for the past six weeks.

But hey, wouldn’t it at least be nice to put something on the résumé for 2022, something to cushion the disappointment of a season that looked like it held so much more promise when the Titans beat Green Bay and improved to 7-3 on Nov. 17?

Because if the Titans don’t win on Saturday, and if they fail to make the playoffs, the 2022 obituary would look even more ghastly than it appears right now.

In that instance, the dubious accomplishments would include:

• A sub-.500 regular-season record (already assured), the Titans’ first since 2015, coming on the heels of a 12-5 season that saw Tennessee earn the AFC’s number one seed.

• A season-ending, seven-game losing streak, which would be the longest for the Titans since Ken Whisenhunt’s bunch finished off the 2014 season by dropping 10 straight en route to a 2-14 mark.

• The possibility that the Titans would not have beaten one team – that finished the regular season with a winning record. Green Bay (8-8) has a chance to finish above .500.

• Getting swept by the Jaguars for the first time since 2006, as well as losing at home to both Houston and Jacksonville (already assured) for the first time since 2004.

Yuck.

At this point, it feels like what the Titans have done best this season is – for the most part – hang tough, despite an inadequate offensive roster, and despite another debilitating run of injuries that’s seen the team place an NFL-high 34 players on injured reserve.

But at some point, being competitive and coming close isn’t much to look back on with a smile, especially considering the Titans went 0-3 in their last three one-score games, failing to win even when they managed to keep things tight.

“It’s not OK just to compete and not end up winning,” Vrabel said. “We have to win. We can go back and we can look at all these games where, `Man, you guys were really competitive, but we just came up a little bit short.’

“There’s been, throughout the last six weeks, some really, really competitive moments -- unfortunately not good enough and not consistently enough. We just have to put it altogether this week.”

Which brings us back to Saturday’s game in Jacksonville.

It’s one more chance for a flawed Titans team to grab that brass ring, one more chance to call themselves divisional champs, one more chance to make the playoffs.

Given how long they’ve been tumbling, it’s all the Titans could ask.