Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Vrabel took part in two Monday Night Football games during his first season in Nashville back in 2018, but none during the 2019 season.
In 2020, the Titans will return to Monday Night Football in the regular season opener against the Denver Broncos at Empower Field at Mile High, which was revealed when the team released its official schedule.
According to Jim Wyatt of Titans Online, Vrabel called it “an honor” to play in the primetime contest.
“It is always an honor to play on Monday Night Football,” Vrabel said. “When you grow up watching football, you watch Monday Night Football. It is your last taste of football for the week. Certainly, it’s a great challenge to go on the road and face Denver. It is a great way to start the season, there will be a lot of excitement and I know there will be a lot of people tuning in.”
The Monday Night Football contest will be the first of three primetime games for Tennessee.
The other two will take place in Week 10 at home against the Indianapolis Colts on Thursday Night Football and in Week 16 on the road against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday Night Football.
Vrabel stressed the importance of starting off the season strong as a whole after the team went 2-4 in its first six games of 2019 before going on a 7-3 run to finish at 9-7 and squeak into the playoffs.
“We need to start the season better than we did last year. We played well down the stretch last year and it is what allowed us to make the playoffs and win a couple of games, but we are going to need to start the season better so the margin for error isn’t so thin. The goal is to win the division and host home playoff games and to put ourselves in the best possible position and that will start with those games early in the season at home.”
The biggest difference between the start of the 2019 season and the start of the 2020 campaign is that the Titans have a different quarterback at the helm in Ryan Tannehill.
It was Tannehill who created the spark the Titans needed to finish the season strong after he was inserted as the starter in Week 7. Of course, the Titans wound up making a run all the way to the AFC Championship Game.
Having Tannehill for a full 16-game slate should equate to a better start and season overall if he can repeat what he did in 2019.
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