His Year: Ryan Tannehill 2019

Ryan Tannehill's career as an NFL starter was over, then he went to the Titans and changed the franchise.

Welcome back to my Sports Passion Project, where I'm about to tell you the story of a man whose time as a QB was over before his NFL career even started.

In college, he was forced to play wide receiver for his first two seasons, even dabbling as a punt returner. By the time he got the chance to play QB, he was already a senior, but he made his one and only chance count, playing so well that he got himself drafted in the first round of the NFL draft to play quarterback.

There are multiple first round QBs whom those two paragraphs can describe. Perhaps some you can think of off the top of your head, but I can almost guarantee you that you were not thinking of Ryan Tannehill, who is exactly who I plan to write about today.

The forgotten man in the epic 2012 QB class which saw Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III taken with the first two picks, Russell Wilson and Nick Foles both selected in the third round, and Kirk Cousins selected in the fourth round, Ryan had to wait longer than each of those guys for his NFL breakout to come.

Andrew Luck was drafted into the winningest organisation of the ten year 2002-2012 period in Indianapolis. RG3 got the brilliant Mike Shanahan to be his head coach, as did Kirk Cousins. Russell Wilson was drafted into the best possible situation for a rookie QB to thrive, with the Legion of Boom behind him, and Nick Foles also ended up with an excellent offensive coach in Chip Kelly.

Fate set Ryan Tannehill up for none of that.

In his seven years in Miami, Ryan had to go through three general managers three head coaches, and two offensive coordinators. Miami was also devoid of talent on offence throughout Ryan's whole time there. He did get a few prime years of Jarvis Landry, but other than that his best receiver with Miami was Brian Hartline, and if you've never heard of Brian Hartline, you’re not the only one, and that tells you all you need to know.

And that’s the best Ryan had to work with.

All of these unfortunate circumstances led to Ryan being the prototypical ‘very good QB hamstrung by very bad offence’ in Miami. For instance, look at his 2016, where Ryan ranked second in the NFL with a 5.3 CPOE, on a workable 6.94 percent sack rate, but ranked a disheartening 27th in EPA/Play. Second in CPOE translating to results this bad just doesn't happen, unless your feet are not NFL calibre, but Ryan’s feet were NFL calibre, and it happened to him anyway. Such is the quality of the Miami Dolphin offence throughout almost all the 2010s.

This is bad, and in the 13th game of that season, it gets even worse when Ryan tears his ACL.

Upon finally returning for the 2018 season, Ryan (who'd never generated negative EPA/Play in a season, not even as a rookie) declines precipitously. All the way down to generating -0.166 EPA/Play on a negative CPOE. The great QB hamstrung by the bad offence is no more. This is a QB hamstringing his offence. The poor results from the earlier Miami years had prevented him from building up a reputation as a good QB that (in my opinion) he deserved, so in the wake of a season this bad coming off a catastrophic knee injury, it honestly looks like it's all over for him.

The Dolphins have just brought in new coach Brian Flores, and it becomes clear Ryan is not going to make it through the fourth regime change, as Brian refuses to comment on (or speak to) Ryan Tannehill. Everybody can see the writing on the wall, so Ryan's agent begins looking around the NFL for other options, but it becomes clear that there is no place for Ryan to go.

He wants an opportunity to start, but nobody is willing to bring him in on the $17.4M that he's owed for the 2019 season. That’s not expensive, but it’s not a cheap veteran contract either. It’s an awkward amount of money to try to fit onto a roster.

This is where Ryan really proves something to me.

Plenty of players say they want an opportunity to start, but when it gets down to the point where they have to give up guaranteed money, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to just wait around to be cut by Miami.

There is no waiting here.

Ryan reworks his contract down to just two million guaranteed dollars, which really helps his case, and improves his market from nothing to almost nothing, but still doesn't entirely solve the problem of where he's going to go.

Ryan tells his agent to look for a team with a starting QB who is 'either injured or vulnerable.' The issue is that there just isn't many. Going back to the 2019 offseason, how many teams around the league fit this description? Ironically, a perfect fit would be Miami, but that door is firmly closed. With hindsight, the perfect destination would've been Indianapolis, but nobody knows the Andrew Luck retirement is coming.

There are simply few options for a man coming off the worst season of his career after an ACL tear, looking for a chance to start. The Broncos have just traded for Joe Flacco, and not Ryan Tannehill. Washington has just traded for Case Keenum, and not Ryan Tannehill. It's hard to believe our man had a 5.3 CPOE just three years ago and is now lower on the totem pole than the withered up husk that is 2019 Joe Flacco, but knee injuries are really scary to front offices. Nobody is calling.

In the end, teams finally do call, but they do not call with offers to start. Backup duty is all that’s on offer. For a player that has to know how good he has the potential to be, if only he can have access to just a few better offensive weapons, this has to be tough to handle mentally, but to Ryan’s credit, he does not make a rash decision. He thinks back to his criteria for teams that he would be willing to go to.

Once the Broncos trade for Joe Flacco, Washington trades for Case Keenum, and the Jaguars sign Nick Foles, there are only two teams that fit Ryan's parameters of having a starter that's either injured or vulnerable. The first is Cincinnati, where it's been a long time since Andy Dalton's Year way back in 2015. He's been a punching bag there for a long time now, and would certainly fit the 'vulnerable' part of either injured or vulnerable.

The problem with this is who wants to play for the 2019 Cincinnati Bengals? It took every bit of greatness Andy had left in him to carry a very bad Bengal team to six wins in 2018, and their roster is looking no better going into 2019, a season which will land them the first overall draft pick and Joe Burrow in the 2020 draft. Best to avoid that situation if possible.

That leaves us with our other option, the Tennessee Titans, who are getting a little tired of the Marcus Mariota experience.

Mariota was the second overall pick back in 2015, but since an impressive coming out party in 2016, Marcus has struggled to follow up. To be fair to him, he has been at the head of some really mediocre Titans rosters, and he’s even won a playoff game for them, but he's never broken the 600 play barrier in a season, never started all 16 games, and has never led the Titans to a top ten offence even when he has played.

With Marcus being on the final year of his rookie deal, he is likely to fit both the injured and the vulnerable criteria. Tennessee has nothing wrapped up in him beyond 2019, meaning they’re much more likely to make the starting QB decision based on performance, something not very common in the modern NFL.

That makes this a godsend of a situation for a veteran QB looking for a second chance to start, and when Tennessee's first choice (Teddy Bridgewater) signs in New Orleans, Ryan jumps at the chance. He's going to Nashville.

To begin the 2019 season, Ryan is officially a backup, but he's there for a reason. Everybody knows that with Marcus Mariota's injury history, Ryan is liable to get a start sometime during the season, and that will be his chance that he'll make count. The Titans as a whole are in a similar state of flux. Having two QBs both on one year deals will do that to a team. Before the season, in ESPN's 2019 NFL Power Rankings, they project the Titans to regress to 8-8 (from 9-7 records in 2016, 2017, and 2018), and give them a 35% chance of making the playoffs.

For all the people who continue to insist that Ryan coasted on a good roster (I know you’re out there), that's roughly the same expectation ESPN had of the Indianapolis Colts prior to 2024. Not exactly visions of greatness.

Marcus looks quite good in the opening game of the season, a 43-13 win on the road in Cleveland, but substantially less good in losses in weeks two and three to Indianapolis and to Jacksonville. He looks awesome in week four against Atlanta, but awful in a home loss against an admittedly great 2019 Bills defence in week five.

The Titans were already tired of the up and down Mariota act (which through 2024 still hasn't quit, which is why he's a backup now), and week six finally gives them the excuse they've been looking for to make a change. The excuse that Ryan came to this team hoping for. The Titans go on the road to Denver and stink up the show. They stink it up against a 2019 Denver defence that isn't even that good (16th in EPA/Play allowed). It's just terrible, and it finally gets too much for head coach Mike Vrabel to handle, so at the 4:49 mark of the third quarter, he makes the call that will change the 2019 Titans' season.

In comes Ryan Tannehill.

I know what you're expecting. This is a His Year article. Ryan comes in and scores a touchdown every time and the Titans either win outright or get close to coming back. Right?

Wrong.

Ryan can do no better than Marcus.

It's awful for everybody involved as the Titans get shut out and sink to a 2-4 record on the season. ‘Awful’ is not a word you see very often in a His Year post. It goes against the whole point of this series’ existence, but I have to call it like I see it. Look at the difference in the two Tennessee QBs in this game, or rather the lack thereof:

Green means good. Purple means bad, and there's a lot of purple in this graphic. Both Titan QBs had nothing to give in Denver, but luckily for Ryan, there’s a lot of baggage between Marcus Mariota and the Tennessee Titans. The starting QB bell is one you can't un-ring in these circumstances. It's going to be Ryan starting in Nashville against the Chargers in week seven.

Starting 2-4 in a season hurts, especially when both the Colts and Texans are both 4-2 and seem set to have a double knockout with each other for the AFC South championship. Generally, if you get to five losses before you get to three wins, your season is over. There have been teams to overcome a 2-5 start and make the postseason (five to be exact), but a lot more haven't than have. The Titans cannot fall to 2-5. This week seven game against the Los Angeles Chargers is imperative if we want to have any chance at the playoffs. It’s as must-win as a regular season game at home against the 2019 Chargers can be.

The 2019 Chargers are going to finish 5-11. They're not the toughest opponent in the world, but it's not going to come easy. You can never count out any team with a big four (Manning, Brady, Rivers, Roethlisberger) QB on it. They're liable to break your heart, and steal wins away they have no business getting, at any time. Today will be no different. Mr. Rivers has come to play.

In typical 2019 Titan fashion, this game has very few possessions. The entire first half has just six. Three for us. Three for them. Each team is able to turn their three touches into ten points, including a very nice Titan drive in the two minute drill to go all the way from out own 14 to the end zone to go into half tied at ten.

From here both offenses slow, and it goes all the way into the fourth quarter before anybody scores again, but the we do manage to reel off two straight touchdown drives, and after a goal line stand, preventing the Chargers from scoring from the one yard line four plays in a row, the Titans have won 23-20, and moved to 3-4.

Whew. That was close.

I'm not exaggerating when I say if we had dropped to 2-5, our season likely would've been over. It's impossible to prove that statement, but it would've left us with only two more losses (at most) left to take, with some very tough games left on the schedule.

Knowing what we know about what's about to happen with this Titans squad, it's important to understand how close it's just come to ending before it even started. This is what’s great about the NFL. One goal line stand against the Los Angeles Chargers in the seventh game of the year can change everything.

Ryan played well in this game, and he did it without much help from the run game. It's not his fault this game was such a scare. Perhaps not rushing 28 times with a rush offence generating -0.21 EPA/Play would've helped with that, but he did get outplayed fairly handily by Philip Rivers. This is no slight. All time greats have been outplayed by Philip Rivers, from Peyton Manning straight on down, but it's also not confidence inspiring to struggle this hard with the 2019 Los Angeles Chargers, even if we barely managed to keep ourselves alive in the playoff race.

The very same goes for next week. Derrick Henry has perhaps the worst game of his career as the Titans generate -0.71 EPA/Play as a rush offence this game, one of the worst rush performances any team has ever had. Ryan plays well but not outstanding, and the Titans just barely manage to squeak by the 2-4 Tampa Bay Buccaneers thanks to this game taking place in the Jameis Winston 30 INT season.

Two interceptions plus two lost fumbles, all from Jameis, mean we get to start drives from as far ahead as the Tampa Bay six, Tampa Bay ten, and the Tampa Bay 36, which to his credit Ryan turns into 14 of our points. Despite these fortuitous circumstances, we spend much of the second half behind, and even after a clutch fourth quarter touchdown pass, we only manage to win due to three defensive stands in a row, out of a defence that's middle of the pack in the NFL, and shouldn’t be relied on to do this, because our horrendous rush offence fails to run the clock out twice in a row, giving Tampa chance after chance to come back. They just couldn't manage to do it.

If you think I've been talking a lot about people who aren’t Ryan Tannehill, that's because I have been. The Titans have now won two games in a row to claw back to 4-4, but both have been one possession nail biters that we've won despite not doing anything on the offensive side to put either of the games away.

None of this is Ryan's fault. He's generated 0.25 and 0.13 EPA/Play in these two games, despite Derrick Henry struggling tremendously in both. Not bad at all, but it still feels like he and his Titans have just been along for the ride as the Chargers and Bucs both collapsed in on themselves.

I'll say this again. It's okay to win this way against the Chargers and against the Buccaneers, but once you run up a team that doesn't do things the way the Chargers and Bucs do, you're going to have trouble trying to win with this unexceptional style.

Week nine proves that it doesn't even have to be a good team.

The Titans go on the road to play the 4-3 Carolina Panthers, and we get exposed. There are missed field goals, bad punts, interceptions. The rush offence struggles quite badly for the third week in a row, and we lose 30-20 in a game that wasn't even as close as that score would suggest.

All of this against a Carolina Panther team that isn't going to win another game.

That's right. The Tennessee Titans just got totally exposed by a team that's going to lose eight in a row to finish 5-11. Once again, not Ryan's fault. He generated 0.19 EPA/Play today, but who can ever take us seriously after this?

Thanks to some Colts losses to fall to 5-4, and a Texans loss to fall to 6-3, falling to 4-5 is not as bad as it could have been. Nevertheless, this is an embarrassing and demoralising loss, and there couldn't have been a worse time to have it, because the most important game of the year is coming up next week.

If you're in the AFC, and you're 4-5, and every game is a playoff game from here, what is the one team you would not want to run into? What is the team you would do everything in your power to avoid? The one team that even when you're playing at home are still five point favourites on you?

For once, it's not the Patriots.

Somehow, it's even worse than that.

We have to play the Kansas City Chiefs.

These are not the Kansas City Chiefs we've come to know over the last few seasons. These Chiefs are hungry. They've not won a Super Bowl yet. Most of their players have not graduated into their second contracts yet, and therefore these Chiefs are much, much better than the version we see in the NFL today. The modern day Chiefs (in a regular season game) are not a terribly intimidating opponent, but it is a different story way back in 2019. They are out for blood.

In a flash, after an opening drive touchdown and then a strip sack, the Chiefs are already up 10-0. This is beginning to look like a serious mismatch already, especially when we punt from the Chiefs’ 40 to close the first quarter. Nothing says fear like punting from the 40, and we’re playing like we’re afraid. You know what happens when you back into a fight. You get beaten badly, and that’s what’s happening now.

Thankfully, by the skin of their teeth, our defence is able to get the Chiefs stopped in response, and this is where everything shifts. One play that lets everybody know that we may be able to play with the Chiefs after all.

The opening play of the drive is a play action pass that sees Kalif Raymond get behind the defence, and Ryan makes no mistake, dropping it on him for a 52 yard gain. This loosens everything up. At last we’ve done something positive. A few plays later Ryan has thrown a touchdown pass to Anthony Firkser, and the Titans are still alive.

Unbelievably, when Ryan touches the field again, the score has moved all the way to 13-13, a result of a defensive touchdown, and then another Chief field goal. It's a weird possession though, and it's perhaps a little bit damning of the Titans' belief (or lack thereof) in our still relatively new starting QB, because we get the ball with 1:06 to go in the first half, and make no effort to score, handing the ball to Derrick Henry a few times and punting with 16 seconds remaining.

This is a perplexing decision to me.

We do get the ball coming out of the break. I understand that, but what is the harm in coming out in shotgun, and trying to score some more points? Ryan, aside from the one horrifying strip sack earlier, has been playing well so far, and this Chiefs defence is good (10th against the pass), but not overwhelming. It beggars belief that Mike Vrabel wouldn't at least allow our offence to try something, unless he just doesn't believe that we can do it.

This is the fear that I was talking about earlier. Why wouldn’t he think Ryan and the offence can do it? He clearly doesn’t. If he did, he would’ve let them try. Perhaps it’s because Mike thinks of Ryan as a backup QB, which is in stark opposition to the way I think about him, as the star of my His Year article.

When that offensive drive coming out of half that Mike Vrabel was so anxious to get to results in three plays and a punt, and the Chiefs jump right back to a 19-13 lead, it makes his caution look even worse, but, in what will become a theme as we go along, these Titans are just not willing to die, with a 68 yard Derrick Henry rush getting us the lead back again 20-19. However, when the Chiefs score a field goal to take a 22-20 lead, and we cannot respond with anything, meaning KC gets to start the fourth quarter with the lead and the ball, it's looking seriously bleak.

The Chiefs do score that touchdown to take a 29-20 lead. At least they do it quickly, but this is horrible news. According to NFLFastR, this KC touchdown has dropped our estimated Win Probability down to ten percent. Ten percent is not unassailable, but these are the Kansas City Chiefs. We are the 4-5 Tennessee Titans. It doesn’t feel like ten percent. It feels like a one in a million chance to come back and beat the Chiefs in the fourth quarter. It is our ball, but even if we do score, we cannot tie the game, and we must rely on our defence to stop Patrick Mahomes. Not exactly a sure bet, but damn it. We’re the Titans. We're willing to try.

It takes six crucial minutes that we do not have, but we are able to narrow the score to 29-27. This drive includes the best 12 yard scramble you will ever see, with Ryan (recall, a receiver in college) carrying defenders on his back across the first down marker to convert an absolutely essential third and ten to keep the drive going, but nevertheless it still leaves us with 6:30 to go, facing a two point deficit, against the Kansas City Chiefs. Not a great spot to be in.

The deficit does not stay at two for long, as the Chiefs kick a field goal at the 3:19 mark to make it a five point deficit, but this gives the Tennessee Titans the chance we've been waiting for. This is it. 3:19 left in the game. We have the opportunity to eat up the whole clock, drive all the way down the field, defeat the Kansas City Chiefs, and keep our playoff hopes alive.

Welcome to Ryan Tannehill's...

Wait a minute. We failed?

Not something you often see in a His Year article, but yes. We fail. We do not even get close to succeeding. Given the chance on the big stage to walk down the field and defeat the Kansas City Chiefs, there's nothing happening. Ryan completes one pass. We manage one first down, and that's all. It's a turnover on downs on our own 32, and it's over.

Not technically over, as we do still have all three timeouts, but our probability of winning this game has dropped all the way to three percent. It would require one of the wildest sequences of events in NFL history in order to win this.

If you’ve been a fan of this publication long enough, you know what that means.

After two standard rushes to burn timeouts, Kansas City is looking at third and two on our 24. They call RPO, and for once in his life, Patrick Mahomes makes an incredibly bad decision. It's the worst offensive play you've ever seen out of the Kansas City Chiefs. He pulls it out to throw, and realizes that the throw he's trying to make is going to be intercepted. He looks elsewhere, but knows it's been too long and linemen are downfield by this point anyway, and Patrick is forced to simply lay down and give a free sack away on the most crucial play of the game.

Just handing the ball off likely would've ended this game, but instead the Chiefs have to try field goal, and it's one of the most bizarre field goal attempts you'll ever see. The snap is not workable, so the holder stands up and throws a pass to nobody. Not only do the Chiefs not get points, they also get intentional grounding on the punter, setting us up all the way out on our own 39.

The first chance Ryan gets he takes, as another epic scramble out of the former punt returner gets his team all the way to the Chiefs' 41 in just one play. The following play is a 20 yard completion. One play after that it's a 23 yard completion into the end zone, and it feels like we’ve just seen a miracle. The Tennessee Titans are ahead 33-32, but must try a two point conversion from here, and what happens on this play must be seen to be believed.

It's a designed run for Ryan, one which does not fool anybody. There's a defender to meet Ryan right on the goal line, but the QB lowers the shoulder, bowling right through in order to put us up 35-32, and the Chiefs cannot score in the remaining 29 seconds, and Tennessee has won. Tony Romo on commentary cannot contain himself, nor can I.

Look at the Win Probability graph for this game:

It's all Chiefs all the time, yet the Tennessee Titans were still able to keep our nerve, and walk out of our home stadium as winners. 5-5, and still barely clutching to life in the playoff race.

Being honest with ourselves, this was not a great Ryan Tannehill performance. He game managed this game really heavily, with the picturesque scrambles and the one 52 yard pass being the only real exceptions. Managing to beat the Kansas City Chiefs despite generating 0.06 EPA/Play is not something that happens very often to a QB. In reality, this Chiefs game is Derrick Henry's finest hour, but does anybody care about any of that right now? Tennessee Titan fans sure didn't when it happened, so why should I?

Did the Titans get lucky to beat the Chiefs? Of course we did, but that doesn't do anything to take away from the fact that this was as gritty a win as gritty wins get, and it came at a time when we needed it worse than badly, one week after a brutal loss against that really bad Carolina team, and desperately needing to win to keep pace in the AFC South.

This game will start a bit of a pattern for Ryan, the pattern of game managing. Over his first three starts (and his entire career in Miami), there was nothing ‘game manager’ about Ryan Tannehill. You can't be a game manager when your rush offence is as putrid as it was against LA, Tampa Bay, and Carolina, but Derrick Henry really found his footing in the Kansas City game.

I want to show you something about this Kansas City game:

Do you see that?

Green means good. Purple means bad. Look at how putrid the Titans were in the late down passing game. Struggling on late downs while being good on early ones is typical game manager behaviour, and it didn't exist in any of Ryan's first three starts, but it showed up in spades this week, and is going to stay for a while too.

Don't get me wrong, game manager is not necessarily an insult. Game managers can still have great (even all-time great) games. These great games normally come when they are so good on the early downs that there is no need for late down passing at all. This is what happens (after a week 11 bye) in week 12 as Ryan generates a crazy 0.59 EPA/Play as the Titans roll over the hapless Jacksonville Jaguars.

Week 13 sees an important 31-17 win over the 6-5 Indianapolis Colts in a crucial divisional game, but it has almost nothing to do with Ryan, or any other Titan offensive players. Our offence mostly stays out of the way and allows the Colts to fold in on themselves, something that (even to this day in 2024) the Colts are quite good at doing. This is evidenced by this chart of the ten most important plays of this game:

Each of the two biggest plays of this game are Colt blunders. Ryan's name does not appear in a positive fashion anywhere, and even Derrick Henry's only appears positively once. On offence, we truly did simply step out of the way and allow the Colts to lose this game for themselves. That's certainly one way to move to 7-5. but it's not very encouraging out of a team with so much offensive talent.

Speaking of all that talent, the well informed among you may be asking yourselves a question. The Tennessee Titans have AJ Brown, one of the NFL's best receivers straight out of the gate in his 2019 rookie year. Why haven't you heard his name yet?

The answer is fairly simple. AJ Brown is not one of the NFL's best receivers straight out of the gate. Look at his numbers from the 2019 season:

I've taken the liberty of highlighting Ryan's starts for you, but even if I hadn't, you would've been able to tell exactly when Ryan took over, because AJ Brown's production takes a jump immediately. With Marcus Mariota throwing the passes, AJ was on pace for about 700 yards and six touchdowns. No small apples for a rookie drafted in the 2nd round, but not exactly unprecedented. Under Ryan however, you can visually see the jump AJ's production takes.

Let me be perfectly clear. Many believe Ryan Tannehill parachuted into a team with the NFL's best rush attack, and its best receiver, and therefore discount his 2019 season as being a product primarily of those two factors. In fact, he inherited neither.

The NFL's best rush attack (even when adjusting for the Lamar Jackson effect, where he adds roughly 0.05 EPA/Play to every rush simply by being the threat he is) belongs to the 2019 league MVP, and it’s funny to me how nobody discounts that season for the elite rushing attack. The Titans' rush attack is going to finish fifth in EPA/Play this season, behind teams as innocuous as the Arizona Cardinals. I’ve never heard anybody take credit from 2019 Kyler Murray for the excellence of his rushing attack, and it’s not just equal but slightly better than what Ryan gets to work with.

Ryan Tannehill did not inherit the NFL's best receiver either. He inherited a second round rookie receiver on pace for 700 yards and six touchdowns. Although he did end up with what AJ Brown quickly became, his breakout explicitly happened after Ryan became the starter and not before. The relationship between QB and receiver is symbiotic. Did Ryan get lucky to have AJ Brown on his roster? Of course, but no more lucky than AJ Brown got to have Ryan Tannehill on his roster.

I choose to bring all of this up now because it's week 14, and we're on the road to play the Oakland Raiders. In an earlier one PM game, the Houston Texans have just lost to fall to 8-5, meaning this game will get us into a tie for the AFC South lead if we can win it. Both of the aforementioned protagonists, Ryan Tannehill and AJ Brown, are about to have their best games of the season, and I have no patience for anybody attempting to discount one on behalf of the other.

It's evident right from the beginning that this Raider defence is in trouble. A bit of overreliance on the run game means we have to face a few third downs, but nothing that can't be handled. Before you know it, we’re all the way to the 19 yard line, threatening to score and take a lead we'll likely never give up, but it's here that something happens that you almost never see in an NFL game. It's going to change everybody's view of Ryan Tannehill forever.

Welcome to Ryan Tannehill's Year.

An attempted screen pass is batted at the line, and falls into the arms of defensive tackle Maurice Hurst, who has nobody in front of him. In technical terms, Ryan Tannehill is in front of him, but everybody knows that QBs make no effort to make open field tackles. One TD is not worth the injury risk. You maybe see a push out of bounds every now and then, but Maurice Hurst is running right down the middle of the field. It’s going to take a tackle, and the only available tackler is the QB. Even with a big slow defensive tackle running, since everybody was out blocking for the screen, nobody is going to catch him. This is the easiest pick six in history.

This is where we again must remember that despite having seven and a half years of being an NFL QB under his belt, Ryan Tannehill still has the mindset of the man told he could never play QB. The man who was forced to play defensive back and wide receiver in college. The man who was kicked out of the ranks of NFL starters prior to the start of this season despite his talents being obvious to anybody who just cared to look for them.

He's back in those starting ranks now, but doesn't act like it on this play, as he turns on the jets, outruns all potential blockers, and tackles the 300+ pound Maurice Hurst, preventing the easy touchdown.

Our defence will render this empirically meaningless by giving up this touchdown anyway, but it is neither emotionally nor morally meaningless. Think about it. Ryan Tannehill is a QB who began the season as a backup. He’s coming off of a substandard performance last week, and a substandard performance against Kansas City. It's still entirely possible that he lacks the respect of a good deal of his teammates.

NFL players are a fickle bunch. They may pretend they’re not, but they are. Think about all the stories that have come out about the Seahawks Super Bowl era, with notable names on the defence (Richard Sherman) and offence (Marshawn Lynch) claiming Russell Wilson had no respect from his teammates, which was a big catalyst for that Seattle era falling apart quicker than it should've.

If it can happen to a Super Bowl champion, you bet it can happen to a QB whose perception as of week 14 of the 2019 season is that he couldn't even hack it in Miami. These little behind the scenes details are what makes a play like this so important. Ryan could've let all the Raider defenders run by him and score the easy touchdown. Nobody would've blamed him. It’s just what a QB does, especially one that really cannot afford an injury like one year, $2M Ryan Tannehill, but instead of allowing all the Raiders to run by him, he slipped a block and made the tackle, something almost nobody else would've done in his situation.

Despite all the things that Ryan has done and will do that I will talk about, to me (and I'm not the only one either, Titans Twitter remembers), this remains the defining play of Ryan Tannehill's career.

Perhaps more QBs should make effort to make tackles, because in the aftermath of his tackle, Ryan has the game of his life. The Titans score every time we touch the ball (barring one missed field goal) for the rest of the first half, but still can get into the half with just a 21-21 tie.

These 2019 Raiders are bad. Just two weeks ago they lost to the New York Jets 34-3.

The Jets. 34-3. Let that sink in for a minute.

It's that bad in Oakland, which is why in short order they will be Las Vegas, but Ryan Tannehill does not get that luxury. His defence has allowed Oakland to score 21 points in the first half as well, meaning that if he wants that share of the division lead that we’re playing for, he must go into the second half playing just as well as he did in the first.

The first drive sees Ryan hamstrung by two Derrick Henry rushes that accomplish nothing and force the offence to punt, but from there it's back on the gas. By 13:25 of the fourth it's 42-21 Titans, and at that point the foot comes off the gas, but what an epic game from Ryan Tannehill.

On his 32 touches, Ryan generates 0.67 EPA/Play today, and he does this around a pretty killer interception. I'm not exaggerating when I say this is may be the best game I've ever seen out of any QB with a turnover in it. This is an all time great day, and without the turnover on the first drive of the game likely would've gone down in the history books as the best game of Ryan's career. As it stands, it's not quite the very best he ever did, but it came at a time when his Titans really needed it, after the disappointing showing last week in Indianapolis, and we've taken a share of the AFC South lead.

We now have two 8-5 teams in the AFC South. Ourselves, and the Houston Texans. From the Houston standpoint, this is the breakout they've been waiting for, out of 2017 first round draft pick QB Deshaun Watson. From our standpoint, this level of success was entirely unexpected, especially the 6-1 record since Ryan came into the starting spot.

From very different starting points, both teams have converged to the same 8-5 record. This may feel good, but it's nowhere near safe, because the loser of this game is likely to miss the playoffs. The Buffalo Bills are 9-4 currently, with a head to head win over us in a game Marcus Mariota played, and are going to be one of the AFC's wild card teams. That's already decided. In addition, the 8-5 Pittsburgh Steelers are on the other side of the conference, and are just as white hot as we are, having won six of their last seven games just like we have.

In week 15, when the Texans come to Nashville, it's a game that both teams need to win, and neither team can afford to lose. Due to just how well we've been playing recently, and the fact that it's a home game, we enter as scant three point favourites, but these are not the Oakland Raiders. The Houston Texans have won the AFC South three out of the last four years, and six times in the last nine. This is their division to lose, and it has been ever since Peyton Manning left this division nine years ago. In order for the Titans to steal it, we're going to have to rip it from their cold, dead hands.

On the first drive of the game, we do just that, as Houston gets all the way into the red zone, but an end zone interception means our defence gets off the field allowing no points, but it also means Ryan has to begin his first touch on his own one yard line. This concern quickly evaporates with a 60 yard bomb to AJ Brown that gets us straight off the back foot, although the excitement is dulled when this drive ends in a blocked field goal and no points.

At this point, the teams trade three and outs for most of the rest of the first quarter, but this ends with a completion on a nice deep out pattern to Corey Davis on a third and 13 at around one minute left. With the curse broken, we rush with Derrick Henry most of the way down to the goal line, with the benefit of a few very productive interspersed passes, and this leaves us with first and goal at the five yard line.

But now it’s our turn for a red zone disaster.

Ryan completes a slant pattern to Anthony Firkser, but a hit on the goal line knocks the ball out of his hands and into the air and into the arms of Whitney Mercilus. I think if reviewed this would've been ruled a catch fumble, but it's in the record books as Ryan throwing a killer interception on the one yard line. He tries to make a heroic tackle, much like last week, but it's been a while since he's played defensive back. He gets juked out of his shoes. Mercilus is not caught until he gets all the way to our 12, and two plays later it's 7-0 for Houston.

That hurts, but what hurts worse is Mike Vrabel not giving Ryan a chance on the next possession until two unproductive runs have made it third and six already. Ryan cannot bail us out of the third and long. We punt the ball back again. Houston responds to this by scoring easily to move the score to 14-0 at the 3:20 mark of the second quarter.

This leaves us with plenty of time to score, but the drive stalls at the Houston 37, and instead of just having our offence stay on the field to try to convert fourth and ten, Mike Vrabel elects to go for the most obvious fake punt of all time. It’s not 1997 anymore. Teams don’t punt from the 37 in 2019. This fake punt was so obviously coming that Tony Romo called it before the snap. Needless to say, the Texans are not fooled, and this drive (and half) ends with no points.

In the game that neither team can afford to lose, we are losing 14-0 at half. Our estimated WP has plummeted from 58% at kickoff to 17% now, and nothing has gone right. As has been the story for much of the season, Ryan himself has played well, but not quite well enough to overcome the struggles the rush game is having (30% success rate). We do get the ball to begin the next half, which dulls the pain a little bit, but it's hard not to begin thinking back already about all the opportunities for points that have been squandered. There needs to be a change in plan for the second half.

There is a slight change, but not a very big one. The drive coming out of half takes sixteen plays. Eight are rushes. Eight are passes. Among the rushes, just two are successful, with even one of those successful rushes being a QB sneak, but among the passes, only two are unsuccessful, with Ryan eventually capping off the drive with the aforementioned QB sneak to narrow the score to 14-7.

This is less helpful than it seems, because taking sixteen plays and ten minutes to score when facing a 14 point second half deficit is not what you're going for. It only increases our chances of winning the game to 25 percent (from 17), but once Deshaun throws his second end zone interception of the game, that’s when we get real hope.

This drive takes nowhere near as long, with its key play being a handoff to TE Jonnu Smith that goes for 57 yards. This puts the ball on the Houston 16. An unnecessary roughness penalty on the ensuing play puts us even closer, and Ryan makes no mistake, throwing a five yard touchdown pass that eliminates the deficit and ties this game at 14.

It does not take long for this tie to be broken, as the Titan defence still has nothing for Deshaun Watson, who takes his team straight down the field for a 21-14 lead at 10:41 of the fourth quarter. Ryan, again hamstrung by several unsuccessful rush plays, can get just one first down before punting it back to the Texans, who take seven minutes grinding the ball down the field for a field goal.

Now down 24-14 with 3:26 to go, there's not much to be done. Ryan does what he has to do in this situation, gets his team a touchdown before the two minute warning, but our defence cannot get him the ball back until there are just 17 seconds to go. In the battle for the AFC South that both teams needed to win, and neither could afford to lose, the Tennessee Titans have lost 24-21.

This hurts, not just because at 8-6 the Titans are now on the outside looking into the playoff picture, but because Ryan once again, just like in Carolina, played well enough to win but got no help. The score should have been wider than it was, if not for two end zone interceptions out of Deshaun, but that spread in team quality is not because of Ryan, who generated 0.19 EPA/Play on his most touches of the season today. Like I say all the time, if your QB generates 0.2 EPA/Play, it’s not his fault that you lost.

It's because of that Tennessee rush game that everybody remembers being so great. Aside from that one handoff to TE Jonnu Smith, and Ryan's rush attempts, the Titan rush offence (in the form of Derrick Henry and Dion Lewis) got 25 touches, and made us more likely to score just six times. They got outdone big time by the Texan rush attack, and I’ve never heard anybody saying 2019 Deshaun Watson coasted on his rush offence either.

This game is the beginning of what we know is going to be a pattern for this Tennessee team as the years go on. In the big games, the vaunted rushing game goes completely silent, and it's all on Ryan Tannehill, which puts him in the terrible position of having to shoulder a big load only when the team is at its worst, therefore catching the most blame for the losses and the least credit for the wins.

This is actually common for QBs who rely heavily on their elite rush attack in order to win (except for Lamar Jackson, who for some reason consistently avoids this treatment). Think Trent Green. Think Jimmy Garoppolo. Think Brock Purdy. Think any Colts QB for the last several years. They and Ryan all share the same characteristic. Very little credit for wins, and a mountain of blame for losses. That's no different today, because even though Ryan played good enough to win, he does himself no favours with this familiar sight:

Look at all of that late down purple. I believe this to be mostly a result of bad first down results (25% success rate on 24 early down rush plays. Ouch) leading to consistent third and long situations, but is generally seen as more proof of this being the same old game manager Tannehill, who's just led the Titans off the cliff.

Our hot streak is over. We're not going to win the AFC South, but with the Steelers losing on Monday Night Football to drop to 8-6 themselves, all is not lost. The Steelers do have a game remaining against the best team in the NFL (Baltimore), so they're looking good for at least one more loss, meaning if we can win out to get to 10-6, the last playoff spot in the AFC has a good chance at being ours.

One big problem with this. Our week 16 game has us pegged as four point home underdogs.

Could the timing be any worse for our Titans to welcome the 11-3 New Orleans Saints to Nashville?

This is a horrendous time to be forced to face the NFC's best non-San Francisco team. This is especially true because Derrick Henry is finally having to sit out a game with the hamstring injury that's been bothering him for a while now. This is perhaps more blessing than curse, because since the Kansas City game, where he admittedly balled out, the rush game hasn't been doing anything but hurt the Titans.

The 2019 Saints are not the suffocating defence that they would become in the early 2020s, relying more on a still prime Drew Brees to win games, but they are ranked tenth on the defensive side, so this is not going to be easy. If the circumstances were different, it would be fun to just sit back and watch two of the NFL's best QBs in action, but as it stands, this is not a fair fight.

Drew Brees has Alvin Kamara, Michael Thomas. Whatever Saints' weapon you can think of and want to bring up, they were here, in addition to a pretty good defence. Ryan has a strictly average defence, no Derrick Henry, and no receiver that's going to get more than six targets in this game. In retrospect, it shows a great deal of respect for how far Ryan has come that, despite these overwhelming odds, the Titans are just four point underdogs.

You know who doesn't respect Ryan Tannehill? Titans' OC Arthur Smith.

The Titans begin this game with two rush tries for Dion Lewis, each of which go nowhere. Ryan cannot convert a miracle third and 11, and the Titans have just wasted a drive against Drew Brees. I wouldn't recommend doing that too many times, but this time we get away with it. Ryan doesn't allow this to happen again, as on the next offensive possession there are two rushes called. Each get no yards, but the three passes called get 72 yards and a touchdown for the Titans. 7-0.

The next Titan touch sees one 15 yard pass from Ryan before another very successful end around handoff, this one to AJ Brown. It's a 49 yard rush, and a 14-0 lead. The Saints respond with a field goal to narrow the score to 14-3, and the next Titan touch does not go well. A 15 yard completion is wiped out by two separate offensive penalties, and we cannot overcome first and long.

This drops the game into a period of sparring where neither team can score, until the 2:34 mark, where a 61 yard touchdown pass from Brees to Jared Cook narrows the score to 14-10. We can't accomplish anything in the two minute drill in response, but nor can the Saints, and we go into the locker room with a 14-10 lead.

This is better than it could have been, but following a 14-0 lead in the first quarter, it sucks to be in this position. This sentiment does not improve as the Saints score on each of their first two second half possessions to take a 24-14 lead. At this point, I finally must give Dion Lewis and the Titan rush attack some credit. A few solid runs put Ryan in solid positions to complete passes of 22 and 36 yards in third and short situations to get our Titans back into the end zone for a 24-21 deficit, but New Orleans will not slow down, and before you know it, it's 31-21 Saints.

When we’re forced to punt to open the fourth quarter, it looks as if this game could be over, but a clutch third down sack saves the offence's bacon, forces the Saints to punt the ball back to us, and once again the rush attack earns their money, as they again put Ryan in several good positions to complete some fairly easy passes to get the ball into the end zone once again and narrow the score to 31-28.

This sees the ball in the Saints' hands at 7:20 of the fourth. It's terribly nerve wracking as they walk all the way into Titan territory, taking 40 full seconds every time, but two consecutive incomplete passes do leave them on fourth down on the our 38. The Saints line up to punt, but it's a fake, and to their credit, our defenders bite, but an extremely fortunate dropped ball means that we get the ball at 4:20 with an opportunity to take the lead.

I've been going through this story a little fast, but let's take a break for a minute to think about how much this one drive means to Ryan Tannehill. Three points down, with 4:20 left on the clock. If you score, you're going to the playoffs, and you have a chance to rewrite your legacy. If you fail to score, you're a QB on a one year, $2M contract who, unless the Steelers somehow lose to the Jets, has just missed the playoffs and is almost certainly going to be moved in the offseason. You've had an incredible season, but as we saw with Jacoby Brissett in 2022, having an incredible season is not enough. You have to be sexy, and a bullet sponge for the regime, or your team will move off you in a heartbeat. It doesn’t matter that your record as the starter is 6-2, missing the playoffs does not make for a good bullet sponge, and if you’re not a good bullet sponge for those in charge, you will be moved aside in favour of somebody who is. That's the reality of the modern NFL.

You may think I'm exaggerating, but I really don't think I am. If things go off the rails right now, I believe Jordan Love is a Tennessee Titan today. I believe the Titans go QB in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft, and while that may be exciting for the fans, this article is about Ryan Tannehill. That would be a catastrophe. The worst thing that could possibly happen. That cannot be allowed to happen. It's now or never for Ryan as an NFL starter.

Once again, factors beyond his control show up to undercut him.

The first play of the drive is a play action dot to Kalif Raymond. It's all the way into New Orleans territory, meaning at least tying the game with a field goal is already guaranteed.

Except.

When Raymond gets hit, he drops like a stone, completely KO'd. Of course, when his entire body goes limp he drops the ball, and it's a fumble. We go from having a great chance to win this game to it being completely over, and the only input Ryan had on this outcome was completing a 23 yard pass. While Saints fans rejoice that they've avoided a potential trap game, it's once again factors beyond Ryan's control that doom him to another loss.

At risk of beginning to sound like a broken record, Ryan played awesome today. In a game that is in the running for the most important he's ever played, he ran out into the unfair fight I described above and generated 0.24 EPA/Play, compared to Drew Brees' 0.22, and had his team in a spot to take the lead late in the fourth, but it just didn't come together. This is surely beginning to become frustrating for him. Worse QBs than him are winning in these spots, but because these are the Titans, it just won't ever come together. To make the bad even worse, nobody is looking at his stellar performance today. They're looking at this:

Late down purple. Game manager Tannehill.

Little happened in this game to foreshadow the fact that things were about to change, but since everybody knows what's coming, I'm going to come out and say it. In about the middle of this game, the Titans' luck did change.

Up the coast in New York, at the beginning of the fourth quarter of their game, the Steelers lose starting QB Mason Rudolph. Duck Hodges, while a fun name and a fun story, is no replacement, and the Steelers fall to the New York Jets to, once again, keep the Titans' season alive.

Actually, it gets even better. Since the Steelers and the Titans have not played head to head this season, that means we must go to the second tiebreak, which is conference winning percentage. Since the Titans have just taken an out of conference loss, and the Steelers have taken an AFC loss, this week has actually brought this tiebreaker even as well. This forces us to go to the third tie breaker, which is best win percentage in common games. However, this only works if the teams have at least four common games. The Steelers and Titans have the Browns, Bills, and Chargers in common, but no common fourth opponent. That means the enforced tiebreak will be the fourth tiebreaker, strength of victories.

The Titans have beaten (in order): the Browns (six wins), the Falcons (seven wins), the Chargers (five wins), the Bucs (seven wins), the Chiefs (12 wins), the Jaguars (six wins), the Colts (seven wins), the Raiders (seven wins), and if we win in week 17, the Texans (10 wins). Adding them together gets 67 total wins for opponents the Titans have beaten.

Doing this same exercise for the Steelers, who have beaten the two win Bengals twice, the five win Chargers, five win Miami, seven win Colts, nine win Rams, six win Cleveland and five win Arizona means that going into week 17 the Steelers have just 41 wins on their resume, meaning that even if they can beat Baltimore's gargantuan 13 wins in week 17, this will not catch them up to the Titans.

Even if you're not a team that's going to compete for the top seeds in the conference, this is why converting your chances at beating good teams is so important, because our extremely close victory over the 12 win Kansas City Chiefs, in comparison to Pittsburgh's extremely close loss to the 13 win 49ers, is what's doing almost all the heavy lifting in this tie break scenario.

All of this means that despite losing for two consecutive weeks, our Titans have somehow managed to take a stranglehold on the final AFC playoff spot. All we need to do to make the playoffs from here is defeat a Texan team with nothing to play for in the final week of the season, and quite frankly (with the benefit of some resting Houston starters) it's easy work.

At 9-7, the Titans are the AFC's final playoff team.

That's the end of the regular season. Due to the nature of the way this team operates, I've spent less time than I should've talking about the subject of this piece, who is Ryan Tannehill, but I'm going to give him his flowers right now. Only given the benefit of touching the ball 360 times in just ten starts, Ryan still managed to do enough to turn this 2-4 team around, and get them into the playoffs.

A lot of people have been fooled over the years by the very high rushing yard totals for this team, but a lot of those came from the 65 yard touchdown runs this team is so good at getting. 65 yard touchdown runs are great, but they're not good enough to carry a team's offence. The fact of the matter is that the 2019 Titans’ rush offence was successful 40.9% of the time. Just 40.9% of their touches made the team more likely to score.

This is good. It's sixth in the NFL in 2019, but people look back at these 2019 Titans as if they're the 2003 Chiefs, a rush offence that was successful 49.8% of the time, led by the record breaking Priest Holmes.

I'm going to say this once, and from here I will assume you've understood. Derrick Henry in 2019 was not anywhere close to Priest Holmes. They're not really in the same league as far as their benefit to helping their teams. Derrick Henry was a good back behind a good line. Priest Holmes was an all timer behind an all time offensive line. Much more similar to 2024 Derrick Henry than 2019 Derrick Henry.

Therefore, you do not have the right to treat Ryan Tannehill as if he's Trent Green. Trent was also unfairly maligned in his day, being perhaps the only QB in NFL history to do both a) play elite football for better than half a decade and b) be overshadowed on his own team by his own fans anyway. Lord knows we’ve talked about that enough around here. 2019-2020 Ryan Tannehill is verging dangerously close in the modern discourse to joining Trent Green in that club as the memories of his elite play get further and further away, and I'm going to throw my body in front of that possibility every chance I get.

He didn’t do it for as long as Trent did, but Ryan’s heights are just as high. Perhaps higher. In 2019, a year which would determine the future of his NFL career, with all the pressure in the world on him, Ryan generated 0.232 EPA/Play (4th among QBs with at least 180 touches in 2019), on a 7.7 CPOE (1st), and 8.52 Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt (1st).

Fourth, first, and first. That's really all I have to say, but I have more myth debunking to do. Perhaps you may have remembered that Ryan Tannehill was the most accurate QB in the NFL in 2019, but did you remember that he did that while throwing the 6th most difficult passes in the NFL?

Ryan's passes travelled on average 9.7 yards in the air, which in 2019 was the third longest average pass length in the NFL, behind only perpetual chuckers Jameis Winston and Matthew Stafford. His expected completion percentage shows these passes were slightly easier than their length would suggest, but Ryan's 64.6 expected completion percentage is still the sixth lowest in the NFL, only throwing easier passes (on average) than Winston, Stafford, Russell Wilson, Ryan Fitzpatrick, and Josh Allen.

This is definitive proof that Ryan was not simply dropping back and throwing easy play action balls on every play. His average pass difficulty was up there with Josh Allen, a man we all know has no fear or lack of confidence when deciding where to put the ball.

While throwing these extremely difficult passes, Ryan put up a completion percentage 7.7 points over his expected (CPOE). Since CPOE began being measured in 2006, this is the sixth most accurate season any QB has ever had. Only 2011 Aaron Rodgers, 2006 Tony Romo, 2007 Tom Brady, 2015 Russell Wilson, and 2013 Philip Rivers can match up to this.

Being in the same company as 2011 Rodgers and 2007 Brady is absurd. It's a place virtually no QB ever ends up, and yet here we are.

For your future reference, when you think of 2019 Ryan Tannehill, you shouldn't think of him as a slightly improved version of Trent Green. You should think of him as a slightly improved version of Josh Allen. As far as I’m concerned, those two sentences mean approximately the same thing, but to the general fan, there’s a big connotational difference there. Ryan deserves to be remembered for what he did, which was attempt really difficult throws, and complete them more often than anybody else could. Josh Allen has been trying this same style for years, and he’s never been able to do it as well as Ryan did it.

This is the second His Year article I've done about the 2019 season, and you may be wondering why I haven't brought up yet that 2019 was the biggest that offence ever got. It was never easier to be a QB in the history of the league than in 2019. This is true, so even in a year that saw Ryan be the sixth most accurate QB of the CPOE era, he still did not win MVP.

Quite frankly, he did not deserve to win MVP, because even as the sixth most accurate QB season since 2006. He was not Patrick Mahomes. He was not Drew Brees. I'm not nor have I ever argued that he was better than any of those three, but I am arguing that you can name me anybody in 2019 that isn't Lamar Jackson, Patrick Mahomes, or Drew Brees. Ryan Tannehill was better than them.

If you feel the need to argue that assertion, I am prepared to go to (internet) war in order to defend it, and I get my exhibit A in wild card weekend.

I have been promising to write an article about how the 2019 New England Patriots are one of the best defences of all time for a while now, and it would've been awesome to be able to link it here to back up my opinion, but for now you just have to take my word for it. The Titans have been lucky this season to have played nine of the 15 AFC teams, and have none of those games fall against the Patriots, because they are monsters.

By EPA/Play, they are the second best pass defence of the play tracking era. Keep in mind that this is raw, and not era adjusted. The New England Patriots managed to have the second best raw pass defence since 1999, in the year where offence got as high as it’s ever gotten leaguewide. That's how good they are. If I were to era adjust this statistic, they would be so far above everybody else I wouldn't be able to make a graph that could contain them. The rush defence lags a just a little bit behind, but not far enough to prevent this from being the best defence in the NFL by a mile.

Strictly knowing these facts already means Ryan is going up against a monolith, but you also must add in that it's the Patriots. It's Brady. It's Belichick. They've been the AFC's representative in each of the last three Super Bowls, and four of the last five. All that separates these Patriots from having gone to the Super Bowl five consecutive times is a failed two point conversion in the 2015 AFC Championship game. They have not lost a home playoff game since 2012.

That is who we're facing here. We're facing them as a team that got into the playoffs via having one of our soul crushing losses come out of conference, while the Steelers' soul crushing loss came in conference. We did not get into the playoffs by winning. We got into them by losing against the correct opponent for tie breaking purposes.

Winning six of Ryan's first seven starts now feels like a distant memory, and we haven't had a win over a team that isn't resting starters since week 14. That's a long time ago. Considering the Patriots have also lost four of their last eight games, this can be considered a matchup between two pretty cold teams by playoff standards.

There is one thing on our side. One team has one of the best QBs in the NFL, and the other has 2019 Tom Brady. Therefore, despite the superiority of the Patriots at (give or take) every position that isn’t QB, RB, or WR, we come in as just five point road underdogs. This may seem big, but this is the smallest spread for a Patriot home playoff game since 2009.

Having the better QB has its benefits.

Retrospectively, you may not believe in Ryan Tannehill, but contemporaneously, people, at least the ones in Las Vegas, believed in him.

The Patriots get the ball to start this game. A badly faded Tom Brady is still Tom Brady, so New England starts with a field goal, but when we get the ball it becomes clear that the greatest defence I've ever seen against the pass is going to have serious trouble handling Derrick Henry. Derrick Henry does not pass. New England has no power over him.

Our play callers wise up, throwing on first and tens, running on second and shorts, just the way God intended, and we get down the field easily this way, ripping off first downs left and right, but after a false start penalty, we’re faced with one of the hardest conversions in football, third and ten from the Patriot 12.

It's even harder this specific time, because it's third and must-pass against the best pass defence in NFL history. Like the Patriots have been doing all season, everybody is covered tight despite it being straight cover 0, with seven people coming at the QB, but Ryan stands strong, and makes the tight window throw to Anthony Firkser.

Touchdown Titans.

Make no mistake. The Patriots, especially these 2019 Patriots, are not used to getting punched in the mouth like this, but they've still got champions in them, scoring a touchdown on the first play of the second quarter to make the score 10-7. From here, we have no luck at all trying to score. It looks exactly like you think it would with this Titans team. A lot of incomplete passes and three yard runs and fourth and two punts. This continues until just before the two minute warning, where the Patriots kick another FG to move the score to 13-7.

This seems to bring the Titans back to life, as Derrick Henry is a one man wrecking crew, catching both passes and handoffs to account for all yards (and all but one pass target) in the two minute drill to send us into the locker room leading 14-13.

Everybody knows that these are the Patriots, and a one point halftime lead doesn't mean anything, but on the first drive of the second half once again one of the most accurate QBs in NFL history can complete just one pass, such is the strength of this Patriot pass defence. Luckily, their offence is suitably weak to compensate, as they can't score either. In fact, at this point the entire game bogs back down.

Nobody can score.

This continues until 12:45 of the fourth, with the score remaining the same, 14-13. This is where our coaches decide that scoring is no longer our primary goal. They're going to run this clock out as much as we can from here onwards, but on first down and second down Derrick Henry can't really get anywhere. It's third and five, and we're liable to give the ball back again.

This Patriot offence in 2019 is significantly worse than it's been for the last 15 years. We all understand that, but it's still extremely uncomfortable allowing them to have chance after chance in the way that we have. Their offence has failed three times in a row in the second half. On none of these tries have they even gotten close to scoring, but this is beginning to look a lot like to the 2017 AFC Championship, where the Patriot offence failed and failed and failed, but due to the Jaguars failing to pull away, they were eventually able to figure it out.

We cannot fall victim to the same fate. Right? We have Ryan Tannehill, not Blake Bortles. There's no way this is how our season is going to go out.

For once in our lives, our anti-Patriot prayers are answered.

On another obvious third and pass, against the same voracious pass defence, Ryan converts with an eight yard pass to Dion Lewis. Nothing exceptional, but enough to keep going. Two more minutes gone. Two plays later it's third and two. It's a QB keep for Tannehill. Nobody is fooled, but once again we see the former WR bowl through a fairly good tackler in Devin McCourty for the first down. Two more minutes gone.

I don't need to tell you everything that happens, but in large part due to these two clutch conversions from Ryan, we shorten the game by eight full minutes. Now with 4:40 left in the game, the Patriots will not get chance after chance. In fact, when they go three and out again, they give us the ball back inside three minutes.

After two plays and two timeouts we find ourselves at 2:54 facing a third and eight for all the money. A conversion means a trip to Baltimore. A failure means the Patriots get one last try at this, needing only a field goal to win. For one final time, I understand the 2019 version of Tom Brady is badly faded, but would you really want to make that bet? Do you expect our league average defence to stop Tom Brady for the fifth time in the second half?

As I understand it, everything is on the line right here. The man who has struggled all season in third and pass is left facing one final must-pass situation.

As always with the 2019 Patriots, everybody is blanketed, but Ryan does manage to find Anthony Firkser, for the biggest third down conversion of His Year, and his life. As is typical with Ryan Tannehill, his clutch playoff moment can't be screaming down the field to throw a late TD pass. Instead, it's a simple (but by no means easy) third and eight completion to a backup tight end, but the meaning is the same.

The game is over. The greatest defence I've ever seen is over. The Patriot dynasty is over. They (as of 2024) will never win a playoff game again. Of all teams, and all players, Ryan Tannehill, and his Tennessee Titans, have killed the Patriot monolith forever.

This was awesome.

I try to be as impartial as I can be, but I can't say I didn't get a little extra joy out of watching Miami castoff Ryan Tannehill, conditioned to getting his brains beaten in twice per season by the Patriots, be the one to end it all. I'm also confident in saying I'm not the only one with this belief, as I don't think (before or since) that the Tennessee Titans have ever been as popular as they were on this day.

The Titans were only five point underdogs. This was not that big of an upset, but it felt like one in the moment.

If you want to focus on the negative, you can. I'm fully aware that Ryan completed eight of only 14 true pass attempts for just 72 yards and generated 0 EPA/Play today. I'm also fully aware that the 2019 Patriots (a top five defence of all time) were looking at two choices: stop Derrick Henry, or stop Ryan Tannehill, and they decided that Ryan was the much more dangerous threat. They did everything they could to get in Ryan's way, Derrick Henry be damned.

Guess what? Ryan still managed to do just as well as Patrick Mahomes could do just a few weeks earlier against this same Patriot pass defence, so as far as I'm concerned, either go focus on the negative in Kansas City, or stay here as I show you this rbsdm graphic:

Do you see that? Look at all that late down green. Game manager no more. Ryan showed up when his team needed him in the late downs in New England, and all the football fans out there who supposedly put so much weight on rising for the playoffs, yet still constantly blow their tops over Lamar Jackson (do you like my foreshadowing?) owe him credit for it.

Ryan has just started and won his first career playoff game, but there's still a long way to go. After all, even Marcus Mariota was able to win one playoff game. When it comes to the playoffs, nobody really cares about the wild card round. It's great and all, and you have to get through it in order to get to where you want to go, but looking back on NFL history, nobody cares about wild card wins. The second round is where the playoffs truly begin, because the pretenders are gone, and the great teams separate themselves from each other.

It's here that fate once again puts Ryan Tannehill into a bad position.

To go along with not being allowed to play QB until his senior year of college. To go along with years of having to suffer through Adam Gase as his head coach. To go along with tearing his knee during the best season of his career, he has now one upped that 2016, and had a new best season of his career, where in the second round of the playoffs he has to face the best NFL team in recent memory.

For the 2019 Divisional Round, our Titans are going to Baltimore to face the Ravens.

The 2019 Ravens are loaded, and led by 2019 league MVP Lamar Jackson. I've already written the His Year article on 2019 Lamar Jackson, and I recommend you read it. In the best year for QBs the NFL has ever seen, Lamar managed to outdo everybody to definitively be the best, and that's not all the Ravens have going for them.

In short, the 2019 Ravens are the best team the NFL has seen since the 2007 Patriots. In the play tracking era, only these Ravens and those Patriots can say they have a top ten offence (all-time) by EPA/Play, while also having a defence that held opponents to negative EPA/Play for the season. These Ravens are better than any Super Bowl champion in the new millennium, and even with how good they are, they somehow still underperformed how good they should've been, turning 14.52 expected wins (3rd in the play tracking era, behind only 1999 STL and 2007 NE) into just 14 real ones.

Winning a playoff game as the sixth seed always means you're going to get the team with the best record in the AFC, but in almost any season other than this one, that still would've been an easier fight than this. For example, if this would've happened one year sooner, we would've gotten the 2018 Kansas City Chiefs, a team with an all-time great offence (but still not as good as 2019 Baltimore's), but a very beatable defence, compared to the suffocating 2019 Ravens. If this would've happened one year later, we would've gotten the 2020 Kansas City Chiefs, a team with great but not all-time great offence (not near as good as 2019 Baltimore's), but a very beatable defence, compared to the suffocating 2019 Ravens. Basically a strictly worse version of their 2018 selves.

In 2024, this matchup would've had us face the 2024 Chiefs, a team with 9.65 expected wins.

You see what I'm getting at here? To all those out there saying 'if you don't want to face great teams, don't be a sixth seed,' I'm making the point that even though we were a sixth seed, it's still almost impossible to find a team this good to match up against. It’s just Ryan's luck that he went and found it.

Sheesh. This guy is a lot like Trent Green.

The road victory over the Patriots was not that big of an upset, and that's coming from somebody going out of my way to give credit to Ryan Tannehill. The same will not ever be said about this week. This time, we are shockingly high (by playoff standards) ten point road underdogs. If our Titans can walk into Baltimore, and end the season of one of the best NFL teams of all time, we're talking about one of the biggest upsets in NFL playoff history.

Things do not start well. The opening drive does see a 15 yard completion from Ryan, but that's the only first town we can muster, punting the ball over to one of the best offences the NFL has ever seen. This defence of ours does not need another chance to show that they cannot contain elite QBs. We've seen it enough, but much like we saw in the Texans game earlier in the season, they do have a penchant for timely interceptions, and they come up with one here to stop the Ravens for no points deep in our own territory, on top of giving our offence the ball on the Baltimore 35 with a nifty return.

The defence has given us one break. Now it's the offence's turn to respond, and it's immediately clear that once again Ryan Tannehill has one of the better defences in the NFL spooked, as Derrick Henry tears the Ravens apart, and the Ravens more or less let it happen, in fear of what will happen if they don't.

This Titan team is one of the best examples in NFL history of how a great QB can make a great run game tick, as even with Derrick Henry ruining the Ravens’ lives, there is no box stacking. We have the sixth most accurate QB of the CPOE era, who will throw it over their heads in a heartbeat if they try. Even on the one third and pass on this drive, third and goal from the 12, Ryan proves the Ravens right in their choice to key on him, as he throws the prettiest fade you will ever see to Jonnu Smith. 7-0 Titans.

Perhaps something divine wanted to see the Titans win today, as on their next chance, the middling defence that's been the weak point all season comes through again. To this point (the first play of the second quarter of this game), Lamar Jackson had not been stopped on a fourth and one in the year and a half of his NFL career. That changes now. We get the ball on the Baltimore 45, and on first and ten, we catch the Ravens getting lazy.

The Ravens call run blitz (those blitzes you see occasionally where nobody actually tries to break through the line, just stick to the linemen). We go play action pass. Should've known better than to play cover 0 on Ryan Tannehill. 45 yard touchdown to Kalif Raymond. 14-0 Titans.

Oh my goodness. Is this actually happening?

It's still too early to think those thoughts, as there is no score on our next touch, and the Ravens narrow the score to 14-3. When we don't score on our possession after that either, the Ravens go right down the field easily in the two minute drill, thankfully running out of time right on the goal line, and we go into the half leading 14-6.

We're doing it. We're actually doing it.

We're going on the road and actually beating one of the best NFL teams of all time, and we're doing it with a castoff from Miami at QB. The defence is at last giving some help, and Ryan shot his shot the one time we caught the Ravens napping. Everything is going right so far. However, these are still the 2019 Ravens. Don't book your flights to Kansas City just yet. NFLFastR still gives us just a 50% chance at winning.

Only a coin flip separating us from one of the greatest upsets in NFL history.

Coming out of half, the Ravens show us why this is. Despite our defence getting off the field in the first half with lucky interceptions and fourth down stops, they still don't have anything for Lamar. Constant second and longs can't stop him. Forcing him to run doesn't work. Forcing him to throw doesn't work, but the defence does manage to find themselves in a fourth and one on our own 18.

Lamar Jackson does not get stopped on fourth and one. It just doesn't happen. Once in his entire NFL career. Lightning already struck to have it happen once in this game. Can it happen again?

You bet it can.

The Ravens are once again held to no points deep in our territory, and our offence once again does not waste the chance. I will admit that the Ravens come out box stacking like nobody's business to begin the half, not wanting us to run the clock like we did against New England last week, but the threat of pass on third and one holds them off just enough to allow Derrick Henry to burst through the hole. He gets all the way to the Baltimore six before he can be brought down.

That's all it takes. A smidgeon of doubt. A second of hesitation. One step backwards. That's what an elite QB does for a rush game. Even abandoning high safeties and challenging us to throw still doesn't matter when you constantly hesitate due to fear of play action pass, which you have to, because we have one of the best play action passing seasons in NFL history playing QB for us. Ryan does not complete a pass on this drive, and he doesn't have to. Touchdown Titans. 21-6.

It's not until now that anybody truly thinks the Ravens are in serious trouble, but it's become undeniable. Bad goes to almost impossible for them when Lamar gets strip sacked his very next touch. One clutch third down completion plus little DBs being unable to stop Ryan on the goal line means that this game is now 28-6 Titans.

It's taken just five (in game) minutes for this game to go from a coin flip to being entirely over. At this point it doesn't matter that the defence cannot stop Lamar Jackson. Ryan will throw just one more pass. It’s incomplete. Nobody cares. The Tennessee Titans have completed the miracle. We're going to the AFC Championship game.

Oh my God. It happened.

It happened.

I don't even know what to say right now. What is there to say? I watched this game live when it happened, and I couldn't believe it then. I can't believe it now. There is no way in the world the Titans should've won this game. Remember last week when I said the Patriots were better than them at every position with the exceptions of QB and RB and WR? I don't think either the QB or RB exemptions apply against the Ravens, who have both the league's best QB and third best RB (third in the NFL in rushing yards over expected per touch) in the form of Lamar Jackson.

It's tough to quantify how big upsets are, especially in retrospect. For example, in 1996, the Jaguars were 12.5 point road underdogs when they beat the Denver Broncos in the second round. Should they have been, with Brunell, McCardell, Jimmy Smith, and that awesome offence they had? Likely not.

I can't say the same about this game though. The Titans walked into Baltimore as 10 point underdogs, beat one of the best teams I've ever seen, and even after I've seen them win the game, I still can't disagree with them having been ten point underdogs.

I've ranked and continuously updated what I believe to be the biggest upsets in NFL history for years. Recently, I’ve published that list for you, but for many years the top tier of upset had only two games in it. First was my pick for the biggest upset in NFL history, backup QB Wade Wilson and the eight win Vikings preventing the 49ers from three-peating in 1987, and second was the New York Giants preventing the Patriots from being undefeated in 2007. After seeing this game, I had no choice but to open up those ranks. You may disagree, but that's how big of an upset I find this to be, and if you hold that disagreement as your opinion, I strongly recommend you go back and watch some 2019 Baltimore Ravens games. You'll remember just how good they were.

The Titans are now well on our way to making history, with a dead dynasty, and one of the biggest upsets of all time already under our belt. A wild card team making the Super Bowl used to be a fairly common thing prior to 2002, but when the NFL moved to a four division per conference setup, this made it impossible to be like the 13-3 1997 Broncos, or the 13-3 1999 Tennessee Titans. With four divisions, it's just not really possible to win 12 or 13 games and not win the division anymore, like it used to be. This had the unintended side effect of making wild card Super Bowl participants go almost entirely extinct.

The most recent team to do so has been the 2010 Green Bay Packers, but even that is a mirage, as the Packers led the NFC with 12.35 expected wins in 2010, meaning that even though they came into the playoffs as the sixth seed due to bad luck turning their 12.35 expected wins into just ten real ones, their romp through the NFC playoffs was still painfully predictable.

The problem wild card teams face is that in order to get all the way to the Super Bowl, they must face the three best teams in the conference in order to get there. This means that wild card runs tend to coincide with either just being a great team in disguise (like 2010 Green Bay), or being in a conference that is incredibly thin at the top, meaning you need only one true massive upset to get you through. This describes the 2005 AFC, as well as the 2007 NFC.

Once again, fate has not set the us up for that, as we've decided to go on our run in one of the strongest AFCs of the new millennium. With the Ravens, Patriots, and Chiefs all strong at the top, I believe that the strength of this AFC can only be matched by 2007 and 2010, and the only AFC that can truly trump this one for strength at the top is 2007, with 2007 Brady and the undefeated Patriots, His Year David Garrard (forthcoming), Peyton being Peyton, a breakout year for Ben Roethlisberger, and the suffocating (and often forgotten) mid 2000s Charger defence getting to the best it ever got, all happening at the same time.

2019 must take second to that killers' row of a conference, but it will not take second to anything else in the 2000s century so far, making it a year uniquely unsuited for a wild card team to make a run, and yet here we are. One game away from making history.

This final game is going to force us to relive one of our greatest triumphs. For the right to go to the Super Bowl, we must once again defeat the Kansas City Chiefs. These are the same young, hungry, no Super Bowl, and not yet onto the second contract Chiefs that I told you about above. Think of the modern Chiefs (three time defending AFC champions), except quite a bit better. That's what we're dealing with here.

We've already dealt with it once, but hidden in that comfort is a grave disadvantage, one that we didn't have to deal with in New England, and didn’t have to deal with in Baltimore. These Chiefs have seen us before, and have no plans to lose twice. That's the ultimate humiliation in football, and the Chiefs come out with a different game plan than both New England and Baltimore. Those teams both decided that allowing Derrick Henry to run wild was an acceptable exchange for suffocating Ryan and the pass game.

The Chiefs are not willing to make such an exchange, and they are upfront in letting everybody know it, as they come out on the first play of the game with nine players lined up in the run box. You can't do this against Ryan Tannehill, and he immediately burns the Chiefs for a 37 yard catch and run to AJ Brown. This pattern continues until we kick our field goal to open up the game with a 3-0 lead, and on our next offensive touch, the Chiefs come out showing a lot more respect for Ryan and the pass game.

The problem with this is that coming out showing respect for Ryan means they get torched by Derrick Henry. Ryan has to complete just two passes (although they do account for 25 yards) for us to find the end zone, and a 10-0 lead.

This is a great start, but it’s still Patrick Mahomes on the other side. It takes no time at all for the score to get back to 10-7, and to make it clear that we are going to have to score on nearly every touch to keep this lead going. It’s also at this point that the Chiefs make their choice. Derrick Henry will not be beating them. If anybody beats them, it’s going to be Ryan Tannehill.

And he does beat them.

Ryan has no trouble at all continuously throwing over the drawn in Chief defenders, while Jim Nantz and Tony Romo on commentary cannot believe their eyes at how easy it is. This is what happens when you decide that a RB is not going to beat you, when that RB’s team also has one of the best QBs in the NFL. It looks exactly how you’d think it would, with throws that are easy for a QB of this calibre. The KC Chiefs look like idiots, and it’s 17-7 Titans.

This is the moment it begins to dawn on everybody.

The Tennessee Titans are going to do this. The Chiefs cannot stop the combined attack of Derrick Henry and Ryan Tannehill. Of all teams, the Tennessee Titans are going to prevent Patrick Mahomes from getting his first Super Bowl championship.

I say this because this is what casuals would be thinking after the 17-7 score, but those in the know understand that the Titans will inevitably waste an offensive series that we cannot afford to waste on Derrick Henry rush plays against obvious no-run fronts that go nowhere and a third and long that Ryan cannot convert. It’s what we’ve been doing all season, and we do it again now.

This is where it all falls apart.

The Chiefs score a touchdown to narrow the score to 17-14, and we waste our series on pointless Derrick Henry rushes and a third and nine that cannot be converted. Before you can blink your eyes it’s 21-17 going into half, and since the Chiefs get the ball again, it’s 28-17 coming out of half.

Ryan tries his best, and there is one more touchdown, but he just can’t play well enough to overcome a rush game that ends up touching the ball 22 times despite the Chiefs clearly declaring that they’re not going to allow the rush game to beat them. Just six of these rush plays make the Titans more likely to score, meaning 16 valuable plays that could’ve turned the tides of this game were wasted, and with Patrick Mahomes having an all-time great (the best of his career by far to date) playoff game on the other side against the typically bad Titan defence, there’s just no chance.

We fall at the final hurdle, 35-24.

After a final stretch that saw our Titans improving so much over what they were, the AFC Championship game saw themselves revert back to regular season form, with Ryan generating 0.14 EPA/Play, enough to win a game, but losing due to factors out of his control for one final time.

It’s all over.

Regardless, what a career turnaround for Ryan Tannehill. I’ve never seen one like it, especially not in the modern era of teams perpetually trying to get younger (read: worse) at the QB position. In the wake of this run, it does not take long for the one year, $2M contract situation to be rectified, as in the offseason the Titans sign Ryan to a four year extension with $62M in guaranteed dollars.

The Titans go from the symbols of perpetual mediocrity that they’d been for years to being the AFC’s fourth favourites to win the Super Bowl in the 2020 preseason in the wake of this shakeup, and almost all of that is due to Ryan Tannehill. He turned a franchise around that was in desperate need of good QB play. Think of the modern Indianapolis Colts. Sometimes make the playoffs. Sometimes not, but it’s perpetual mediocrity every year. That’s what the Titans were. That’s what Ryan Tannehill ended.

Never forget Ryan Tannehill’s Year, but the story does not end in 2019. The Tennessee Titans have more ahead of them, and as it turns out, Ryan has one more elite year in him.

Stay tuned. His Year II inbound.

Thanks so much for reading.