Back to back losses cost us the division, but all that really means is: the playoffs start a week early…

A weird calm comes over me.

Weeks 15 and 16 come and go and we are 8–7, meaning best case scenario is we go 9–7 for the 4th straight year. But much like the year Mularkey’s team got into the tournament at 9–7, this team feels capable of going into Arrowhead and stunning the Chiefs, who will likely be their opponent if the Titans’ beat Houston next week… unless the Dolphins somehow beat New England in Foxborough and the Chiefs win against the hapless Chargers.

Not to sound overconfident in a team who I wholeheartedly believed was done in Week 6… but it just makes sense we beat Houston. They are likely going to rest their starters, regardless of what Bill O’Brien says.

Houston has remarkably kept up their lose 1 win 2 streak and following that pattern means they should lose to us.

Also, speaking of patterns, the Titans I’ve known for the previous 3 seasons can’t help but finish 9–7. Yes, looking for patterns…. in the chaos…. that is the NFL…. is a sure fire way to convince yourself something will happen that ultimately will not.

However, in my 20 years of fandom there have been a few tried and true constants.

For instance, the Patriots will win 10 or more games, and more than likely the Super Bowl- no matter what. Andy Reid will constantly find new ways to become the personification of poor clock management. Justin Tucker will only miss field goals or extra points if I need 2 to 3 points to win my fantasy game.

Editor’s Note: Rookie mistake, ALWAYS draft Harrison Buttkicker.

But patterns all start somewhere, and I’m starting to think the Titans’ going 9–7 will happen until I’m dead.

There’s not much to say about these games other than I think with Henry full strength, we win both of them.

Titans- 21 Texans- 24

Houston got a lucky goal line pick off a ball that was forcefully dislodged from Anthony Firker’s hands, which before this game, I assumed he was incapable of touching a ball and that didn’t result in a catch that made me say “Ah yeah Firkser! Good for him!” Henry has a good game on one leg. AJ Brown is already my favorite receiver in franchise history. The biggest mistake Jon Robinson has made in his career thus far has been managing the kicking situation this season, and that’s saying a lot for a man who once drafted Kevin Dodd. Ryan Succop is either injured and we are ignoring it, or he’s reached his expiration date as a kicker.

Titans- 28 Saints- 38

At least Succop didn’t have a chance to ruin the game against the Saints because he was graciously put on Injured Reserve, despite Mike Vrabel ferociously insisting “he’s not injured, he’s never been injured, he doesn’t even have nerve endings so he couldn’t feel pain if God asked him to” or at least that’s how Titans’ beat writer and unparalleled social media martyr, Paul Kuharsky makes it sound on Twitter. AJ Brown ran for a touchdown and Ryan Tannehill was great again. Further entrenching themselves as the only choices for Offensive Rookie of the Year and Comeback Player of the Year, respectively. The Saints are a good team, but in no world do I think we give up a 14 point lead if we have Derrick Henry this game. Which I’m kind of glad we didn’t, the coaching staff made a good call resting him until Week 17. Plus, if plays we probably win, that’s 9 wins. Which means Week 17, or as I call it, “The Colliding of the Constants” becomes a paradox since neither constant could possibly happen- and that causes a glitch in the matrix, rendering all other games meaningless. I’m not a league expert, but I’m pretty sure the NFLPA has a contingency plan for that exact scenario where they cancel the playoffs and they award the Patriots another Super Bowl by default in lieu of drama and for the sake of brevity and “yeah they probably had it anyway.”

In case it’s not clear at this point — this season of highs and lows, banishments and redemptions, hellos and goodbyes… it’s taken a toll on me as a fan and fatigued has set in. It’s been 20 years of this, and I’ve seen it all from the Titans… I’ve seen everything but the only thing: the Super Bowl. And despite my certainty we will go 9–7 and subsequently make the playoffs as one of the hottest teams in the league. The team that no one wants to see in January. In spite of all this, the toll of 20 years of arguably futile fandom — has rendered me unable to even make an educated guess on if this team has a chance to win it all, or if it’s how it was when I watched my now, late father cry as he saw his Houston Oilers become the Tennessee Oilers and then the Tennessee Titans and then come a yard short from tying the Rams in the first and only Super Bowl he saw his team play in… if it’s how it was then? It’ll be 20 years before it happens again.

If the NFL really is chaos, then why does it feel so set in stone that the Patriots will win undoubtedly win one more before my Titans even get to another? Why does it seem like there’s always a Pittsburgh-type team with a shitty backup quarterback who scores 6 points against a team barely warm bodies in Week 17 and that “win” sneaks them into the Wild Card and then they unceremoniously exit so a team like Houston advances to the Division Round to be a sacrifice for the Ravens, Chiefs or Patriots who subsequently embarrass the Texans on their way to an AFC Championship — that a notable percentage of the National Media predicted moments after the Patriots won the latest Super Bowl? It all feels so… well it’s definitely not chaos. It’s monotonous and painful.

I’ve never needed a Titan’s win more. I’m counting on patterns and constants to break up the unwavering monotony of what it means to be a fan of this team — I’m sure this is what it’s like to be a fan of most teams.

It was a win and we’re in- and we won so we’re in…

Titans- 35 Texans-14

It happened. For the 2nd time in my adult life, the Tennessee Titans have made the playoffs with a 9–7 record. Derrick Henry was nothing short of spectacular, and watching him get a 53 yard, 4th quarter touchdown, that had zero ramifications on the outcome of this one-sided “game” — was the moment I stopped believing in what team could be, and started believing in what the team is. The Titans are a team that makes sure the guy who makes it all go, gets the rushing title despite only playing 15 games because he’s that awesome and he deserves it. Derrick Henry is the epitome of who the Titans are: strength. He scored 16 rushing touchdowns in 15 games because that’s what strong does. The Titans are the team who let’s Marcus Mariota sneak onto the field, and throw the pass that put his friend AJ Brown over 1,000 yards in his rookie season. The Titans have become the antithesis of what was almost their downfall. Simply put: the Titans are a family. And that’s cheesy and trite and I don’t care. They’ve come back from nothing and have a chance to go to Foxborough and end the dynasty. To change the landscape of the NFL for the foreseeable future. Any time a 6 seed makes the playoffs, the mantra is always something predictably lame like: Why not us?

But will all sincerity, that question has never replayed in my head louder and more frequently than the moment I saw that former Titans’ quarterback, Ryan Fitzpatrick, led the Dolphins over the Patriots pushing them into the Wild Card for the first time since 2009. But this is the first time Brady has shown real significant signs of aging. Brady is a free agent after the season, and no deal seems imminent. Regardless of that, they are tired and were banking on that bye week. If there was ever time to end the dynasty that has berated my love of football with nothing other than a sense of entitlement and dread — why not now? And if there ever was a team, why not the team the National Media cheekily called The Patriots South? Why not the team that rejected that moniker and the notion of needing to be any version of the Patriots all? Why not the team who came up one yard short 20 years ago? Why not the team who has come up one yard short every year since? Why not the team who faced certain death after Week 6 and refused to pack it in, and burn it down, and reset like everyone assumed they would? Why not this team, this family? Why not us?

As it turns out, it was us. The Tennessee Titans ended the dynasty….

Titans- 20 Patriots-13

Pure ecstasy.

What’s left after the inevitable?

When my buddy Jimmy first texted me to congratulate me after the game, he told me I should write an in depth column of the significance of this game. A task Jimmy claimed was my destiny (a statement I respectfully reject). A task I couldn’t wrap my mind around without first trying to contextualize what exactly this season was and how it led to the biggest win I’ve experienced as a Titan’s fan. Maybe more importantly, I had to figure out what recapping the season through the lens of a lifelong fan of the Tennessee Titans really meant in terms of the perspective it provided — for not only other Titans’ fans, but fans of any team not named the New England Patriots.

Along the way I realized, it was more than a recap of a tumultuous season for a team who became the unlikely hero and went on to dethrone a legitimate empire of unyielding dominance. It wasn’t until I realized what the dethroning really meant. It wasn’t until I saw countless people on social media thanking the Tennessee Titans for going into Foxborough and finally ending the dynasty that felt immortal. It wasn’t until I realized that if Brian Flores (another Belichick disciple, hell bent on taking down the very empire he helped lead to its final Super Bowl victory) and the Miami Dolphins hadn’t have gone into Foxborough themselves, and stunned a team who was playing to win, desperate for a bye week — then the Titans would have played the Chiefs and the dynasty would still be breathing, resting up for one more chance to be the only team standing, one last time, while 31 other franchises would have been forced to admit their season was ultimately futile one last time.

Does that mean the Patriots would have inevitably been dethroned by another team? More than likely, yes. I personally believe any of the 4 remaining teams in the AFC Playoffs (Ravens, Chiefs, Titans, and Texans) could have beaten them at any point in this postseason, because all 4 of those aforementioned teams are 1–0 against New England this season- and I will not forget to mention the equally probable dethroning of New England by whoever represents the NFC in the Super Bowl this year.

And yes, many teams (Giants, Ravens, Eagles, Broncos, Colts, and hell even the Jets) have beaten this Patriots’ Dynasty in the playoffs before this season- but none of them killed them for good.

Underneath all of it: the tired, yet desperately hopeful (but ultimately unwarranted) hot takes that Brady has lost “it” anytime he didn’t win a Primetime game, spygate, deflate gate, the Seth Wickersham article describing in great detail the massive unmendable divide between Bellichick, Brady, and Kraft in the same season they’d beat the Rams for the second time in the Super Bowl claiming their sixth Lombardi Trophy… that weird thing this season where the Patriots had a team employee film the Bengal’s sidelines… seemingly for a competitive advantage that pretty much every other team obtained without the need for rogue espionage… when Brady suffered a season ending injury in year that saw Matt Cassel lead the team to an 11–5 record but missed the playoffs for the second and final time over the entire course of their dynasty… which ultimately led to offseason storylines about if Brady would ever be the same again, and even a few head scratching takes that Cassel proved that Belichick and the Patriots didn’t need Brady at all… even though the year before he led the team to a 18–0 record heading into a Super Bowl they ultimately lost to the underdog New York Giants, a loss that some poor, lost souls tried to anoint as the end of the dynasty… a loss that was unsurprisingly followed by five more Super Bowl appearances- 3 victories, 2 defeats, each outcome used as fuel to spell the imminent demise of the seemingly immortal Patriots… in truth, I could list countless examples of the media, the players and the coaches of multiple teams across the NFL, providing takes, espousing hopes and dreams, and providing evidence all with one single, underlying motive — they needed it to be true, because all the other 31 teams in the NFL could only hope to rent the title of “World Champion”.

The Patriots owned it.

The National Football League itself, on some level, had to know New England had more ownership of the Super Bowl than the very league who failed to contain them. In my 20+ years of watching and studying the NFL, I’ve never seen the league blatantly try to prevent any team from winning besides New England. An argument could be made New Orleans faced this fate too, however, in my opinion. New Orleans was justly punished for a violation with far more dire consequences than anything the Patriots ever did or were unjustly accused of.

For context: the fines, the suspensions, and the mandatory forfeiting of draft picks New Orleans suffered in the aftermath of Bountygate seemed less harsh and unfairly disproportionate when compared to the $1,000,000 fine, Brady’s 4 game suspension, and the mandatory forfeiting of draft picks the Patriots suffered — all because Jim Irsay was mad he lost a playoff game and was oblivious to the existence of the ideal gas law.

But since Tom Brady has a private life, and he didn’t want to forfeit his phone to the league and subsequently the public — the NFL seemingly used it as an opportunity to take it upon themselves… to kill the dynasty.

But they never did die, not until January 4th, 2020. After completing their 19th consecutive winning season. After completing their 17th playoff season since 2001. After completing their dynasty by playing in 9 out of the possible 20 Super Bowls between the years of 2001 and 2020. The New England Patriots’ dynasty was brought down by a team who last appeared in a Super Bowl two seasons before Belichick and Brady went to and won their first.

I don’t know if the Titans are necessarily the most poetic team to end of all this. If I was being completely honest, I’d say poetic justice would have best been served by the New York Jets. The team Belichick bailed on to join the Patriots. Which has led to 20+ years of borderline irrelevance, winning the division only one time in that span, all while sharing said division with the coach who quit on them after only one day to join the team who would propel him to heights unknown — a rarified air occupied only by the greatest coach of all time.

But it wasn’t the Jets. Poetic justice instead came in the form of the team that plays in the city Bill Belichick was born in. It was the team that symbolically lifted 31 teams, themselves included, to a level playing field for the first time since 2001.

The Patriots could very well win a Super Bowl within the next decade, especially if Belichick is still around. But due to Brady’s imminent departure from New England, whether to another team or, less likely, to retirement. With Josh McDaniels likely becoming a head coach in 2020, just two seasons after bailing on the Colts to rejoin the Patriots. McDaniels will likely continue to try to become Belichick 2.0, but I believe he will fail. Not only because I think he’s secretly a bad coach and Belichick has employed him collectively for 16 years as a practical joke to be played on whatever franchise is dumb enough to make him their head coach. And not only because I believe this was exactly what Belichick did to the Denver Broncos while McDaniels likely believed he was living out his Belichick-Coaching-Cleveland moment.

No I believe that Belichick was the last of the head coaches who were truly smarter than everyone of his peers. After putting 20+ years of football superiority as a head coach on tape, after grooming coordinator after coordinator into brilliant football mind after brilliant football mind, after instilling relentless work ethic and providing a truly unparalleled football education to thousands of players since his first job with the Baltimore Colts in 1975, and last but not least: after inspiring and teaching generations of football fans who have already joined and will one day join the very league he’s arguably owned this entire Millennium — it was an inevitability that one day, through copying and transforming what he did, the league was going to, and I assert finally did… catch up with him.

In fact, the notion of inevitably has been what this entire piece is ultimately about. Through the lens of my Titan’s fandom and admittedly biased recapping of the 2019 Regular Season leading up to the 2020 Wild Card Game — I aimed to express how that inevitably shaped the mindset of a fan who has waited their entire life for the empire to crumble only to be the team who has a chance to end it all in one game.

My favorite team brought down the team that caused me to feel, for the past 20 years, that my fandom was ultimately tarnished and limited by the inevitably of knowing my team could never truly own the title of World Champion.

Throughout all the off seasons of changing coaching staffs, throughout every single draft of convincing myself that “we finally found the guy, the guy who will make this all worth it”, throughout every single game the Titans won or lost, throughout every conversation I had with my brother Cameron and my mother Denise, about how “this year is the year”…throughout every single experience I’ve had as a fan including every single word I wrote in the season recap — there was always this pervasive knowledge festering in every single thought I’ve had as a fan: “It doesn’t matter. The Patriots will come back and take it even if we get it.”

I believe this is a knowledge and a feeling every fan of an NFL team (who is not New England) has involuntarily had since this all began.

If you’re a fan of any of the teams who managed to beat the odds and win a Super Bowl in that time span- I do not believe that my statement takes away anything from the experience of pride, joy, and sports immortality that you have as a fan- an experience I’ve never known.

Rather I hope this contextualizes how impressive of a feat winning a Super Bowl during this era truly was. Because your team wasn’t only facing who they defeated- on some level they were facing the Patriots too.

More so than any team in modern NFL History, I assert the New England Patriots had the talent, the desire, and the opportunity to win the Super Bowl every single season during their respective dynasty.

Because for the past 20 seasons, the NFL was not a parity. It was run by an unrelenting tyrant, who believed all the glory there was to have was for the tyrant and the tyrant alone. More often than not, on a subconscious level, I assert that every fan of any of the 32 NFL teams felt that glory belonged to the Patriots too, and if anyone else wanted it- it would have to be ripped from their cold dead hands.

However, every time we believed the tyrant was dead, it would come back and grab what it believed belonged only to it, and close it’s fist around the glory- the rest of us staring at the light escaping the clenched fist- leaving only awe and envy behind our constant, observing eyes.

But if we look now, the glory rests in the open palm of the tyrant whose lifeless fist can clench no more. The glory is everybody’s and it’s nobody’s. It is likely to never be truly owned again, but rather experienced by a select few.. for a time- and then by more after that.

The light we all seek, the glory we all crave, is again elusive and unbiased- and it was freed by a Titan.

No matter what happens next, at least it will finally be different.