Photo: Frederick Breedon





Maybe the new normal for the Tennessee Titans is outrageously, even farcically, abnormal.

In the Two-Toners’ two decades in Music City, the team — even in success — has been about as exciting as Phil Bredesen declaiming on municipal debt repayment schedules. At its best, the team steam-shoveled up the field three-yards-plus-one-foot at a time, grinding first downs into touchdowns with the run game and using Steve McNair’s Jedi elusiveness to create big plays in the passing game.

That was fun for the four or five years it lasted.

Mostly, the attempts at efficiency seemed more like the Island of Misfit Toys trying to invade Gibraltar. Sure, there was a plan, but a cowboy riding an ostrich isn’t exactly Teddy Roosevelt on San Juan Hill.

Former coach Mike Mularkey’s promise of “exotic smashmouth” featured a lot of the latter and precious little of the former.

Two games into the tenure of Mularkey’s successor, former New England Patriot and human tribal tattoo Mike Vrabel, it’s hard to say if the Titans are good enough to return to the playoffs (or for the cynical, if the rest of the AFC South is bad enough to allow a repeat trip to January by default). But one thing’s for sure: The freight-train efficiency of the best of the Titans and the spare-parts gobbledegook of the worst is now combined into some kind of amphibious flying battleship that never appears able to fly forward or even float on with any sort of consistency, but is nevertheless impossible to ignore, and occasionally looks downright lethal.

Welcome to the steampunk offense.

After Week 1’s mind-numbing seven-hour balk against the Miami Dolphins — during which more Titans fell than in all the lines of Hesiod’s Theogony — Vrabel found himself having to play a critical early-season divisional game without starting quarterback Marcus Mariota. Signal-calling duties in Week 2 went to Blaine Gabbert, whose career began with the ignominy of being drafted by the Jacksonville Jaguars and never really recovered. What’s worse is that the eight-year journeyman would have to direct the offense without the protection of Pro Bowl linemen and All-Universe catfish slingers Taylor Lewan and Jack Conklin.

Planning for such a challenge would be difficult for even the most experienced, level-headed coach. For a first-year firebrand like Vrabel, it looked as inscrutable as a Klingon sudoku.

What’s the old saying? If you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bovine excreta?

Early in Sunday’s game against the Houston Texans, Vrabel didn’t need Gabbert to complete any passes. Which is good, because he didn’t do so for quite some time. In fact, he was the third Titan to find a receiver, because Vrabel opted to take the proverbial El Camino (kitted out with cranks and weird clocks and externally mounted gears turning unnecessarily) and load it up with plenty of cattle ordure, ensorcelling the visitors.

The team from the homeland of DJ Screw might have felt they’d accidentally swapped Gatorade for lean when the Titans scored an early touchdown on a fake punt that even by the standards of the gadget play was chopped and screwed. Playing the upback, All-Pro safety Kevin Byard threw a southpaw spiral into the waiting paws of fellow safety Dane Cruikshank, who ran out of an Edgar Rice Burroughs short story and wide open down the Nissan Stadium sidelines for a 66-yard touchdown.

On the Titans’ next offensive possession, Derrick Henry — the Mack truck with the Ferrari engine and a supernumerary airship propellor — stepped into the quarterback’s position with Gabbert split wide as a receiver. Most wildcat formations result in plenty of zone-read runs, and with Henry, there are certainly worse options, since he’s as easy to tackle as a propane tank mounted to a skateboard.

But on one key play, Henry flipped forward what was technically a pass to the speedy Taywan Taylor. Perhaps miffed that a safety and a tailback had completed throws when he had not, Gabbert came back to the huddle to (rightly) complain to Henry that he was wide open on the play.

Meanwhile, Mariota remained on the sideline, wearing a glove on his numbness-afflicted right hand. After the first few series, it was reasonable to wonder if he’d check in as an extra tackle in the jumbo formation.

Ultimately, Gabbert capped the drive with a touchdown pass to Taylor, pushing the Titans to a 14-0 lead. Thereafter the Texans fought back, and the Titans eased into a more conventional offense — though the attack still featured wonderful moments, like when Vrabel, who apparently got his offensive game plan from a stoner playing Madden in 2002, went for it on the Titans’ 32 (it worked).

Gabbert’s command of the passing game provides the anxious energy of a roller-coaster ride, except that a roller coaster follows an obvious and clearly observable path. Watching Gabbert is more akin to riding a roller coaster while it’s under construction. But he had moments of accidental brilliance, opting to throw a second forward pass on a play to avoid a sack. The lost yardage due to the penalty was far less than what Gabbert would have lost had he been tackled, and illegal-forward-pass penalties don’t cost the offense a down. Maybe it’s not failing upward, but failing laterally isn’t so bad.

The Titans evened their record to 1-1 with a 20-17 win, with Texans quarterback DeShaun Watson failing backward on the game’s last play, running around unnecessarily, chewing up time, before throwing a jump ball into the middle of the field and doing so forward of the line of scrimmage. That allowed the officiating crew to meet their career quota of illegal-forward-pass penalties in a single game.

After two games, Mariota, in his prove-it year, hasn’t had much opportunity to do so. It’s hard to make broad predictions about the team after a storm-marred Week 1 game with two two-hour delays and an injury-riddled lineup taking the field in Week 2. Titans fans don’t know any more about the direction of the team after two weeks than they did in the middle of the summer.

The good news is the Titans showed that no one else knows what direction they’re going to go either.