The Titans Have a Second Half Problem
Photo Credit: Armond Feffer/IndyStar
This past week, the Tennesee Titans won their second game of the season beating the Indianapolis Colts 24-17.
The win puts them at 2-2 after starting out the season 0-2.
However, despite being at the .500 mark, there has been a common theme that Titans fans including myself are noticing clearly with this team so far.
The Titans are terrible in the second half.
In four games, the Titans have been outscored 64-7 after halftime.
They were outscored 21-7 against the New York Giants in their Week 1 loss.
In Week 2, they were manhandled by the Buffalo Bills in which they were outscored 24-0 and all 24 of those points came alone in the third quarter.
Moving forward to Week 3 against the Las Vegas Raiders, they let the Raiders outscore them 12-0 and almost came close to tying the game.
And just this past Sunday the offense could not score for the third straight week as the Colts outscored them by only scoring one touchdown.
Just looking at the Colts game alone, the offense produced only three first downs, were 1-6 on third downs and overall had a total of 28 yards. This was the worst second-half outing the offense had produced in all four games so far.
It has been frustrating to watch especially when the offense is firing in all cylinders in the first half but then magically disappears in the second half.
The most infuriating part of it all is that the team has admitted that they have to fix it.
Titans fans have given offensive coordinator Todd Downing a lot of criticism on his play calling. In the first half, it seems as if he is pushing the right buttons but in the second half, he tends to get too conservative which causes a lot of drives to be cut short. Opposing defenses have seemed to be able to adjust accordingly and so that might be another factor in the offense not producing.
This has left the Titans defense holding onto the leads that the offense produced all in the first half. So far, the defense has been below average when it comes to defensive statistics. The concern should be very high when three of the four teams they faced were able to cut the lead into a one score game.
If the Titans want to be considered a team that should be taken seriously, then they have to play complementary football for the entire game.
