Time and Patience

The Tennessee Titans have four wins, and four losses. They are mediocre, they are bad. Their younger players are inconsistent, and their veterans are playing bad. Their front office came up with a complete free agency bust in Barrett Ruud, resulting in their linebacking core being weak as ever. Their expensive superstar running back has sputtered and is struggling. Their defensive line is either underachieving or not as good as they appeared to be early in the season. These are your NFL Tennessee Titans in 2011.

Now, here is how our season has gone so far.

Week 1, @ Jaguars (2-6):
Lost 14-16
Excuse for loss: Offense out of sync for 3 quarters.

Week 2, Ravens (6-2):
Won 26-13
Reason for win: Kenny Britt was awesome. (next week, is out for the year.)

Week 3, Broncos (3-5)
Won 17-14
Reason for win: Defense came up big with some timely INTs.

Week 5, @ Browns (3-5)
Won 31-13
Reason for win: The Browns suck.

Week 6, @ Steelers (6-3)
Lost 38-17
Excuse for loss: The Steelers don't suck, we were on the road, and we couldn't do anything right.

Week 7, Texans (6-3)
Lost 41-7
Excuse for loss: Our offense was terrible, and our defense was terrible.

Week 8, Colts (0-9)
Won 27-10
Reason for win: Winless team.

Week 9, Bengals (6-2)
Lost 24-17
Excuse for loss: Offense did not show up for the second half.

Now that all of that is out of the way, let me point out something that I think is getting lost in everything else.

After Kenny Britt went down in the Broncos game, we've subsequently gone 3-3, only winning games against mediocre offenses, and losing games against actual NFL offenses.

Since KB went out, the most our offense has scored is 17 points. In all of our wins, we had to hold the opposing offense to under 17 points.
(Footnote: We scored more than 17 points against the Browns, actually. But they're the Browns.)

Unfortunately, our defense is nowhere good enough to consistently hold an NFL offense to under 17 points. We don't have the type of defense to keep us in games against really good offenses when our own offense isn't scoring. This is not your 2008 Titans defense.

Now, realistically, looking at the rest of the schedule... We don't face another mediocre offense until Week 16. That's 6 games from now. Our Titans could very well be 4-10 by then.

We need to do something to either fix our defense or improve our offensive scoring, because we're entering a 6-game stretch that; if we don't; we will lose every game played.

The optimist in me is screaming at me to shut up, but it is what it is.

Now, to satisfy my inner optimist and piss off the part of me that wants instant results, let's talk about the future.

We came into this season knowing this was a rebuilding year, and I truly believe that if CJ had shown up earlier and Kenny Britt stayed healthy, we would be sitting at 6-2 right now despite the rebuild. But unfortunately, things did not go that well.

The 2012 Titans season? Hopefully with another good draft class, we can keep filling up the holes that are visibly showing themselves this season. Not to mention, since we will have on off-season, one of two things will go much more smoothly: the eventual transition to Jake Locker, or the second year of the Hasselbeck era.

Kenny Britt should be rehabbed and back to play on opening day, with a little help from Donnie Avery, too, because he suffered the same injury KB has years ago and had to rehab back to playing football too. This was the real reason for signing him, and I think it was a good move that the front office should have received more praise for.

So, in 2012, we should have:

1. Tenured Jake Locker/More situated Matt Hasselbeck
2. The real CJ2K for a full season
3. A healthy Kenny Britt

And we could hopefully have:

1. Another good draft class to jam up holes in our defense.
2. A season without Barrett Ruud as a Titans linebacker.
3. A team down with its new offensive and defensive scheme.

I don't know about you, but I already look forward to 2012, because it looks like a really really good situation for the Titans. Hopefully the world doesn't end in December next year, or the universe really truly does hate us.

So, keep these two thoughts with you as we enter the toughest stretch of the season with a meh record and a mediocre team. Hold onto them like a saving grace, because they just might keep you from having a seemingly eternal bout of depression as our team continues to struggle.

2011 is a rebuilding year.
2012 is our year.

No matter what happens this year, we will have a better and more fluent team in a better situation to erase the bad memories of 2011. It'll feel like hell getting there, but don't worry.

We will get there.

It's just a matter of time and patience.

(Like you probably had to have both of, reading this entire post.)