Countdown to Kickoff: 4 Days

The Titans' run of four straight seasons with identical 9-7 records is an NFL first.

The countdown to kickoff continues.

The Tennessee Titans will open the 2020 regular season Sept. 14 at Denver. That is four days away. So, today we look at one way the number four figures into the team’s recent history.

For four years it has been the same thing. At the finish, anyway.

The Tennessee Titans are the first team in NFL history to finish 9-7 four years in a row, a streak that they bring with them into the 2020 season. Unique, though it might be, much of the offseason focus has been to do better this year and bring an end to that streak.

Although the records have been identical, it would be inaccurate to say that those seasons have been the same thing year after year.

They have done it under two different head coaches, Mike Mularkey (2016-17) and Mike Vrabel (2018-10).

Twice, 9-7 has been enough to get them to the playoffs (2017, 2019) and both times they won at least one game in the postseason. The other two times they ended up a game behind the AFC’s second wild card team.

The only one among the last four in which they started 1-3 was 2016. Since then they have gotten out of the gate better. There also was one instance in which they won three of their first four (2017).

Both times Tennessee made the playoffs, it did not exactly finish with a flourish. Last season the Titans went 2-2 over the final quarter of the campaign and in 2017 they lost three of their final four. The other years (2016, 2018), they won three of their final four only to come up short of the postseason.

The closest thing to true consistency is that for three years running the Titans had a four-game winning streak en route to 9-7. In 2016, their longest run of victories was just three games. In none of the four years did they lose more than three in a row.