A Massive Disparity on Defense

NASHVILLE – The Tennessee Titans’ defense was the NFL’s best this season. And the worst.

No team was better when it came to stopping the run. Opponents averaged 76.9 yards per game and 3.35 yards per carry.

At the same time, every team was better against the pass. The Titans allowed an average of 274.8 passing yards per game and ranked 25th with an average of 6.96 yards allowed per pass play.

It is a startling discrepancy but hardly an unprecedented one. In 2021, the Baltimore Ravens did the exact same thing. And like the Ravens last season, the Titans failed to make the playoffs this year.

“You can't be first in run and last in pass,” coach Mike Vrabel said. “It goes hand in hand. We have got to find ways to rush the quarterback and impact the quarterback. That is the best coverage, being able to rush them. Those will be conversations that I’ll have with [defensive coordinator] Shane [Bowen] and the coaching staff. It starts there and then it starts to materialize into the coverage, zone, man.

“That is something that we certainly have to improve on.”

It is not a new issue. Last year, the Titans finished second to the Ravens in run defense and ranked 25th against the pass. The sack number fell, from 43 to 39, and the opponents’ completion percentage improved from 62.9 to 65.4. Interceptions also fell from 16 to 14.

Part of the issue is that the defense’s success in stopping the run discouraged teams from even trying to do so. Opponents ran the ball against Tennessee 390 times, third fewest in the league.

Only twice in the past 15 seasons did the defense face fewer handoffs. The most recent was in 2016 when opponents ran it 356 times. That season, the Titans finished second against the run but 30th against the pass yet still managed to finish with a winning record (9-7).

“I don’t think that has anything to do with the run game,” defensive coordinator Shane Bowen said. “I think it’s just we haven’t done a good enough job defending the pass, affecting the quarterback, covering the guys, executing our zones.

“We’ve just got to do a better job of making sure we’re all on the same page and our coverage understanding what we’re asking them to do, and then being able to go out there and execute. We've got to find ways to affect the quarterback.”

Safety Kevin Byard and rookie cornerback Roger McCreary are the only members of the secondary who started every game this season. According to Pro Football Focus, Byard was the Titans’ best player in coverage, and his four interceptions were at least twice as many as any of his teammates. McCreary had his ups and downs but ultimately allowed completions on just shy of 70 percent of the throws in his direction.

Injuries, however, forced the Titans to use three different starters alongside Byard at safety and three others at the cornerback spot opposite McCreary.

“That’s one thing we have to clean up, for sure, is our pass defense,” Byard said. ”We have to find a way to be better. … To make more plays for this team.

“We, obviously, had a whole lot of injuries in the secondary as well that affects things.”

Yet that does not change the fact that there could not have been a bigger difference in how productive the Titans defense was against the run versus how productive it was against the pass.

“It’s pretty disappointing to me personally, being a DB, to obviously have the number-one rush defense and the worst pass defense,” Byard added.