Who’s Afraid of the Tennessee Titans? Everyone Should Be. A surging road team bounces AFC No. 1 seed Baltimore and is one win away from the Super Bowl
My favorite sports story so far in this turbulent new decade? That’s easy. It’s the Tennessee Titans—football anarchists, lobbing stink bombs into all the expected story lines of these NFL playoffs.
How delightfully disruptive it’s been, watching this underestimated road dog of a team, once widely considered lucky just to be here, mow through the dreaded Patriots in Foxborough, and now the top-seeded Ravens on a warm and gloomy night in Baltimore.
What is going on here? Didn’t the Titans finish 9-7? Aren’t they playing with a promoted backup quarterback?
Aren’t they, you know, the Tennessee Titans?
This is like watching a random wedding guest show up, give a 20-minute toast to the bride and groom and sing 10 songs with the band. And then march off with the entire cake.
Now the Titans get the Chiefs in Kansas City next Sunday for a shot at the Super Bowl.
Are the Chiefs scared? I know they can score four million points in, like, 45 seconds, like they proved Sunday in a daffy comeback win over the Houston Texans.
If the Chiefs are not scared, they should at least be nervous. The Titans are not to be ignored.
The grizzly football smashmouthers are giddy, because the Titans play the old way, which is to say, largely on the ground, straight up the gut, without much sizzle or clever scheme work. They have a running back, Derrick Henry, who looks and plays like two running backs fused together—at 6-foot-3, 250 pounds or so, Henry is about twice the size of the current fashion. He’s on a historic romp, racking up 195 yards versus Baltimore after 182 yards against New England and, oh yeah, he put up 211 on the Texans in Tennessee’s regular-season finale. (Although I am starting to feel I could score 48 points on the Texans.
Henry even threw a touchdown pass in Saturday’s AFC divisional round win. (I guess you’d call that clever schemework.)
More important, and alarmingly for opponents, he’s got that look, you know, that look great players get when the game is slowing down for them, and they feel they are not just on target, but on a mission, and they are starting to really, truly believe in all that corny Team of Destiny stuff.
This is like watching a random wedding guest show up, give a 20-minute toast to the bride and groom and sing 10 songs with the band. And then march off with the entire cake.
Now the Titans get the Chiefs in Kansas City next Sunday for a shot at the Super Bowl.
Are the Chiefs scared? I know they can score four million points in, like, 45 seconds, like they proved Sunday in a daffy comeback win over the Houston Texans.
If the Chiefs are not scared, they should at least be nervous. The Titans are not to be ignored.
The grizzly football smashmouthers are giddy, because the Titans play the old way, which is to say, largely on the ground, straight up the gut, without much sizzle or clever scheme work. They have a running back, Derrick Henry, who looks and plays like two running backs fused together—at 6-foot-3, 250 pounds or so, Henry is about twice the size of the current fashion. He’s on a historic romp, racking up 195 yards versus Baltimore after 182 yards against New England and, oh yeah, he put up 211 on the Texans in Tennessee’s regular-season finale. (Although I am starting to feel I could score 48 points on the Texans.
Henry even threw a touchdown pass in Saturday’s AFC divisional round win. (I guess you’d call that clever schemework.)
More important, and alarmingly for opponents, he’s got that look, you know, that look great players get when the game is slowing down for them, and they feel they are not just on target, but on a mission, and they are starting to really, truly believe in all that corny Team of Destiny stuff.
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