NFL Pick: 2023 Tennessee Titans Over 7.5 Wins (-118) at BetRivers
The Tennessee Titans blew a 4-game lead over Jacksonville to lose out on what looked like another sure AFC South title. The stunning 7-game losing streak to end 2022 already led to the firing of general manager Jon Robinson last December, but head coach Mike Vrabel returns with Ryan Tannehill and Derrick Henry still leading the offense.
But Tannehill has competition now that the Titans used a high 2nd-round pick on Kentucky quarterback Will Levis, who slipped in the draft after having top-12 pick potential.
The top-rated sportsbooks seem to feel the window has closed on Tennessee as a Super Bowl contender. The Jaguars are the new favorites in the AFC South, and the Titans only have an over/under win total of 7.5 wins this season.
Does Vrabel have enough tricks up his sleeve to get this team back in contention, or is the losing streak going to continue long enough that we see Levis starting games in 2023?
Significant Changes
At the very least, the Titans will hopefully not start a quarterback they signed off the streets with the playoffs on the line this year. They also have a change at offensive coordinator, a new wide receiver, and the return of their best pass rusher.
Tannehill’s Last Stand Comes With Latest OC
At 35 years old, Ryan Tannehill is now one of the oldest and most experienced quarterbacks in the NFL. That probably makes you feel old, but this Tennessee offense will do that to you.
The quarterback is 35, the running back (Derrick Henry) is 29 with a ton of mileage on his body, and the new No. 1 wide receiver (DeAndre Hopkins) is 31 and has not played in more than 10 games since 2020.
Tim Kelly is the new 37-year-old offensive coordinator, replacing Todd Downing, which is no big loss. Kelly was already the passing game coordinator last season, so he should have a rapport with these players. He also used to coordinate offenses in Houston when Hopkins was at his best.
But the Titans have some youth that will hopefully grow this year to give the offense a better shot than it had last year. Tyjae Spears was a 3rd-round pick at running back in case Henry slows down after leading the league in carries again.
Emerging Prospects and Quarterback Dynamics
Beyond the rookies, it is the 2nd-year players that are worth watching for breakout seasons. Treylon Burks was the 1st-round wideout last season and showed some big-play potential. He will likely never be an A.J. Brown, who was great right away, but a more experienced Burks combined with Hopkins’ ability to win contested catches should lead to a better passing game than last year.
There is also tight end Chig Okonkwo, who had 450 yards as a rookie to rank 2nd on the team. We have been burned by countless tight ends in this league who were expected to break out and did very little, but Okonkwo is an interesting target who averaged 14.1 yards per catch last year.
But nothing is bigger than getting Tannehill back, and maybe the selection of Levis will give him a new chip on his shoulder as he hopes to keep this starting job another year. Levis does not appear ready to take over just yet. Things would have to go very poorly, or Tannehill would have to get injured again – not unrealistic given his history – to see Levis start in 2023.
Does Tennessee win the division last year if Tannehill does not get injured against the Chargers? It very well could have been the case, especially since they nearly won in Jacksonville with Dobbs, but the injury happened, the fumble return happened, and now Jacksonville is the trendy pick, and the Titans are old news. It can be annoying, but sometimes the NFL works out this way.
But hopefully, the Titans will have a couple of good shots against the Jaguars this year. They will meet in Week 18 in Tennessee this time.
The Return of Harold Landry
In the 2023 draft, new general manager Ran Carthon made the rare decision to go all offense with the team’s 6 selections. New left guard Peter Skoronski was a tough choice to argue against for a team that loves to run the ball, and the 3 best pass rushers were off the board by that point.
But the Titans are at least getting a big piece back they did not have last year in Harold Landry, their No. 1 pass rusher who had a career-high 12 sacks in 2021. He tore his ACL last August, so he has a full year to get ready for this season.
Landry also had 43 pressures in 2021. No one on the Titans had more than 22 pressures last year according to Pro Football Reference, so Landry is a big addition to this unit.
2023 Schedule Analysis and Pick
The Titans are not going to drastically alter the way they play football. If you are lousy at stopping the run, you can be a liability against Derrick Henry. The passing game should be better with Hopkins, more experienced secondary receivers, and a healthy return of Tannehill. The defense may not have such extreme splits again for the run and pass, but chances are they will make teams have to throw often to move the ball against them again.
Based on the schedule alone, the Titans can get halfway to their over with division games. The Colts and Texans made very defensible moves in the head coaches they hired and the quarterbacks they drafted, but Year 1 for those rookie regimes could look rough, especially against a veteran team like the Titans.
The Titans are not going to go 0-9 against teams with a winning record again. There may not even be many of those teams on the schedule, and the Titans do not have to face the Chiefs or Bills, and they get one of the best NFC schedules with the weak NFC South division and a home game with Seattle, which is winnable for this team.
Getting 10 games against the AFC South and NFC South is a good way for the Titans to work on this over at the NFL odds board. They may concede the division title to the Jaguars again, but if anyone is in shape to upset Jacksonville, it is still Vrabel and the Titans, who won at least 9 games in every season since 2016 before this 7-game losing streak to end 2022.
The team may be old and stuck in purgatory, but that losing streak should not linger deep into this season too.
NFL Pick: 2023 Tennessee Titans Over 7.5 Wins (-118) at BetRivers
2022 Recap: Schedule and Health
There is nothing normal about starting 7-3 and finishing 0-7, but the 2022 Titans at least had a season that made logical sense. That was not the case in 2021 when the Titans were 12-5 and a surprise No. 1 seed in the AFC after going 8-3 against teams with a winning record, the best mark ever for a single season (min. 9 games).
But last year, the Titans started 7-3 with a lot of close victories over non-winning teams. They leaned on their defense, which was impossible to run against (fewest yards and lowest yards per carry allowed), so teams took to the air against Tennessee more than any other defense in the league.
Realistically, the Titans could have been 9-1 had they made a 47-yard field goal at the buzzer against the Giants in Week 1, and if they could have held onto a late 17-9 lead in Kansas City. But Patrick Mahomes came back, and the Titans had no answers on offense with rookie quarterback Malik Willis starting that night.
But even when Ryan Tannehill was the starter, the Titans were at a disadvantage without a legitimate No. 1 wide receiver following the trade of A.J. Brown to the Eagles last April. The move never made sense, and the Titans paid for it in 2022. Brown helped the Eagles all the way to the Super Bowl while the Titans did not have a receiver break 550 yards.
From Surprises to Struggles
However, at 7-3, the Titans looked like they still had a good shot at hosting a playoff game thanks to the state of the AFC South. Tannehill also had his best passing game of the season against the Packers. But things would fall apart from there. Tough losses to the Bengals and Eagles, both elite teams, were not surprising. Getting crushed by Brown and the Eagles was probably enough of a bad look that the Titans fired general manager Jon Robinson 2 days later, a move you almost never see in the NFL in December.
But losing to Jacksonville was rough with 4 turnovers not helping the effort, and Trevor Lawrence shredded the pass defense. A week later, Tannehill was injured against the Chargers and stayed in long enough to almost gut out a win, but the Titans lost that one too, and lost QB1 for the rest of the year.
Willis was in over his head as a rookie, and he failed to pass for 100 yards in any of his 3 starts. The Titans ended up signing Joshua Dobbs just before Christmas, then ended up starting him with the playoffs on the line in games against Dallas and Jacksonville to end the season.
All could be forgiven with a win in Jacksonville in Week 18 as that would have been enough for the AFC South title. The defense played well against Lawrence this time, Dobbs was serviceable, and Henry ground out 109 yards on 30 carries, but it came down to a big 3rd down with 3:00 left. Dobbs was hit as he threw, and the ball was ruled a live fumble and the Jaguars returned it for the game-winning touchdown. Jacksonville lost 20-16 after Dobbs was unable to engineer a go-ahead touchdown drive to atone for the mistake.
By virtue of losing that game and making Jacksonville a 9-8 division winner, the 2022 Titans finished 0-9 in games against teams that finished the season with a winning record. What a fall from 8-3 the previous year.
