It was an invasion — that’s what we were told. Buffalo had taken over the city of Nashville and they were ready for a party. The NFL’s darling had traveled south to have their mini-vacation, stomp the Tennessee Titans, and then go back to western New York to begin building Josh Allen’s statue.
If we are honest, it was hard to blame anyone for thinking this way. The Bills had the league’s best offense and defense heading into Week 6, Josh Allen was truly looking like an MVP, and the defense has talent at all three levels while being coordinated by a defensive mastermind in head coach Sean McDermott.
On the flip side, the Titans had rightfully lost some trust from most of the fan base and the media. The Week 1 blowout loss to the Arizona Cardinals was bad, but admittedly looks less ugly every week with the Cards still being the only undefeated team in the league. The Jets game, though, looks just as hideous as it did when it happened.
So, all the odds and all the picks were against the Titans. Admittedly, everyone — myself included — was asking the same question:
How could this disappointing Titans team compete with the league’s best? A team with the best offense AND best defense, where is the weakness? As my YouTube comments would tell you, the “Bills had no weaknesses.”
However, the lie detector test determined that was a lie!
Buffalo did, in fact, have one MAJOR weakness coming into this game that most people seemed to overlook. It is a surprising Achilles’ heel considering the mobility and arm strength possessed by their all-world quarterback, but one that stuck out like a sore thumb.
In a brief moment of self promotion, I will, without shame, self-servingly say I identified this weakness. But more important than identification, is execution and, luckily, the Titans used that execution to take advantage of the Bills’ biggest weakness, their red zone offense.
The Bills came into Week 6 ranked 24th in the NFL in red zone conversions. They only converted red zone opportunities into touchdowns on 58.3 percent of their chances. For a team being universally celebrated, that is quite the issue to have. The Bills had just been up by so much early in some of their games, this weakness never fully impacted their games up to that point.
That is, until they met the Titans. The Titans’ defense is not one of the best in the league. It is not going to shut opposing offenses down, especially the top offenses in the league, but what the Titans defense can do, which has been the game plan in these circumstances throughout Mike Vrabel’s tenure, is let the offense go up and down the field, but hold firm in the red zone.
That is exactly what the Titans were able to accomplish on “Monday Night Football.” The Bills got their yards, amassing 417 in total, but when it counted in the red area, the Titans were able to prevent the Bills from cashing in with touchdowns.
The Titans held the Bills to 2-of-5 in the red zone — including the game-winning goal line stand — while the Titans’ offense went 3-for-3. This swung the game in the Titans’ favor. They attacked Buffalo’s weakness and the tape shows us exactly how…