Story By: Brady Trapnell
A 7-3 loss against the Jets Saturday night in MetLife Stadium was not exactly what the Titans hoped for or expected in their first preseason game.
But, Coach Mike Mularkey met with reporters on Sunday afternoon at Saint Thomas Sports Park and remained positive.
“There are some good things that came from that last night,” said Mularkey on his team’s performance. “I’ll say this again, as long as we play with that effort and that kind of intensity, we have a chance to win the game just like we did last night. We had a chance.”
The Titans finished with 223 yards total offense and gave up eight sacks, with the second-team offensive line struggling to protect. Mularkey said during Titans Radio’s postgame coverage that he needed to watch the film to completely assess his team’s performance. His assessment came out better than he expected.
“After watching it a couple times, it still was not good enough obviously to win a football game,” he said on his offense. “There were less mistakes than I thought there were. The problem was the mistakes that there were, were critical and some catastrophic. Tough lesson from that, and that’s what we’ve got to get better.”
For Mularkey, the problem was not necessarily the offense’s overall performance, which is often unimpressive from teams around the league in the first preseason game. He just wanted his team to be different.
“I wanted us being in our second year knowing that when we got in the second half it wouldn’t be as clean,” he said. “I wanted it to be clean with our starters and with our veterans. That’s what I was concerned about. First preseason game, the norm is not to play well offensively. Got to be better than that.”
There were fewer mistakes for Coach Dick Lebeau’s defense, as they were standout performers in game one, allowing only seven points, 251 yards of total offense on 56 yards rushing and two sacks.
“Thought our defense played winning football. Any time you can get stats like that in a game, holding your opponent to seven points, you should win a game,” said Mularkey in his day-after game press conference. “I liked the way they played, the physicality and the effort that they gave.”
Second-year corner Kalan Reed, the last pick in the draft in 2016, led the defense with six tackles, earning praise from his head coach.
“He actually played the most snaps on defense. Kalan played good,” he said. “He played very good. Really, if you think about last night, one of the best things we did better than coverage early on was our support by our secondary.”
The secondary was one of the biggest groups to watch going into Saturday’s game. Specifically, the eyes were on cornerback addition Logan Ryan and first-round pick Adoree’ Jackson.
Mularkey noted Jackson’s physicality and tackling. However, after giving up a deep ball to set up the Jets only touchdown, he was more critical of Ryan’s performance.
“Yeah, it was not a good early start for him,” Mularkey said on Ryan. “But again, this is the first preseason game. A couple of those balls—the first catch on him was tight coverage, thought he was all over him and the guy made a good play . . . He gave up some plays. I like that he’s his own worst critic, that’s important. He’ll respond to that.”
The Titans will hold joint practices with the Carolina Panthers this week at Saint Thomas Sports Park on Wednesday and Thursday morning beginning at 9:15 a.m. open to the public. Players will be in full-pads but with no live tackling.
“It’s going to be good for us to work against somebody else,” said Mularkey on the upcoming week. “It’ll be good for us to work against a four-down defense. Special teams will get some good work against another unit. There’s a lot of positive coming from this work.”
