Tag: 2020 Titans schedule

Touchdown Wire predicts which team will hand Titans their first loss of 2020

Which game did Touchdown Wire predict would be the Titans’ first loss of 2020?

No matter what strength of schedule formulas come up with, the Tennessee Titans have a tough slate of games in 2020.

Tennessee will have six games against five different 2019 playoff teams, and five more games against four teams who I consider to be on the rise and potential playoff teams in 2020.

That’s no easy task.

Touchdown Wire’s Barry Werner recently predicted when each NFL team will lose it’s first game of the 2020 campaign, and he believes the Titans’ first loss will be in the Week 3 road game against the Minnesota Vikings.

“Mike Vrabel’s Titans will win their first two before losing at Minnesota in Week 3,” Farrar wrote.

That would mean the Titans nab two wins to start the season, one against the Denver Broncos on the road in Week 1, and the other against the Jacksonville Jaguars at home in Week 2.

That’s better than what I recently predicted, as I have the Titans suffering their first loss in Denver in Week 1, which is historically a very difficult place to win in the first two weeks of the regular season.

On the bright side, I do have the Titans ultimately going 10-6 and winning the AFC South.

The Week 3 contest against the Vikings will have a little extra juice, as former Titans fifth-round pick and wide receiver, Tajae Sharpe, signed with Minnesota this offseason. He’d certainly be happy with the result Werner has forecasted.

Tennessee Titans open as underdogs to Denver Broncos in Week 1

The Titans will open the season as underdogs.

The Tennessee Titans will open the 2020 regular season on the road against the Denver Broncos on Monday Night Football in Week 1.

According to BetMGM, the Titans (+1.5) are opening as underdogs against the Broncos (-1.5).

These two teams met in Week 6 of last season in Denver, with the Broncos emerging victorious, 16-0. However, that was with Marcus Mariota starting at quarterback and before the Titans’ rebound with Ryan Tannehill.

Tannehill did see his first action with Tennessee in that game after he was substituted in for Mariota in the second half, but it was too little too late. Tannehill would make his first start the following week.

After that game, the Titans would go on to win seven of their next 10 games en route to making the playoffs, and eventually, put together a run all the way to the AFC Championship Game.

The Broncos (7-9) finished the season with a worse record than the Titans (9-7), but did end their season strong with four wins in their last five games after switching to Drew Lock under center. Because of that strong finish, the Broncos are certainly a team on the rise going into 2020.

Since 2000, the Broncos are 22-2 at home in games that take place during the first two weeks of the season, making the task of earning an early-season win in Denver even more difficult for the Titans.

The most interesting storyline coming out of this contest will be Jurrell Casey facing his former team after the Titans unexpectedly traded him to the Broncos during the offseason for a seventh-round pick.

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Check out game-by-game score predictions from around the NFL Wires network:

Buf / Mia / NE / NYJ // Bal / Cin / Cle / Pit // Hou / Ind / Jax / Ten // Den / KC / LV / LAC //// Dal / NYG / Phi / Was // Chi / Det / GB / Min // Atl / Car / NO / TB // Ari / LAR / SF / Sea

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Titans’ Mike Vrabel talks playing on Monday Night Football, starting season strong

Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Vrabel talked about starting the season strong and what it means having a Monday Night Football game.

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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