Some people are fans of the Tennessee Titans. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Tennessee Titans. This 2015 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group.

Your team: Tennessee Titans

Your 2014 record: 2-14. That includes blowing a 28-3 lead to Cleveland. At home. “I’M PISSED OFF. HOW ABOUT THAT?!”


Your coach: Ken Whisenhunt. EVERYONE BEATS THE WHIZ. When are people gonna stop giving this man quarterbacks to ruin? Jake Locker RETIRED this offseason. Jake Locker is 19 years old. He had to retire because Whiz coaches all his quarterbacks to plant your face in the defender’s chest prior to releasing the ball. Classic throwing motion. Good thing they didn’t draft another slender, speedy quarterback who might be similarly frail! Oh wait…

Your quarterback: MARIOTO! All of the blandness of Russell Wilson with NONE of the ability! It says a lot about Marcus Mariota that the Bucs had their choice of quarterbacks at the top of the draft, and still went with the alleged rapist and verified crab burglar that Mariota trashed in the Rose Bowl, instead of Mariota himself. Mariota had every possible intangible advantage over Jameis Winston, and yet the Bucs still looked at his game film and were like, “Nope. He’s dead meat.”


But I’m sure he’ll soon flourish in a Ken Whisenhunt offense that is tailored to quarterbacks who have the EXACT OPPOSITE SKILL SET. In the Whisenhunt offense, your job is stand ramrod straight and throw the ball 30 yards down field, incomplete. I’m worried that Mariota doesn’t possess the immobility necessary to pull that off.

On the off-chance that Marcus Mariota is actually good (and with Oregon’s legacy of highly drafted QBs like Akili Smith and Joey Harrington, how could he fail?), the Titans will still ruin him. They’ll plug him into a shitty, unimaginable offense; put him behind an abominable offensive line that is somehow WORSE than the one that allowed 50 sacks last season; and then blame him when everything goes to shit. Thankfully, Mariota will be too damned nice to get angry about any of this. YOUR PLEASANT DEMEANOR IS A SIGN OF COWARDICE, YOU GRASS SKIRT-WEARING PUSS.


By the way, once Mariota gets blown to pieces by J.J. Watt, your backup QB is still Zach Mettenberger, who fired back at J.J. Watt a swift nine months after Watt gave him shit for taking selfies. Real quick reaction time on this young quarterback…

“I think this chicken is expired!” –Zach Mettenberger, five days after dying of salmonella poisoning


“You mean we won?” –Zach Mettenberger, watching The Patriot

“They did WHAT?!” –Zach Mettenberger, on September 11th, 2002

What’s new that sucks: Well, the kicker died. Also: the Titans also signed Brian Orakpo and Hakeem Nicks, because they’re always looking for new players to get hurt. FUN FACT: The Titans possess only four active players on the roster any given week. They have to fill out the rest of the starting lineup with statues made from old floss and wet sand. Their stretching routine includes Oreos.


What has always sucked: Bishop Sankey. Fuck Bishop Sankey right in the eye. I believed in you, Sankey. I trusted you to be a reliable 2RB as a rookie. Instead, you were SHIT. I’m never trusting a rookie running back again. I feel so violated. YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE IS WHAT YOU ARE.

And Dexter McCluster is still here. WHOA HEY STOP ME BEFORE I SHIT MY DICK. I can’t believe the Titans ponied up $4.5 million for a dude who is good for one nice end-around per season. Dexter McCluster is one of those players where the coach is like, “We HAVE to find a way to get the ball in his hands more!” and then they never do, because the player in question actually sucks. If I have manufacture ways to get you the ball, that means that you suck at getting the ball. You are of no use to me. Wait, they signed Harry Douglas, too? Why have one shitty small guy when you can have two?


Also, please note that the decaying remains of Dick LeBeau have been brought in to “save” one of the NFL’s worst defenses. Given how Monte Kiffin fared in Dallas, I’m sure we’re all in for a treat. This defense is the 76ers roster of football. Even the coaches don’t know who these people are. At the very least, LeBeau will get Michael Griffin to up his cheapshot rate to at least three per game.

Otherwise, this is same kind of same boring, anonymous Titans team we’ve all grown accustomed to over the years. The most exciting part of any Titans season is when their ticket office gets caught committing blatant acts of fraud. There’s a lot of Bill Macatee in your future, kids.


And you know what? This is what Nashville deserves for giving the world Clay Travis. And country music. God, FUCK country music. Nashville makes country music that even people who like country music don’t like. DURRR THAT AIN’T REAL COUNTRY! Even among redneck posers, this is somehow a city filled with even WORSE redneck posers. Take it from someone who lives near D.C.: terrible things happen when Northern white kids walk around pretending to be Southern white kids. Nashville is nothing more than several miles of a bar on every corner featuring the same shitty country bar band playing the same shitty country song to the same shitty faux country people. They also have a statue saluting the founder of the KKK in Nashville. Nashville should be incinerated.

What might not suck: Even while Mariota is getting his nuts stomped into the ground by opposing defenses, at least he’ll be CLASSY about it. Such a poised young man getting mangled out there!


And as long as he’s equipped with a knife, Justin Hunter will find a way to get open.

Hear it from Titans fans!

Adam:

The first few years I lived in Nashville I worked at a music store. One day Eddie George came in and proceeded to demo an electronic drum set for 2+ hours. He had it set on an “alien spaceship” sound setting and turned it up REALLY LOUD. Fuck Eddie George. And dig Bud Adams up and fuck him with a sun-baked fire hydrant.


Justin:

The Titans are the most boring dysfunctional franchise in all of sports, they are the missionary position of the NFL.


Brian:

Somehow Jeff Fisher is still coaching this team remotely. I swear I saw Eddie George running the ball up the middle on 3rd and 14 at some point last year.


Jarred:

I honestly think our owner (whoever the hell it is) changed the name of our stadium to “Nissan Stadium” because Nissan has a truck called a “Titan.”


Kennedy:

The University of Memphis is literally the best football team in the state right now.


Aaron:

The best QB in franchise history was killed by a mistress that worked at Adult Chucky Cheese’s, after a night out at a bar called Loser’s.


Jeff:

This is a top-shelf town full of friendly, handsome, surprisingly metropolitan people, but Nashville is not a professional football town. The Titans are a replay of the Braves starting in 1989. At first, nobody gives a shit because they’re not good and they’re not in the SEC. Then they have a good run, fans care, and Garth Brooks does promos. Then the organization sets unreasonable expectations for that to endure. Sure enough, they suck again and no one shows. Repeat. Hard to pull for a team that puts your recent Saturday afternoon hated enemies on the field in baby blue jerseys. Did you know that the runner up name for the Titans was the Tennessee Trappers? For a mascot, I think we can all agree that a mountain man with bloody rusted traps on chains outcompetes the stuffed animal with feet so large he can’t run.


Jon:

Frank Wycheck is, without hyperbole, the worst announcer I’ve ever heard. Yes, even worse than Joe Buck. You’ll get a cramp listening to him.


Matt:

We now have two defensive coordinators for the second time in three years.

Mark:

I’ve been a NJ-based Titans fan (don’t ask) for 15 years. Whenever they play the Jets or the Giants, I make it a point to go. Last season, the closest city they were scheduled to play at was Philly. I think 3 starters got injured for the Titans, and they never really threatened. My friend and I took the subway line to Center City, when my stomach started to make a horrible sound. It felt like a volcanic surge was brewing, and I swore I was going to shit myself in front of 50 Eagles fans on a crowded subway line. My friend and I barely made to a bar where I ran to a toilet and remained there for a good 30 minutes in agony. Fuck hoagies, fuck Philly, and fuck the Titans most of all.

Ryan:

Every good player we get either gets arrested or dies. Our front office signed Michael Oher to a multi-year deal, and then replaced him with the only tackle in the league worse than he is. Many of our fans legitimately think Zach Mettenberger is still the answer at QB, and frequently compare him to Tom Brady. I’m serious.


William:

The cutesy town storefronts outside both end-zones is a fucking joke. There are more Steelers fans than Titans fans in this city.

Roy:

I didn’t want the Titans to take Mariota because we’ll just break him, just like we did with Locker. He won’t last six games this season and will age faster in one year behind our OL than Obama has in 6 and half years in the White House. I actually feel bad for him.


Brandon:

Our owner died, his son-in-law took over before realizing we were a dumpster fire and now the team is run by the management equivalent of SOS Staffing Services. Sadly, this is the most excitement we’ve had since Vince Young spending $50,000 at the cheesecake factory.


LombardiPardi:

Apart from our talking potato of a GM, I don’t know who to blame for all our problems. Did you know we have an INTERIM PRESIDENT? Because we do. Nobody even wants the job. Bud Adams’ human marshmallow of a son-in-law had the job for a year before quitting. He instead is going to focus on managing the family oil business, because an oil rig has a lesser chance of catching fire than this football team.


David:

Our shiny new QB has all the personality of a bowl of Grapenuts. Our more interesting back-up Meth-in-Burger got into a “selfie” beef with the scariest motherfucker in Texas and then proceeded to taunt J.J. publicly about his letterman jacket. So he’s dead. Oh, and our biggest free-agent addition (Orakpo) can’t even sneeze without tearing a tit. We are so fucked.


Chris:

Titans fans are among the most antiquated fans in the NFL, born from the #DoingItTheRightWay camp, which uses the pillars of a solid running game and quarterbacks who didn’t talk back to their coaches like in the old days as its core tenets. Sam Hinkie should come be the GM of the Titans when he’s run out of town in Philly because Titans fans love nothing more than fantasizing how great the team will be in five years. He could die in office at the age of 93, without making a single playoff appearance, and fans would regard him as the greatest goddamn GM of all time, so long as he wrangled up an 8-8 season once every four years. Fans would drool over all the accumulated 7th round picks that would mean “we’re only three years away.” Most fans were fucking livid over the team selecting Marcus Mariota, apparently because Zach Methburger played like a quarterback drafted in the 3rd round instead of one drafted in the 6th. Seriously, the fans were worried about taking a quarterback with the No. 2 pick because it might “set this team back for the next three years.” We certainly wouldn’t want to disrupt the sterling track record of a team that hasn’t had made the playoffs since 2008 and has one winning season over the past six years.


Blake:

Our fan base is a quarter the size of our state’s college team that has been to one bowl game in the past seven years, a bowl that was named after a shitty tax preparation website that no one has ever heard of. What few fans do exist are the definition of homer redneck morons. The vast majority of them were upset when they drafted Mariota to replace a sixth round rapist with a bum knee. In fact, Titans fans were so hungry for Mettenberger’s dick that the first time in his life he received affirmative consent was right before fucking them in the ass.


Andy:

The NFL has sentenced them to a nationally televised game against the Jaguars on a Thursday, where it will rival Mr. Ed reruns taped off Nick at Nite 25 years ago in ratings. Fuck this team.

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