A little more than four years ago, the Tennessee Titans benched quarterback Marcus Mariota during a dismal 16-0 Week 6 shutout loss to the Denver Broncos in exchange for backup Ryan Tannehill. They’d fall to 2-4.
A few months later, the Titans would play in the AFC Championship game after an out-of-nowhere renaissance that handed Tom Brady his final loss in a New England Patriots uniform and took down the MVP in Lamar Jackson on the road in Baltimore.
Simply swapping out the quarterback in a crummy Week 6 game in 2019 helped spark a multi-season run as one of the AFC’s more formidable teams that careened off the cliff in the second half of last season because of injuries and ineffective offensive play calling.
Ahead of Sunday’s home game against the feisty Atlanta Falcons, the Titans were in familiar territory. They were 2-4 and needing of some sort of unexpected spark to pull them away from a lost season, and the next game would see Tannehill watching from the sideline with a high ankle sprain.
Enter a four-touchdown performance from Mr. Mayo-in-Coffee, and life looks a lot different in Nashville on Monday than it did on Sunday morning.
Rookie quarterback Will Levis’ startling debut has put the Titans in a tough-yet-fortuitous position. The team’s second-round draft pick just played like a first-round one against a good Atlanta defense, and the team’s record is a win away from being .500. In an AFC South that feels unsettled, that matters.
What matters more is the long-term outlook for the franchise, one that looked headed toward a rebuild after the early-week trade of franchise safety Kevin Byard. Trading a major player like that signaled that the Titans didn’t have much hope for this season.
Well, one promising performance from a young quarterback can change things. Don’t expect any other trades out of Nissan Stadium this week.
It’s not to suggest that one good performance for Levis guarantees he’s the next great NFL quarterback. It does suggest, given the context of where this franchise is, that he’s given Mike Vrabel and Ran Carthon a very easy, relatively painless out on the Tannehill era.
For a team that looked like it was going nowhere fast, Levis has given the Titans reason for hope. It’s a feeling they’ve got to chase for the rest of the season to see if the former Kentucky Wildcat has the goods to do this in the seasons ahead. Making a quarterback swap should be an easy decision.
Vrabel entertained the possibility that Levis could start for the rest of the season on Monday, but he didn’t make any major declarations for the future. Tannehill getting healthy could give him his job back, but that would feel like a step in the wrong direction.
The veteran quarterback will be a free agent after this season, and the Titans didn’t draft Levis to warm his bench seat for him in 2024. It was a long-term move that now has immediate ramifications. Tannehill had a really nice second wind with Tennessee, but it’s now time for the Titans to move on.
Levis will take some rookie lumps if he keeps starting for Tennessee; that just comes with the territory. He’ll make mistakes, and he might have a game or two that makes Titans fans momentarily miss the Tannehill days.
However, Levis’ long-term development has to start now after his Falcons performance. Sometimes, the Wildcat is out of the bag, and you just can’t put him back in. Levis showed legitimate potential on Sunday, and it’s the kind of potential that the Titans would be unwise to ignore.
Yes, Tannehill didn’t really do anything to deserve getting benched for the rest of the season like Mariota did in 2019. However, his fate might just be the same as Mariota’s for the rest of the 2023 season. That’s the cruel symmetry of the NFL, and there’s not a lot you can do about it.
However, there is a big decision the Titans can make right now to build a path to the future. With Levis expected to start against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thursday night, they can just internally decide that this is Levis’ job for the rest of the season and keep moving forward.
If Levis’ one promising start turns into a bunch of problematic ones, it could give the Titans the proof they need to keep looking for a new guy in 2024. If Levis builds on his very solid Sunday in the weeks ahead, Tennessee won’t have to worry about what happens when Tannehill walks in free agency.
In that scenario, they’ll have their guy for 2024 and maybe beyond that. The Titans need to roll with Levis for the rest of the year. Any other decision beyond that would be malpractice for a team that just got a legitimate lifeline.
