The NFL preseason is deceptive. No team has better embodied it lately than the Tennessee Titans.
By pulling out a 19-16 victory
over the Seattle Seahawks at Nissan Stadium in their second preseason game of 2026, the Titans claimed their fourth preseason victory in a row. They are 9-1 in their last 10 preseason games, going back to 2023, which is a perfect demonstration of how little preseason results matter in the long run.Indeed, the result of this “win” over the Seahawks said one thing. What was witnessed on the field said another.
And I believe the words are …
Uh, oh.
Another long, miserable, stinky season could be ahead for the Titans in 2026, y’all.
There’s no other reasonable takeaway from the first quarter of a preseason game that was somehow
controlled by the team playing its backups. The Titans, despite playing their starters on both sides of the football, were the ones being dominated.
The Seahawks’ B-team scored on its first three possessions, building a 16-3 lead with a pair of very easy, very long touchdowns. The Titans’ A-team, meanwhile, had a heck of a time accomplishing much of anything offensively, settling for a 55-yard field goal before turning it over on downs.
The fact that fringe players on the Titans’ roster outplayed the Seahawks’ fringe players in the second half didn’t matter one bit. We’d already seen the first quarter, and now, we can’t unsee it. We can’t be honest with ourselves while also staying oblivious to how familiar the ineptitude in this preseason game was to the ineptitude of the Titans' back-to-back 3-14 seasons.
All the same hallmarks were there:
You had big plays for the opposing offense, thanks to Titans busts. You had penalties that wiped out game-changing plays, like an interception (and then a touchdown pass once the No. 2 offense got into the game).
Titans coach Robert Saleh said after this game that, “I think both our offensive and defensive lines are pretty damn good.” Yet his first-string offensive line couldn’t convert a fourth-and-short early in the game. Tyjae Spears was stuffed for no gain.
Sound familiar?
How about the offense settling for all those field goals because it lacked explosive plays?
Of the Titans’ 10 longest plays in this game, nine weren’t produced by Cam Ward’s first-string offense. The exception was a 33-yard catch and run by Tony Pollard on the opening drive. It was followed by an incomplete pass, a 3-yard completion, another incomplete pass and a 55-yard field goal.
Coach Robert Saleh explained after the game that the Titans have been using a “base, vanilla offense” in preseason games and “not making it very easy for our players to go execute.”
Fair enough.
But if that’s the case, why bother playing all these starters and tempting injury? Ward has stayed healthy this preseason (thank goodness), but he has also been better in practices than his two mediocre preseason performances. I can’t imagine either game boosted his self-confidence.
Can’t say the same for Seahawks backup Drew Lock, who was 12-of-14 passing for 103 yards. A lot like the 49ers’ Kurtis Rourke going 12-of-14 for 101 yards in the Titans’ first preseason game.
It just looked so much easier for the 49ers and Seahawks offensively, and that’s got to be frustrating for Titans fans. Because when does it ever look that easy for Ward?
“We're not far off,” the Titans’ quarterback insisted after the Seattle game. “We're actually right there to getting where we want to be.”
Now tell me that doesn’t sound way too much like 2025.
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: The Tennessee Titans' stinking up this preseason game looked way too familiar | Estes
