Following a Week 1 loss in New Orleans where the Tennessee Titans’ offense looked mostly lifeless, the starting group bounced back in a big way to pick up the team’s first win of the year in Week 2 against the Los Angeles Chargers.
Despite Tennessee’s winning effort in which the team scored more points than it did in all but one game last season, the Titans still find themselves ranking toward the bottom of the league in one rather concerning category.
Over the first two weeks of the 2023 campaign, the Titans have produced a three-and-out rate that is tied for the eighth-highest in the NFL (43 percent).
These rates include any first series of a drive that results in a turnover, failure to gain a first down or touchdown before having to give the ball back to the opposing team.
Offensive three and out rates through 2 weeks. Bengals, yikes man pic.twitter.com/dZR0oUdVnH
— Arjun Menon (@arjunmenon100) September 20, 2023
To put that rate into perspective, the Titans were a disaster when it came to three-and-outs in the second half of games last season, failing to get a first down on 48 percent of those drives.
Even in an improved performance last week, the Titans still went three-and-out on 36.3 percent of their drives.
Obviously, this particular chart isn’t an accurate indication of how the rest of the Titans’ season will go considering it’s so early on in the year, but this is the type of issue that cannot become a growing trend as the season wears on.
Three-and-outs result in extra possessions for the opposition, subsequently placing unnecessary pressure on your defense to bail you out. Adding to that, too many three-and-outs can lead to a tired and less effective defense.
Nobody is expecting the Titans’ offense to score on every possession, but getting a few first downs at the very least will allow Tennessee to play the field possession game where they eventually create shorter fields.
That’s even more likely to happen when the team has a suffocating defense of its own, paired with a real weapon of a punter in Ryan Stonehouse, who is more than capable of pinning an opposing offense deep in its own territory with one swing of the leg.
It will be interesting to see how this data changes over the course of the season, but in an ideal world Tennessee will find itself on the lower side of that graph by year’s end.
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