The offensive momentum halts for the Titans on Sunday

The offensive momentum halts for the Titans on Sunday originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

The Tennessee Titans’ offense showed some confidence, and more specifically, Cam Ward did. He had one of his best games of the season versus Seattle on November 23rd, completing 28 of 42 passes for 256 yards and one touchdown, along with rushing for one touchdown. After that showing, it was thought the Titans would continue that newfound confidence in their game against Jacksonville. After the first drive, it looked like it would, as the Titans drove ten plays for 70 yards and a field goal to go up 3-0. But after that drive, the Titans would total only 118 more yards on the day while falling to the Jaguars 25-3 at Nissan Stadium in Nashville.

One thing that happened in the first drive was the evidence of the running game. Tony Pollard had three runs for a total of 36 yards. For the rest of the game, he only had 24 yards rushing on seven carries. Jacksonville seemed to have answers for what the Titans did in the running game, getting their offense started early in the rest of the game. Unfortunately, the Titans did not make any offensive adjustments that worked. Titans right tackle J.C. Latham did not have any answers as to why things did not work in the running game after that first drive either.

“I am not the coordinator. I just have trust and faith in the calls and I just try to execute what’s called to the best of my ability.”

While JC is trying to execute, obviously, something did not work. Something changed from that first drive onward, specifically in the running game. But that was not the only thing that did not work in this game.

Ward was decisive in passing the football or deciding to run against the Seahawks. That led to Ward’s rushing touchdown and many solid scrambles against Seattle. The Jaguars apparently watched the tape of last week’s Seahawks/Titans game because there were no running lanes for Ward to escape through the entire game. They rushed with fury, but controlled fury, the entire game. Jacksonville made sure their outside rushers did not rush past Ward to give him creases to escape, along with their interior pass rushers staying in their lanes, too. The result was Ward sitting in the pocket more and more while either eventually taking a sack, throwing the ball away, or even dumping the ball off to safety valves for short gains.

And finally, the Jaguars eliminated any big plays the Titans wanted to make. The Titans had some chances, but they were few and far between. Ward was often checking down to the short options because of the coverage the Jaguars were presenting, allowing the shorter things to be there so they could break up on them and make the tackle. Ward averaged 6.1 yards per pass against the Seahawks. Against the Jaguars, he averaged 3.7 yards per pass. In a passing league, averaging fewer than 4 yards per pass is not something you can win with, and obviously not something you can move the chains with consistently.

The Titans head to Cleveland next week to take on a stingy Browns defense that’s looking to take out some frustration on Tennessee. The progression that had been building has lost some momentum. It will be interesting to see if the Titans are able to regain some confidence and progress back towards where they were heading before the Jaguars came to town.